Builder to Be Fined for Runoff

State regulators this week said they will levy a $422,000 fine against one of the Inland Empire’s most prominent and controversial developers for allowing storm water and pollutants to spill from a construction site at Vail Lake into nearby creeks.

The developer, Bill Johnson, who owns a limited liability corporation with ambitious plans to expand the Temecula-area wine country on the shores of Vail Lake, said he plans to appeal the fine. It was levied by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board’s San Diego region, which includes part of Riverside County.

According to board documents released Tuesday, Johnson’s construction team failed in 1999, 2000 and 2001 to develop a pollution control plan that would contain sediment and pollutants from the construction site.

Not only did Johnson fail to contain storm-water runoff and pollutants caused by erosion and grading, the documents say, but he also placed bales of hay along some of his newly graded roads, which effectively acted as a funnel for storm-water runoff, increasing the possibility of damage to the environment and small nearby creeks.

Fines of nearly $875,000 were levied by the same board late last year in connection with two other Temecula-area developments. “Those were largely paperwork issues,” Johnson said Tuesday.

He said the board’s contention that he was preparing to build homes on the shores of Vail Lake is wrong. He said he was merely clearing ground for new vineyards and olive groves. Johnson said, however, that he hopes to eventually build a swath of “estates” on the shores of the lake.

Johnson said some of the clearing was intended to cut down on the possibility of a fire at the site.

“The contention that this was an industrial subdivision is simply wrong,” he said. “I think the board has a misperception here.”

Environmental advocates and many residents in southern Riverside County consider Vail Lake an ecological gem.

It was established by relatives of rancher Walter Vail in the 1940s, then purchased by Johnson after government officials failed to raise the $20 million necessary to turn it into a preserve for endangered species.

Art Coe, assistant executive officer of the Water Quality Control Board, said an appeal of the Vail Lake fine must be filed within 30 days, and would be heard by the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento.

Despite the fines, which regulators say are substantial for this type of a case, residents in the ballooning Temecula area were less than optimistic Tuesday.

Kerry Mayer, a retiree who lives west of Temecula, said Johnson, who has bought and sold more than 90,000 acres of real estate in the area since 1973, will treat the fine as “the cost of doing business.”