MWD Builds Reservoir of Goodwill

Just imagine the reaction in the executive board room when the boss pitched this project:

Let’s build the largest lake in Southern California. It’ll cost more than $2 billion-with-a-B. It’ll hold enough water to serve everyone from Santa Monica to San Diego for five months.

This lake will require not one, not two, but three dams. The valley’s farmlands will be under 250 feet of water; the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rats that live there will be wiped out, but don’t worry: We’re pretty sure the threatened gnatcatcher will manage to fly to higher ground.

The Sierra Club will love us, the federal government will love us, and we’ll end up environmental heroes.

Of course, we’ll have to kick off the farmers who live there now, and the area is rich with American Indian artifacts.

But at least Southern California will have water.

A preposterous scenario? Hardly.

That very project is under way by Southern California’s mother water agency, the Metropolitan Water District, on thousands of acres of onion and wheat fields a few miles southwest of here.

It will be the largest and most important water facility ever constructed by the MWD, whose job is to ensure that Southern California has water, come drought or come earthquake.

The reservoir will almost double the amount of water stored aboveground in Southern California. It will be larger in size than the Southland’s six regional reservoirs combined: the state’s Castaic, Pyramid, Perris and Silverwood lakes, and the MWD’s Lake Mathews and Lake Skinner.

When completed around the turn of the century, the reservoir will guarantee water delivery to its customers for five months should the aqueducts and canals that carry water here from Northern California and the Colorado River be cut off by a cataclysmic temblor along the San Andreas Fault.

And should Southern California face another drought requiring rationing, the new reservoir could serve MWD’s 27 public agency customers for two to three years if its water is meted out carefully.

It is that big. And it will cost about $1.5 billion, plus another $750 million or so to construct the related pipelines to distribute the water. In time, the cost will trickle down to the average residential customer in terms of about a $2-or-so increase in the monthly water bill, said Bert Becker, assistant director of finance for the MWD.

Officials say it is well worth it, the cost of providing water in a desert.

“In terms of a physical project and its effect on the reliability of Southern California’s water supply, this is our single most important project,” beamed Carl Boronkay, who first raised the need for the reservoir in 1984 and who recently retired as MWD’s general manager.

And the amazing thing is, the MWD has moved forward with the huge project with nary a ripple of dissent from environmentalists, state and federal regulatory agencies, local governments and nearby tribal councils who value the site as a rich repository of treasured American Indian artifacts.

About the only ones voicing protest are some of the residents in the valley who complain that they are being offered river-bottom farmland prices for property far more valuable in years ahead as California’s newest neighborhoods.

“The way they’re treating us would upset anybody,” grouses patriarch Francis Domenigoni, 81, whose grandfather settled the area 100 years ago and gave the valley its name.

The argument over property values notwithstanding, the plans to build the reservoir could be a model for future public works projects because of its success in handling a myriad of environmental issues.

The MWD’s strategy: Find a site with the least number of potential environmental pitfalls to begin with, spend tens of millions of dollars to develop more off-site nature reserves than required by state law, hire archeologists to comb the fields and hillsides in search of human artifacts, and work with local American Indians in relocating and preserving the archeological discoveries.

The planning has taken years, but the patience and dollars spent have paid off, officials on both sides of the fence say.

“We’re very, very, very pleased with the MWD and their actions in doing something positive for the environment,” said Marvin Plenert, the western states regional director for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“If there are any environmental people who are angry about this, I haven’t seen or heard them,” he said.

Indeed, the local chapter of the Sierra Club has reviewed the project and decided to take no position on it, or even pass it along to its national office for review.

“The environmental work on it has been pretty thorough, and we have no objection to it,” said Joan Taylor, conservation chairwoman for the San Gorgonio chapter of the Sierra Club. “From a biological standpoint, this has not been a controversial project.”

Even Boronkay admits to surprise by how smoothly the project has advanced.

“I give great thanks to someone up there that this program has moved ahead much more smoothly and efficiently than anyone would have anticipated from the start,” he said.

“We adopted the attitude that we weren’t going to win this by beating down the opposition,” he said. “We were going to get support for it. We’ve probably done a lot more than we’ve had to, but we’ve won a lot of friends along the way.”

And a few enemies, too.

The Domenigoni family settled in the valley last century. The family once worked 10,000 acres of alfalfa, wheat and cattle, and now will be forced to not only sell 340 acres of their remaining 500-acre farm, but to look out their windows at a towering dam that will be built almost in their back yard.

