Lake Woebegone

It happened on one of those Riverside County summer nights when the sun dutifully sets but somebody forgets to turn off the heat.

The scrubby town of Lake Elsinore was holding a pop concert at a baseball park when Bill Reimbold, a rambunctious gadfly, approached the man who plays town mascot Whiskers by wearing a large foam catfish head. Reimbold says that when he expressed concern about several people who had drowned in the town’s eponymous lake, Whiskers used racial epithets to describe the victims.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Reimbold said.

After a public flap, Whiskers--or the man inside the foam head--said he meant no offense, and some believe he was merely the latest target of the town’s relentless critics.

But the exchange last summer was emblematic of life in Lake Elsinore, a town that never quite made it. It is always contentious here. It is always a little strange. And it is always about the lake.

Now the town is preparing to spend $15 million from a state bond measure last spring to clean up the watershed that spills into Lake Elsinore, which, at 3,000 acres, is the largest natural lake in Southern California. Much of the money will go toward the lake itself in the latest effort to scrub it clean of pollutants that turn it bright green and kill its fish with alarming regularity.

In typical fashion for a place that has seen fistfights during political campaigns, critics of the town government are sure the effort will be for naught.

Right or wrong, distrust of government is rampant in Lake Elsinore, especially after the 112-year-old town failed to realize the benefits of the economic boom that neighboring cities, such as Temecula, have enjoyed.

Critics are sure that the lake--and, therefore, the town itself--won’t be any better off after the money is spent. And they fear that an unusual proposal by a company that wants to pump lake water up and down the nearby hillside to generate electricity could undo any progress that is made.

“This place has a lot of potential. But basically, whatever this city touches turns to doo-doo,” said Kerry M. Clark, a retired police officer and the owner of Camper’s Outpost, an outdoors store near the shore of the lake that makes its money largely on tourism.

In theory, Lake Elsinore is something of a mountainous Eden. The lake, popular with Jet Skiers, boaters and water skiers, is nestled against the eastern foothills of the Cleveland National Forest, whose mountains provide a dramatic backdrop. It is halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles, and Interstate 15 runs along its eastern border, providing easy access for visitors.

In practice, though, it’s never been easy. Once a prosperous resort, popular with many European Jews who settled in Southern California, it has fallen on hard times, largely because of its troublesome lake. At times, the lake has been completely dry. More recently, it has become a receptacle for runoff that sweeps off golf courses and farms, introducing damaging nutrients into the water.

That has produced a public relations disaster. The town remains bleak and depressed, a hodgepodge of bingo parlors, trailer parks and watering holes, including the Wreck, a bar across the street from the Chamber of Commerce.

It is a small town--but one where some restaurants have thick bars on their windows and where some homes are guarded with barbed-wire fences. “Elsinore: the armpit of Riverside County. Mudhole USA,” one resident wrote last week in a posting to an Internet chat room about Lake Elsinore.

Officials say bashing the town has become nothing short of sport among residents, and City Hall is searching for a very different image. Many believe that the $15 million could be the first step.

The money is the region’s share of a $2-billion bond issue that voters statewide approved in March. So far, about $8 million of it has been earmarked for cleanup efforts, said City Manager Dick Watenpaugh. The money will be used, he said, in a variety of ways. Among the ideas the city is considering:

* Launching an exhaustive study of the 750-square-mile watershed that spills into Lake Elsinore, from Hemet to Moreno Valley to Perris to nearby Canyon Lake.

* Installing giant blowers that will introduce air into the lake. The city may build large pipes underwater. Bringing oxygen to the lake would fight algae blooms that have turned the lake green and, as Clark puts it, “make water skiers look like creatures of the black lagoon.” The algae saps the lake of oxygen at times and kills thousands of fish.

* Ridding the lake of carp, an unpopular, bottom-feeding fish that stirs up harmful metals and silt in the bottom of the lake and eat young bass, reducing the lake’s appeal for sport fishermen.

Beyond the lake-saving effort, city officials point to a number of other steps that have been taken in Lake Elsinore.

Tax revenue, due to an exhaustive city effort to lure new business, is on the rise. Armed with a $23.7-million budget for 2000-01, city officials are looking to build a new fire station, refinance their debt and restore city parks--some of which were closed in recent years because of financial woes. Crime, officials say, has fallen by two-thirds since 1995.

“Lake Elsinore is an old, old community, and it’s gone through a lot of ups and downs,” said Watenpaugh, who has been city manager for four years. “It has had years of a bad reputation. But we think we are moving in a positive direction.”

Reimbold, an insurance adjuster who lives in the hills overlooking the lake and has been known to kill rattlesnakes in his backyard and eat them, isn’t so sure. He is among a boisterous group of critics who dog the city at every turn, and his Web site parodying Lake Elsinore includes pictures of scantily clad women and rude depictions of city officials.

Like others in town, he is concerned about a $450-million proposal by Enron North America, which wants to use lake water to create energy--and profit. Enron is considering pumping the water up a nearby hillside at night, when energy prices are low, and then dumping it back into the lake through large turbines during the day, when the company can sell electricity at higher prices.

The project would probably change the surface level of the lake by less than two feet. But the lake is so shallow that its edges could recede by more than 20 feet in some spots when the water is temporarily removed. And critics are sure the plan will stir up the bottom of the lake, reintroducing dormant chemicals and pollutants that can lead to a new round of fish kills.

“They could care less about the quality of the water in the lake, as long as it is liquid that they can pump up and down the hill,” Reimbold said. “They just look at it as a machine. And this throws the whole $15-million lake cleanup into chaos.”

Enron has assured Lake Elsinore’s 30,000 residents that the project, if it goes forward, will be built carefully. Supporters of the plan say taxpayers would save money because Enron would assist in keeping the lake--which has reached drastically low levels again recently--full of water. But city officials say they are studying the plan with a critical eye.

“The lake is the economic engine the city lives by,” Watenpaugh said. “The project has potential positives and potential negatives. Anything is possible.”

Including failure, say the city’s relentless critics.

They cite a minor-league baseball stadium, run by the city, that has not produced the revenue officials had hoped. And they point to the parks. After the city took over administration of the parks a few years ago, they say, the grass died on campsites and boats had trouble launching from neglected docks and shorelines.

“We just don’t trust the government to do anything wise with that money,” Clark said. “People have the perception that this place is so filthy, and we all want it better. But we just don’t think the money is going to wind up helping the lake.”

Like many residents, Gene Frick, a retired engineer who moved to Lake Elsinore five years ago, believes the old town is at a crossroads.

“We need to figure out who we are going to be,” he said. “Some people would like Lake Elsinore to stay a small town. Some people would like it to become the Mission Viejo of Riverside County. We are approaching a critical point. Elsinore has always been an attractive spot for promoters. But it never quite works out.”