Encino Reservoir Upgrade Begins

Jeff Scapa will be ringing in 2003 on a bittersweet note.

He’s resigned to the fact that the new year will be a noisy one on his Encino street, but he’s not looking forward to it.

His home borders the Encino Reservoir, where construction of a 30,000-square-foot filtration plant has already begun. The plant is a crucial part of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s effort to comply with stricter regulations for open-air reservoirs.

“I wish they didn’t have to do anything,” said Scapa, a real estate investor who has lived in his home for more than 20 years. “This is a secluded place where you don’t hear anything. It’s a great place to live.

“But since it’s going to happen, they are trying to make the unpleasantness as pleasant as possible.”

Recognizing that open-air reservoirs are prone to contamination by such things as rain runoff and bird droppings, state and federal agencies drafted new rules to help protect consumers. The challenge for the DWP has been creating plans that satisfy the agencies as well as reservoir neighbors.

After a decade of discussions between water officials and residents -- sometimes involving a hired mediator -- it was determined that as of Jan. 1, water for Encino’s and Tarzana’s 100,000 residents would come directly from the Los Angeles Reservoir and be treated at the DWP filtration plant in Sylmar.

Aging 72-inch water lines were recently replaced with 96-inch pipes to accommodate the load, part of the DWP’s $3.1-billion improvement plans during the next decade. Water officials plan to begin bypassing the Encino reservoir a few days before the state Department of Health Services’ Jan. 1 deadline. Failure to meet the deadline could result in a $1,000-a-day fine.

In turn, a $24.7-million high-tech filtration plant is being built at the base of the Encino Reservoir, which would largely be taken out of daily service but maintained for use during emergencies such as earthquakes and prolonged droughts. The new plant will filter up to 6.5 million gallons of water a day and allow for better control of the reservoir’s water level.

If the DWP had chosen to maintain the status quo at the Encino Reservoir, the water supply would have needed additional chlorine treatment, and a large $200-million filtration plant would have had to have been built, involving four years of construction and expensive ongoing maintenance costs.

The chosen plan “was a cheaper solution and better in the long run,” said Melinda A. Rho, DWP’s manager of regulatory affairs.

Improvements have been made, or will be made, at three other DWP reservoirs that are subject to runoff contamination. Two 30-million gallon underground tanks were installed to replace the Upper and Lower Hollywood reservoirs. Construction of a small filtration plant, pumping station and chlorination facility at Lower Stone Canyon Reservoir north of Bel-Air is to begin next summer.

To lessen the effects of construction at the Encino Reservoir, the DWP and residents laid down several rules for the contractor, Merco Construction. Work cannot stretch beyond 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and deliveries are limited to 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. No more than 25 vehicles a day can arrive at the site; if more are needed, workers will carpool. Noise cannot exceed 75 decibels within a 500-feet radius. The grounds will be watered three times a day and trucks that travel more than 500 feet on the property must be covered with a tarp to reduce dust pollution.

“The noisy, dusty part will be done within a year,” said Raul Banuelos, a DWP project manager. “Once the walls of the building are up, they’ll be working inside the building.

“We know [the restrictions] are the right thing to do. The reality is, the residents are our customers and it’s our responsibility to work with them.”

Featuring a low-profile design that follows the contour of the land, the plant will be visible to as many as 15 homes. The facility is to be painted a dusty green to help it blend into the hillside.

“It’s an absolutely elegant system,” said neighbor Jim Brust, a retired aerospace executive who helped form the Encino Hillside Coalition to represent local residents. “I’m very much in favor of what they are doing. It turned out to be the best technical decision.”

But Gerald Silver, who lives two miles from the reservoir, isn’t pleased with the plan. He would rather have had the DWP build the larger filtration plant, which could have provided more water in the event of an emergency.

“If you don’t have an earthquake or a terrorist attack, then the city probably did the right thing,” said Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino. “Only time will prove who is right.”

Banuelos said Silver is “probably the only person not happy” with the plan.

“The DWP is very sensitive to the community and community values,” he said. “We’re not going to put a building up that looks like a refinery. We want to put something that everyone will be comfortable with.”