“We’re going to lose our best water wells and our best soil, where we plant our seed stock for the next year,” complained Andy Domenigoni, the family’s fourth-generation farmer in these parts. They will lose access to another 5,000 acres the family leases for farming.

“We’re all resigned that the reservoir will be built,” Domenigoni said. “That battle was long ago lost. But if our property is going to be taken, we want it based on its highest potential use--as developable residential property--and not based on farmland.”

That is the battle now being fought between the MWD and the family, and Domenigoni complains that the MWD is trying to low-ball its offer.

Andy Domenigoni’s wife, Cindi, said: “This place has a heritage. It’s been handed down from generation to generation. Now we’re going to have to reconsider our lifestyle. Will there be a life for our son?”

While negotiations with the Domenigonis continue, the MWD has purchased more than 70% of the land needed for the 11,000-acre project.

By design, the proposed reservoir had to be built somewhere in Riverside County. Officials wanted a vast storage basin south of the San Andreas Fault, where a catastrophic temblor is expected to occur, so that they could continue to provide water for Southern California if the supply from the north were cut off. Additionally, the region’s elevation allows the water to flow by gravity to most of MWD’s customers.

One potential site, along the Potrero Creek near Beaumont, would have been cheaper to develop. But it was dismissed because it is home to a large population of endangered species and features a rich riparian and wetlands habitat. The federal regulatory review in this case would have been too cumbersome to tackle.

Another possible site was Vail Lake east of Temecula, but it too would have triggered stringent environmental review because of its wetlands habitat. Besides, it would not have accommodated a large enough reservoir.

Domenigoni Valley had several things going for it:

* Because the land had been farmed more than 100 years, it was considered environmentally disturbed. Building there would raise fewer regulatory hackles than targeting pristine land elsewhere.

* There were no wetlands or riparian habitats to muddy the environmental approvals.

* An aqueduct passes through the site, so the mechanism to fill the lake is in place.

* There was ample land nearby to set aside as nature preserves, to offset the loss of habitat in the valley.

But the MWD had to move quickly to buy new habitat land, ahead of developers who already had their foot in the door to build home sites.

The water agency purchased about 3,500 acres of land on the Santa Rosa Plateau, west of Murietta several miles away, at a cost of $15.4 million. The land, near a state-owned ecological preserve, had been destined for residential development.

The MWD also contributed $1.7 million to a trust fund to help manage the preserve, one of the largest undisturbed sites of California native grassland and coastal and Englemann oaks.

Buying the Santa Rosa Plateau land mitigated the loss of Domenigoni Valley’s pastureland. One environmental issue down, two to go.

Next, the MWD bought 2,400 acres just across the southern ridgeline of the reservoir site, specifically as habitat for the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat. Cost: $10.5 million. The site, known as the Shipley Reserve for its former owner, hosts a healthy kangaroo rat population, and by putting it into public trust, the MWD has guaranteed its posterity.

Because it set aside new habitat, the MWD won state approval to literally plow under the kangaroo rats living in the valley. “We blitzed them,” one MWD official said matter-of-factly.

Two down, one to go.

With the new habitats set aside for grasslands and the kangaroo rats, the MWD had one last hurdle: the gnatcatcher songbird, a nemesis to development all around Southern California.

The gnatcatchers living in the valley fared better than the kangaroo rats: 10 pairs were banded and released, and they have now been tracked in the hills above the valley.

Furthermore, the MWD has set aside 9,000 acres of hillside around the reservoir as a nature preserve, not only for the gnatcatcher but for 16 other sensitive bird, plant and animal species identified in the valley. That way, the project will not be jeopardized should the desert wood rat, pocket mouse or any of the other species at the site be listed as endangered.

Construction is expected to begin in 1995, ultimately turning this open-ended valley into a 4 1/2-mile-long bathtub.

At its western end, a behemoth earthen-and-rock dam 1.8 miles long, 280 feet tall and 300 yards wide at its base will link ridgelines that form the natural sides of the reservoir. At the east end, the dam will be 2.2 miles long and 178 feet tall. A smaller dam will plug a gap along the northern ridgeline.

The reservoir will cover 4,410 acres. The water will be 250 feet deep, amounting to 800,000 acre-feet of water.

It will take four years to fill the lake to capacity--even though the MWD may draw water from it as it slowly fills with water from Northern California and the Colorado River during winter and spring months.

Fishing and sailing will be allowed on the lake, and in a public relations move to accommodate water contact sports such as water skiing, several smaller recreational lakes will be built on MWD parklands at both ends of the reservoir.

