Behind Dam, a Tug of War Over Property

Southern California’s sizzling real estate market has thrown into court the question of how much money five property owners should receive for land around Chino and Corona that flood control engineers say is critical to complete expansion of Prado Dam.

The Orange County Flood Control District needs the property because, with a higher dam, more land behind it would be inundated by floodwaters backing up behind the structure. Engineers say that, by raising the earthen dam 28 feet, to 594 feet, about 3,500 more acres would be covered by the reservoir in case of flooding on a scale expected only every 200 years.

The dam controls the flow of water from a sprawling Inland Empire watershed down the Santa Ana River through Orange County and to the ocean along Huntington Beach’s southern border. Dam improvements costing $422 million are needed, officials say, to protect Orange County from torrential rain that engineers refer to as a 200-year flood.

County officials and property owners were at loggerheads over sale of the land for nine months before the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted in January to condemn the properties under its powers of eminent domain and ordered attorneys to file lawsuits to resolve how much landowners should be paid.

The five holdout families are among nearly three dozen property owners with whom the county has negotiated since 1993. Some 380 acres already have been purchased through voluntary sales of homes, small ranches and dairies in the reservoir area, at a cost of about $40 million.

In a process to take several more years, officials seek 1,660 acres from 280 landowners, including those already purchased. Total land costs have been estimated at $206 million, but that is expected to grow because of the market-value disputes. The county and the Army Corps of Engineers will share the cost, with the county hoping to get most of its share covered by the state.

The county has offered $44 million for 275 acres owned by the five holdout property owners, but that doesn’t approach the prices sought by the owners. In the biggest gap between buyer and seller, the county offered $1.83 million to the Koning family for 37.5 acres in Chino that the family said was worth $10 million. The property includes two homes and a horse ranch.

The other three Chino properties are commercial dairies. The fifth, in Corona, is home to a paintball park. All of the owners have argued that their properties are worth far more than the county has offered, particularly given the area’s transformation from dairy land to lucrative home sites, a process only recently begun and expected to take five years.

Some 10,000 homes are planned for an area rezoned residential and bordered by the Chino Valley Freeway, the Riverside Freeway and Norco. The rapidly rising real estate market and new residential zoning are expected to trigger a bidding war by developers in the next several years, and property owners expect to cash in.

Real estate broker Bernard Bidart, representing the Mendiondo dairy family, declined to comment Friday on his negotiations because the matter is in court. Other landowners couldn’t be reached for comment.

Longtime dairy owner Sybrand Vander Dussen is also a real estate broker negotiating on behalf of three of the five holdouts, and his property is in the next round of those sought by Orange County. He said county officials drove the issue into court by refusing to compete with market prices.

He said county appraisers offered $213,000 an acre in August for one of the holdouts, also a dairy, only to more recently increase the appraisal to $379,000 because of other recent sales. By comparison, an unrelated land sale in the area, expected to be $487,000 an acre, is set to close in October, he said.

The holdout landowners, he said, would accept $400,000 an acre from the county.

“The county has simply refused to negotiate beyond their offer,” he said. “We’re all willing to settle. We recognize the property is needed. We just want a fair price.”

Because of the chasm between the county and property owners, supervisors want a judge to decide, said Bill Campbell, chairman of the Board of Supervisors. Court intervention may also speed up the process.

“We were getting nowhere, and we need to keep this project on track,” Campbell said.

The land is where dikes and berms are needed to protect structures, including two state prisons, that can’t be moved from rising reservoir waters, said Herb Nakasone, the county’s director of public works. The plan for the dikes also helped the county cut the project cost by reducing the amount of land behind the dam that it needed to buy.

This is the third time the region’s dairy farmers will be on the move. After World War II, they were pushed out of Paramount and Bellflower by demand for housing. They moved to Cerritos, then called Dairy Valley, and to La Palma, known as the Dairyland. In the 1970s, they were then pushed into the Chino basin.