Angry Westlake Lake Residents Say They Have Been Left High and Dry : Dispute: Docks rest on dirt as nearby golf course legally siphons water. Homeowners want action, but management says it is powerless to stop the pumping.

A battle over water has erupted on tranquil Westlake Lake, where residents this week watched lake levels dip to record lows while the owners of a nearby golf course sprinkled the links with hundreds of gallons of lake water.

So angry are the residents that they have initiated a vitriolic letter-writing campaign to decry lake management and call for the end to a decades-old agreement giving the golf course water rights.

Residents said in letters circulated this week that they can no longer allow the lake’s water level to drop. On the lake’s perimeter, docks rest on dry dirt and boats scrape the lake floor. Small islands of land have surfaced where the water was once deep and glassy.

Statements sent out to the 1,200 residents who live along the man-made lake, which straddles the border between Ventura and Los Angeles counties, call for the ouster of Ben Schulman, president of the lake management association.

And the letters object to a proposed contract with the owners of the Westlake Village Golf Course that would continue to allow greenskeepers to siphon hundreds of gallons of lake water each day.

Tonight residents of the once-quiet community are expected to confront the lake’s nine-member management board with their concerns.

“It’s going to be a wild meeting,” said lakeside homeowner William Rolland. “People are extremely concerned about our board allowing the golf course to rape our lake.”

Schulman, who has been involved in managing the lake for six years, said the campaign against him has been rife with misinformation.

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The Westlake Lake Management Assn., he said, does not have the power to prevent golf course owners from taking lake water.

Both the lake and the Westlake Village Golf Course were built by the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. in the late 1960s. The developer included in the code that governs the lake’s management a requirement that the golf course have access to the lake water. Schulman said he believes that stipulation cannot be changed, but residents disagree.

Only when the lake’s surface level drops 24 inches can the lake managers cut off the golf-course supply. Schulman estimates the level is presently 14 to 16 inches below normal.

“I’ve looked at the agreements and I’ve talked with lawyers,” he said. “We just don’t have the right to ask them to stop.”

At the heart of the dispute between Schulman and a band of residents who say they represent 80% of the homeowners has been the fate of two wells that are used to pump water into the lake from an aquifer, one of several sources of lake water.

In August, the federal government awarded ownership of the wells to Los Angeles-based PYJ Corp., the company that bought the golf course in 1990.

The company received title to the wells even though area homeowners, through the lake management association, had for 20 years been paying to service and operate them.

A contract with PYJ, Schulman said, would mean the homeowners would regain part ownership of the wells, and the golf course would have to begin paying for some pumping and repairs.

“All I wanted to do was raise this as a possibility, given that the golf course has been getting a free ride for water,” Schulman said. “What I’ve gotten in return have been these outrageous attacks.”

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One anonymous letter accuses Schulman of betraying the homeowners and another includes personal attacks against him.

Rolland, one of those leading the effort against Schulman, said the anger behind the letters is warranted.

“If we enter into this kind of agreement, we would be selling out half the lake for the next 200 years,” Rolland said. “It would be a disaster.”

Schulman said he hoped some kind of arrangement could be made to prevent the golf course from extracting water for free, but he will no longer push for the agreement.

Thousand Oaks Planning Commissioner Irving Wasserman, who lives in the lake community, said he will ask the cities of Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village to create an oversight committee to help resolve these issues more calmly in the future.

“Both cities have a tremendous stake in seeing that the lake remains a viable entity,” Wasserman said. “We need to make sure there is enough oversight to prevent it from being siphoned away.”

Rolland said he plans at tonight’s meeting to ask for a change in the lake association’s codes to prevent the golf course from using any more water. The proposal, he said, would recommend that the board use its funds to begin drilling a new well.

The meeting will be held at 7 tonight at the Westlake Yacht Club, 32123 W. Lindero Canyon Road, Westlake Village.