Water Agency Agrees to Consider 20% Expansion of Bard Reservoir : Calleguas: Officials say the $2-million project to increase the capacity above Wood Ranch would pay for itself in five years.

The Calleguas Municipal Water District, searching for places to stockpile cheap winter water for summer use, may find an answer in its own back yard: expanding Bard Reservoir by 20%.

The Calleguas board of directors agreed Wednesday to proceed with further studies of the expansion of the reservoir above Simi Valley’s Wood Ranch community, Calleguas General Manager Don Kendall said.

According to initial estimates, Kendall said, the expansion would cost about $2 million and would enlarge the reservoir from 10,000 to 12,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot--the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land with one foot of water--is about what a family of five consumes in a year.

“Basically, we would create a larger bathtub,” Kendall said. “We wouldn’t be touching the existing dam.”

For $2 million, Kendall said, the expansion project would pay for itself in little more than five years because Calleguas could fill the reservoir with water during the winter, when water costs are lower.

“That’s a doggone good investment. If you could buy a house with a five-year pay-back you’d be doing cartwheels,” said board member Donald Hauser, who proposed the study.

Hauser said he is a firm believer in reservoirs.

“Storage of potable water is expensive and hard to find,” he said. “Once you’ve got a place where you can put it, you tend to keep it full.”

Calleguas, Ventura County’s largest water wholesaler, supplies all or part of the water for nearly 500,000 residents of Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard and the unincorporated areas of Oak Park, Somis, Lake Sherwood and Bell Canyon.

A public agency, Calleguas buys its water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and resells it to 21 public and private water companies in its service area.

The more water Calleguas can store locally, the better, Kendall said, because the Metropolitan Water District offers a 34% discount on the price of water that Calleguas buys during eight “off-peak” months.

Andrew Sienkiewich, manager of the Metropolitan Water District’s ground-water branch, said the discounts were designed to encourage water wholesalers such as Calleguas to build new storage capacity.

“It is something they can use to justify the expenditures on these facilities. It was intended to help finance the facilities,” Sienkiewich said.

The discount rates usually are in effect from September to April, but Sienkiewich said the Metropolitan Water District board extended them throughout 1993 because of the abundance of available water.

Bard Reservoir, built in 1965 and named for Calleguas founder Richard Bard, sits on 860 acres of Calleguas-owned land between Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, near the Calleguas office headquarters.

The reservoir is fenced and is off-limits to the public, though it has been used as a movie set, recently for the Robin Williams movie “Toys.” But movie producers were not allowed to disturb the water, which is drawn directly into drinking water supply lines.

Kendall said the expansion would be done entirely on Calleguas property.

He said preliminary environmental studies showed there would be no archeological damage and only minor damage to habitat, which could be mitigated.

Furthermore, Kendall and Hauser said the expansion would pose no threat to the integrity of the dam. Because it would not increase the depth of the reservoir, they said, it would not increase pressure on the dam.

Kendall said the cost of enlarging the reservoir would have to be weighed against the cost of other water storage options such as drilling storage wells in the Las Posas Basin.

Several wells are planned as part of Calleguas’ attempts to “drought-proof” the region by increasing the amount of water it can store in Ventura County.

Calleguas also is joining with the Metropolitan Water District to finance a second supply line from Castaic Lake, from which Calleguas receives all of its water.

In a related action, the Calleguas board gave preliminary approval Wednesday to an ordinance that would require customers to use reclaimed water when it is available or pay penalties. Reclaimed water, which is treated effluent from sewage treatment plants, is typically used to irrigate golf courses and public landscaping.

Calleguas is building a reclaimed water system that will serve Oak Park and the North Ranch section of Thousand Oaks.

Kendall said the board will take final action on the reclaimed water ordinance next month.