Casitas Board Rejects Proposal to Build Recreation Area on Watershed

Faced with opposition from Ojai Valley residents, the Casitas Municipal Water District has rejected a proposal to build a 300-acre recreation area on the Teague Memorial Watershed near Lake Casitas.

In a unanimous decision, the district’s board members turned down Recreation Management Associates’ request that the board study a development proposal that included a 27-hole golf course, an equestrian center with 30 horses and two dozen rental cottages.

Board members said the vote this week effectively ended immediate plans to build in the area.

“If the community doesn’t support it, there’s absolutely no way we can support it,” board member Larry Whelan said. “And people have made it very clear that they don’t want it.”

District General Manager John Johnson said he had initially endorsed the plan as a way to offset a potential $1-million budget shortfall.

“We thought it was an idea that was worth looking into,” Johnson said.

But the plan sparked intense opposition from residents in the federally protected watershed who were forced to sell their land under eminent domain laws in the 1970s.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has purchased about 3,100 acres from landowners in the area to protect the watershed, which supplies drinking-quality water to Lake Casitas. The water district manages the land for the federal government, which is allowing the residents to stay in the watershed for the rest of their lives.

“I don’t think anyone who had their land taken away could support an idea to build a golf course on that very same property,” said Katherine H. Haley, who owns 350 acres along Santa Ana Road, east of the lake. “The whole idea didn’t make any sense in the first place.”

Ojai resident Pat Weinberger, who worked with federal officials and local residents to establish the watershed 20 years ago, said she was pleased with the board’s decision.

“I think they acted with moral certitude,” Weinberger said. “You can’t just act based on financial considerations, you also have to consider the enormous emotional cost this would have on the people in the watershed.”

But Gerald Barney, who heads Recreation Management Associates, said the plan was misunderstood.

“There was a lot of indignation and fury whipped up by people who didn’t understand what had been proposed,” Barney said. “I’m disappointed in the water district. I thought it would be good for the district’s customers as well as for us.”

Barney said the project could eventually have raised between $500,000 and $1 million a year for the district, offsetting the district’s projected deficit and avoiding rate increases.

The district is now considering raising water rates an average of 9.3% for the district’s 2,900 customers, Johnson said.