Reservoir Project Holds Hope for All of California

The invitation was hard to resist--a helicopter flight to eastern Riverside County, where a huge, new reservoir will be built.

The prospect of a helicopter ride prompted me to phone a quick RSVP. A close-to-the ground flight over the Eastside and the San Gabriel Valley into the farthest reaches of the Inland Empire would be a break from slogging around Southland freeways. My most interesting work-related travel recently had been driving to a Neighborhood Watch meeting on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

But there was more to this invitation than a flight. Domenigoni Reservoir is an important part of one of Southern California’s most fascinating political stories, the effort of this semidesert to secure enough water to support a population that nature never intended to live there.

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At 7 a.m. last Wednesday, I joined officials of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California at the agency’s Downtown Los Angeles headquarters, and we headed to the helicopter waiting for us at a Civic Center parking lot.

Our destination was the Domenigoni Valley near Hemet. By 1999, this valley will be covered by 250 feet of water, creating a reservoir 4 1/2 miles long and 2 miles wide. Three dams will hold the water in the valley, which for more than a century has been the farming domain of the Domenigoni family.

The $2-billion-plus reservoir is being built to correct a basic flaw in the Southern California water supply system, a planning misjudgment that has caused years of conflict between Northern and Southern California and between agriculture and the cities. The problem is that there is not enough reservoir capacity to get us through periodic droughts. Domenigoni will also be big enough to supply us for six months should the long-awaited Big One cut off the aqueducts bringing water from the Colorado River and Northern California.

As our helicopter headed east into Riverside County, I could see why there was a growing need for the water. Around Corona, we flew over huge mansions-- pseudo-colonials and fake French chateaus--occupying comparatively small hillside lots. On the flatlands, houses stood row on row, looking from the air like the subdivisions that inspired Malvina Reynolds to write her folk song about little boxes.

These houses, big and small, and their inhabitants are slurping up the water. And more are on the way. The recession stopped the Riverside County boom for a while. Now, heavy equipment and carpenters are back at work, putting up shopping centers and subdivisions.

The helicopter landed in Domenigoni Valley. This is pre-industrial, pre-suburban California, not much changed from the days when Gov. Pio Pico granted this land, as part of the 47,800-acre Rancho Santa Rosa, to Juan Moreno on Jan. 30, 1846. But don’t mourn for the land. If the MWD hadn’t bought it for a reservoir, I’m sure it would have been subdivisions and reservoirs in a few years.

As we looked around the area, I talked to MWD General Manager John Wodraska and Elizabeth Ann Rieki, an assistant U.S. secretary of the interior.

The water officials, who have been criticized for being environmentally insensitive, spun their story about how they were at one with nature in developing this particular reservoir. At the headquarters building, they showed me how the engineers had saved the habitat of the rufous-crowned sparrow, the Stephens kangaroo rat, the San Diego horned lizard, the orange-throated whiptail and the California gnatcatcher.

Saving these species, in fact, is why Domenigoni Valley reservoir is taking shape with relatively little controversy.

Each of these creatures has protectors who’d go to court if a single one were threatened. Working with other agencies, the MWD helped buy more than 11,000 acres of wildlife habitat, thus preventing a legal assault on the reservoir project.

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What was more interesting to me, however, was the Domenigoni Valley Reservoir’s place in California’s long-running water wars, fought over dividing a limited supply.

The water that will fill this reservoir will come from the Colorado River and the Feather River in Northern California. The Feather runs into the Sacramento River, and then to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where huge pumps constantly pull the water into the big aqueduct that carries it to Southern California.

The pumping has depleted the delta water supply, diminished its flow to nearby San Francisco Bay and all but wiped out the striped bass, once a favorite delta sport fish.

Northerners hate the south for this assault. By storing water in our new reservoir, pressure can be eased on the delta. The pumps can be turned off when the delta needs water the most. Instead of just exploiting the delta, we can help save it, and find a way to provide enough water for all California.