O.C.’s Water Czar Dies, Was ‘an Institution’

H. George Osborne, longtime chief engineer of the Orange County Flood Control District, died this week. He was 83.

“He is part of history,” Jennifer Greenlief, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Water District, said of Osborne, who also served on the water district’s board and was the first director of the county’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Osborne became known as “the father of the Santa Ana River project,” the backbone of the county’s flood-control system. “He was instrumental in developing Orange County during its most rapid years of growth,” Greenlief said.

Family members recalled that Osborne was always fascinated by water--maybe from having heard his father’s stories about helping build the Panama Canal.

Osborne “was always pointing out drainage problems, even in the yard,” grandson Matt Stone recalled Thursday.

“He definitely was an institution,” said Stone, who followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and chose a career in water engineering.

Osborne, who grew up in Fullerton, trained as an engineer during World War II and went to work for Southern California Water Co. in 1947. In 1950, he was employed by the Orange County Flood Control District, first as a civil engineer and, from 1955 to 1974, as the agency’s chief engineer and operating manager.

During those years he was instrumental in the passage of a $42.6-million bond issue that was to become the seed money to build the county’s now-elaborate system of dams, basins, channels, storm drains and water conservation facilities for flood control.

He also played a pivotal role in the early planning and authorization for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explore flood-control measures along the Santa Ana River basin, a study that eventually led to the $1.2-billion project that now forms the backbone of the flood-control systems in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

In 1974, the Orange County Board of Supervisors appointed Osborne as the first executive director of its newly formed Environmental Protection Agency. The building housing the agency’s headquarters in Santa Ana was later named in his honor.

Osborne retired from government service in 1980 to become a consultant and later to serve on the water district’s Board of Directors.

“He was a very bright and insightful man with a good sense of history,” fellow board member John Fonley said. “His knowledge has come in very handy from time to time because not all events have always been written down.”

Phil Anthony, another board member and friend for 25 years, described Osborne as an encyclopedia of experience and knowledge.

“He was a soft-spoken man of few words but well known for his wisdom,” Anthony said. “He was a very intelligent man. He didn’t say a lot, but when he spoke people usually paid attention.”

He was also a man of considerable humor.

In 1992, when the county’s environmental headquarters in Santa Ana’s Hutton Towers was renamed the H. George Osborne Building, the former water czar--who county officials called simply HGO--had a characteristic response. “I was numb, but I was honored,” he said. “I did ask if this would mean a free parking pass.”

Osborne is survived by his wife, Dorothy; daughter Georgia Stone; six grandchildren; and two sisters, Marion Findley and Dorothy Cole.

Funeral services are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Fullerton’s First United Methodist Church. The family asks that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Assn. of the California Institute of Technology.