Reservoir water-ready

Alicia Robinson

After sitting empty and dry for more than 10 years, the San Joaquin

Reservoir could start filling with water as soon as next month.

The 49.3-acre reservoir, which can hold nearly a billion gallons,

held drinking water for the Metropolitan Water District until late

1993. The district was one of eight joint owners at the time. Soon,

the reservoir will store treated wastewater to be used for irrigation

by its current owner, the Irvine Ranch Water District.

With the additional storage, the district will be able to treat

and use more water instead of sending excess water to the Orange

County Sanitation District to be treated and discharged into the

ocean.

“In essence, what it does for us, it makes our plant more

efficient,” said Michael Hoolihan, the Irvine Ranch Water District’s

project engineer. “We can run our plant year-round and not send as

much water to the ocean.”

The reservoir has a murky past. It was drained in 1984 to remove

an infestation of African clawed frogs, and it was shut down 22 times

between 1986 and 1993 because of contaminants including algae, insect

and bird droppings and bacteria.

Metropolitan Water District officials voted in 1993 to put a

floating plastic cover on the reservoir to prevent contamination and

had even pacified residents with homes overlooking it, but a 1994

landslide at the south end took nearly five years to fix, Hoolihan

said.

By 1998, an estimate of $17 million to cover the reservoir had

soared to about $35 million, and the Metropolitan Water District was

ready to cut its losses.

The Irvine Ranch Water District bought the reservoir in 2001, with

plans to convert it to an open impoundment that holds treated

wastewater. Construction began in January 2004 and is mostly

complete, Hoolihan said.

Still empty, the reservoir today resembles a sports stadium with

no bleachers. It is about 1,100 feet wide and 1,900 feet long with

sloping sides and a flat bottom.

Three new pump stations will send water from the Michelson Water

Reclamation Plant to the reservoir, where it will be drawn off to

irrigate common areas and green spaces in Newport Coast, central

Irvine and parts of Lake Forest and Tustin Ranch.

Water should start flowing in by the end of the year. The

reservoir will only be partly filled by March, when warm-weather

demand for irrigation water starts to grow, and it may not be full

until 2006. But residents surrounding the reservoir are happy to see

any water come back.

“Essentially, they lost their view some eight or nine years ago

when the reservoir was emptied,” said Steve Cranford, president of

the homeowners’ association for residents of Harbor Ridge. “People

have been left looking at a big empty hole since, and I can tell you

in our community there is big enthusiasm with water beginning to fill

in the reservoir.”

Cranford has lived across the street from the reservoir for five

years. He said neighbors have been watching the progress of

construction and looking forward to its completion.

“The excitement comes from the fact that people feel it will

assist in the property values, particularly in homes that surround

the reservoir,” he said.

The reservoir project also has satisfied former foe Bob Caustin,

founding director of Defend the Bay, an environmental watchdog group

that filed a lawsuit in 2001 that forced the Irvine Ranch Water

District to rethink a plan to store chlorine gas for water treatment

at the reservoir.

When the Orange County Superior Court agreed with Caustin’s group,

the district opted to use a less volatile powdered substitute,

Caustin said.

“I think it’s a shame they didn’t maintain [the reservoir] and

hold it for fresh-water storage, with the potential for drought that

we have,” he said. “The second choice, given the changes that we were

able to force them to implement through our litigation, made the

project an acceptable one.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

[email protected].