No Swimming at Puddingstone : Recreation: High bacteria levels are to blame. Boating, fishing, water-skiing and other activities at the 250-acre lake are not affected.

For the first time in Puddingstone Reservoir’s 40-year legacy as one of the east San Gabriel Valley’s most popular swimming holes, visitors will be forbidden to plunge into its cool waters to escape this summer’s heat.

Citing budget cuts and the potential for swimmers to contract bacteria-borne diseases in two designated swimming areas, Los Angeles County park officials say “No Swimming” signs now posted at the 250-acre lake in San Dimas, and at Castaic Lake to the north in the Santa Clarita Valley, will stay up throughout the season.

Both facilities will remain open for boating, fishing, Jet-Skiing and water-skiing, however, because those activities take place in deeper waters where bacteria levels are low.

In recent years, swimming at Puddingstone, in the rolling hills of Frank G. Bonelli County Regional Park, has been allowed from Easter weekend through early September. The sprawling park is also the home of Raging Waters, a popular amusement park that is not affected by the ban.

Actually, Puddingstone’s north and south shore swimming holes have been closed since last August, when county health officials found that bacteria levels on weekends were more than double the acceptable standard for public swimming. The cause: too many people, sometimes more than 20,000 on sweltering weekend afternoons, in or near the water.

Some park visitors are not so keen on the new swimming ban, which for the first time will involve the whole summer.

“I paid $6 to get in here, and it’s not fair if I can’t swim,” said Pomona resident Edwin Franco, 28, who ignored the sign and plunged in the water Wednesday.

Violators of the swimming ban are warned the first time by county park police officers, then face a $150 citation.

But Franco probably had no reason to be concerned about the water itself. Health experts have found bacteria levels to be high only on the weekends, when more than 1,000 swimmers may be in the water at once.

But under the shadow of this year’s county budget ax, county park officials decided to ban swimming at Puddingstone throughout the week, allowing them to save funds otherwise spent on nine seasonal lifeguards employed at the lake. Also, it would confuse and perturb the public to allow swimming on weekdays but not on weekends, said Bonelli Park superintendent Olene Ewell-White.

“Imagine telling people it’s OK to swim during the week when you’re at work, but not on your day off,” she said.

Health officials say the bacteria they test for in the swimming areas at county lakes come from human waste--young children are the likely culprits--or are carried into the water on swimmers’ skin.

High levels of the bacteria found in the shallow swimming areas at Puddingstone last year indicated there were so many people in the water that the risk of contracting a disease from sewage-born pathogens was, at times, unacceptably high, according to Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection for the county Department of Health Services.

“We’ve had outbreaks of disease in crowded bathing areas in the past, and that’s why we’re so sensitive to these things,” he said.

Petralia pointed out that, several years ago, about 40 people who had taken a dip in the lake at Santa Fe Dam County Park in Irwindale later suffered severe diarrhea. He said the illness was caused by a pathogen called shigella, carried in human waste.

Shortly after the incident, Santa Fe Dam officials repaired a malfunctioning chlorination system at the lake that has since been used successfully to kill bacteria in the swimming area, park officials said.

Castaic Lake has no plans to install such a system.

Ewell-White said chlorination for Puddingstone would cost about $200,000, money she is certain she could not obtain. Nevertheless, she has requested a study of the idea.

Santa Fe Dam will thus be the lone county-operated lake to offer summer swimming.

Health experts say the high bacteria levels have always been roughly confined to the county lakes’ swimming areas, and pathogens that cause disease in humans are not carried by fish. They said there was never a reason to be concerned that bacteria from humans was tainting the meat of fish caught in the lakes.

At Santa Fe Dam, where about $2,600 worth of chlorine a month is pumped into the swimming area during the summer, fish populations have not been affected adversely, according to Fred Evans, the park’s superintendent.

Park officials say they expect parking fee revenue to drop as a result of the swimming bans at Puddingstone and Castaic. However, Ewell-White said that, in addition to the $6 parking levy at her lake, which is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., revenues come from fishing boat, aqua cycle and Jet Ski rentals, among other recreational activities.

Officials at Bonelli and Castaic say they will try to boost income by scheduling more Jet Ski races, fishing tournaments and other aquatic events that could draw large crowds.