Sepulveda Basin Improvements OKd : Parkland: Eleven million will be spent on 20 acres of athletic fields, 185 acres of wildlife area and reclaimed water system.

City park commissioners approved an $11-million agreement Wednesday with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that will pay for major improvements in the Sepulveda Basin, including development of 20 acres of athletic fields and more than 185 acres of wildlife territory and an expansion of the basin’s reclaimed water system.

The cost of the improvements will be split evenly between the Corps of Engineers, which owns the 2,100 acres of the basin, and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, which leases it for parkland.

The department’s $5.5 million share of the funding will come from two sources: $3 million from Proposition A funds for the athletic fields and wildlife projects, and $2.5 million to be shared by the Department of Water and Power and the Department of Public Works for expansion of the reclaimed water distribution system.

Work is scheduled to begin in May and will conclude by the winter of 1996, officials said.

The Sepulveda Basin serves as the San Fernando Valley’s largest public park. While the primary purpose of the open land is to provide a runoff basin for flood control, as a park it is a mecca for golfers, soccer and softball players, as well as for fishermen and other visitors to the 11-acre Lake Balboa.

The basin is viewed by environmentalists and others as one of the most important wetland areas in the Valley, forming an important link in a chain of five remaining urban open space areas along with the Encino Reservoir, Pierce College farm, the Chatsworth Reservoir and the Van Norman Dam area.

Currently, the reclaimed water system in the basin services only Lake Balboa and the pond in the wildlife area. After the expansion, reclaimed water--filtered waste water--will be used to irrigate both the Woodley and the Balboa and Encino golf courses, said Bob Faucett, a landscape architect with the parks department. Eventually, the reclaimed water system will service the entire basin, officials said.

Twenty acres of new athletic fields also will be built using the funds. The fields will be in the northeast corner of the basin near the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and will include soccer, cricket and softball fields.

“In addition to those, we’re putting in more athletic fields adjacent to existing fields at Hjelte Park and Balboa Sport Centers,” said Deborah Lamb, a landscape architect with the Corps of Engineers. Other fields will be north of Lake Balboa, she added.

Lamb said the expanded wildlife areas, to be north of Burbank Boulevard on both sides of Woodley Avenue, were originally slated for use as athletic fields. But due to drainage problems in that area, planners decided to use the acreage for an expanded nature preserve and wildlife trails.

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The area will be sewn with plants native to the area, perennial grasses and buckwheat, Lamb said, noting that the area is within the Pacific Flyway, an international corridor traversed by migratory waterfowl including Canada geese. Raptors, songbirds, shorebirds, snowy egrets and blue herons have also been seen in the basin.

The agreement prompted little immediate reaction among environmental groups. But Glenn Bailey, director of the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District and a founding member of the Coalition to Save the Sepulveda Basin, criticized park commissioners for providing only one day’s notice of the meeting regarding the agreement.

“This sounds like a good agreement,” Bailey said, “But the public needs to know if you’re locking it into things we might not support. Give us time to review it.”