Plans also call for campsites, hiking and equestrian trails, sports fields and a golf course.

The MWD will not have to look far for materials to build the dams. It will extract dirt and rocks from the nearby hillsides, thereby significantly reducing construction costs and pollution from trucking.

But tapping the hillsides has created one of the few sore spots with American Indians, who are distressed that one or more ancient village sites, and possibly a burial ground, will be disturbed.

The MWD and representatives of local tribal councils are still working that problem out, but Jennie Miranda, spokeswoman for the nearby Pechanga Reservation of the Temecula band of Luiseno Indians said talks are moving along. “It’s been smooth so far, and I’m not working to look for the worst,” Miranda said.

Out of respect for the region’s cultural heritage, American Indians are working with INFOTEC, a large archeological firm hired by the MWD to help identify and preserve artifacts found on the site.

So far, the valley and the hillsides have yielded about 10,000 historically significant items, ranging from arrowheads and quarry tools to granite grinding bowls and game balls. They have been retrieved, identified, interpreted, catalogued in computers and safeguarded in storage.

No one is sure what will come of the artifacts. Because most history museums are filled and can accommodate no more items, there is some talk of erecting an American Indian museum somewhere on MWD parkland for display and interpretive purposes. Elders from the region’s various tribes will make a recommendation to the MWD, which has the final word.

Miranda said although she was not willing to offer an unconditional attaboy to the MWD for its efforts in saving the artifacts, “Metropolitan has recognized some of their responsibilities, and allowing our involvement is very significant.

“Too many times developers come in and destroy cultural resources without questioning their significance with respect to cultural heritage,” she said. “What seems to be understood here is that although this is part of our (American Indian) heritage, it’s part of the history of the people of this state as well.”

Alvino Siva is an elder of the Cahuilla Indians and a member of the Riverside County Historical Commission, and he worries that some hillside sites--including rock foundations of prehistoric living shelters--will be totally destroyed for the sake of the dams.

But he acknowledges that there is no stopping the MWD. “The law just says that Native Americans will be notified (if sites are found)--but that we don’t have a say in their preservation.

“Our children need to know who they are, and a discovery like this should be preserved. Why destroy it to save a few million dollars, and to heck with your heritage?” he asks.

INFOTEC archeologist Melinda Romano has been studying the Domenigoni Valley for the MWD for a year. She and her crews of surveyors, standing 30 feet apart, have walked the entire valley and trekked into the hillsides, looking for evidence of artifacts, probing into the ground and sometimes digging 12 feet down to bedrock to search for artifacts if there are suggestive clues.

The archeologists have uncovered about 90 significant sites, including six village sites distinguished by rock art, soil altered by campfires and cooking, stone tools and the like.

“What’s so exciting about this project is that the Domenigoni Reservoir study is contributing significant information about the prehistory of inland Riverside County,” Romano said.

Had the area been developed piecemeal for home sites, the overall history of the region would not have been uncovered, Romano said.

“This can be a case example of how a major development project should be carried out,” she said.

Grand Plans

Some facts and figures on the Domenigoni Valley Reservoir:

THE RESERVOIR

Area: 250 feet deep, with a surface area of 4,410 acres.

Size: About 4 1/2 miles long, 2 miles wide.

Capacity: 800,000 acre-feet of water.

Dams: Will require three earthen dams: One 1.8 miles long, 280 feet tall; another 2.2 miles long, 178 feet tall; and a smaller dam to close a northern ridgeline gap.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Grasslands: $15.4 million spent to preserve 3,500 acres of native California grasslands and oaks on the Santa Rosa Plateau.

Habitat: $10.5 million spent to set aside 2,400 acres, now called the Shipley Preserve, as habitat for the endangered Stephens kangaroo rat.

Species: Another 9,000 acres set aside in hillsides around the reservoir, as habitat for the threatened gnatcatcher songbird, plus 16 other sensitive bird, plant and animal species.

THE ARCHEOLOGY

Sites: Six prehistoric or historic village sites uncovered, representing the lifestyle of early Luiseno and Cahuilla Indians.

Artifacts: 10,000 artifacts uncovered, including grinding bowls, tools, projectile points and rock paintings.

History: Archeologists say the area is rich with information about prehistoric life in an inland California valley.

THE COST

Land: $1.5 billion in land acquisition, design, engineering and construction.

Pipe: $750 million in new water pipelines.

Customers: Eventually, an increase of about $2 a month for the average residential water customer.