Filtration Plant Plans Move Ahead, at a Trickle

ENCINO — Mired in controversy for much of this decade, plans to build a giant water tank and filtration plant at the Encino Reservoir are proceeding, but at a trickle, under the watchful eye of wary neighbors.

Much of the full-blown opposition to the project has dissipated as government agencies have worked to reduce the number of trucks that would traverse the narrow hillside streets on any given day during construction, and offered to tuck the facility behind a hill a few hundred yards from the original, more visible site. Opposition has also been tempered somewhat by the realization that, one way or another, the facility is almost certain to be built.

But residents say the $60-million plant could still be cheaper, and the holding tank, which would be about two-thirds the size of the Great Western Forum, smaller. All options, they contend, have not yet been explored.

Officials from a host of federal, state and local agencies, meanwhile, are being unusually attentive to the concerns and ideas of the well-to-do and politically connected neighborhood groups at the same time they attempt to nudge the project along. After all, the Department of Water and Power could face fines of up to $25,000 a day if the plant isn’t purifying water by 2003, the deadline set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“By law, we’ve got to do something,” said Bob Yoshimura, director of the DWP’s water supply division. “We have looked at an awful lot of alternatives. This is pretty close to optimal.”

Barbara Hand, president of the Encino Hillside Coalition, a group established to oppose or at least minimize the impact of the plant, isn’t so sure. “We still have a tremendous amount of concern over this project,” she said.

Officials hope to begin work on an environmental impact report for the project in the next few months and have the document completed by the end of 1998.

“Still, at every meeting, a new idea comes up,” said Alana Knaster, president of the Calabasas-based Mediation Institute, which has sought a solution acceptable to all sides.

The debate over the Encino water plant has dragged on so long that the Mediation Institute’s contract with the DWP for that project expired late this year and has not been renewed.

Efforts to clean the Encino reservoir’s water--and other open reservoirs around Los Angeles--began in 1989, after the EPA decided that waste from coyotes, deer, birds and other creatures inhabiting the surrounding mountains could contaminate the water supply with dangerous, stomach-churning microorganisms. Until the more stringent standards take effect in 2003, the Encino reservoir remains in use and serves DWP customers on both sides of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The state Department of Health Services ruled that water districts could comply with the EPA’s new decree in one of three ways: covering open reservoirs, diverting runoff into storm drains, or filtering the water.

The DWP initially proposed sealing some Los Angeles reservoirs with giant metal lids, but that idea was met with unexpectedly staunch opposition. Asphalt-weary Angelenos, it turned out, had grown fond of the pseudo-lakes, even if they were man-made and concrete-rimmed.

During five years of secret negotiations that ensued, residents near the Encino Reservoir and the Lower Stone Canyon Reservoir in Bel-Air came up with a plan to build a single filtration plant that would serve both. That plant was to be erected halfway between Encino and Bel-Air, at the mouth of the old Mission Canyon landfill in the Sepulveda Pass.

That was the plan, at least, until the even tonier communities of Bel-Air Crest, Mountaingate and Bel-Air Knolls--all located less than a mile from the defunct dump--learned of it. With the help of then-City Councilman Marvin Braude, the landfill’s neighbors brought that proposal to a swift and unceremonious end two years ago.

So plans began anew for separate filtration plants at both Encino and Stone Canyon.

While negotiations have dragged on year after year in both cases, the Encino Reservoir’s neighbors point to a series of changes in plans along the way to bolster their contention that still more can be done to mitigate the impacts of the proposed plant.

The capacity of the filtration plant, for example, has been reduced by 85%, from the originally proposed standard chemical filtration version that would filter 100 cubic feet of water per second to the currently proposed micro-filtration version that would treat just 15 cubic feet per second.

Another key concern over early proposals was the heavy truck traffic that could clog the narrow hillside streets as contractors poured ton after ton of concrete to create a 15-million-gallon storage tank. In recent months, officials have proposed constructing a so-called batch plant at the reservoir, so that concrete could be whipped up right on the premises rather than being trucked in.

That would enable shipments of raw materials to be spread over time, rather than having 60 to 80 cement trucks clogging the streets on a few of the busiest work days. The busiest days, in fact, might average just four truck trips, Yoshimura said. And neighbors who would have been most disrupted by the passing trucks under earlier plans “aren’t going to be affected much at all anymore.”

However, premixed concrete is much more efficiently transported than raw ingredients, Yoshimura said, so the total number of truck trips could be more than the original estimate of 2,000 by the time the project is complete.

Still, some opponents question the need for the reservoir at all. On an average day, Encino produces little more than 1% or 2% of the city’s water supply, according to some estimates.

However, the reservoir’s more important role, perhaps, is as a source of drinking water during an emergency, when other sources might be contaminated or cut off. Encino Reservoir accounts for as much as 20% of the city’s backup supply.

Encino is also used for seasonal storage of water. DWP purchases water during the winter at cheaper rates, stores it at Encino, then sells it during the peak summer months to local customers, thus keeping prices down.

Chuck Hand, Barbara Hand’s husband and a member of the Encino Hillside Coalition, said the DWP saves about $1 million annually buying water at the cheaper winter rates, and wondered if that kind of savings would be wiped out by the interest on the bonds needed to build such a massive project.

But officials say that because of dogged opposition from the Hillside Coalition and others, the DWP has paid more than half that to the Mediation Institute to try to work out agreements with angry neighbors of Encino and other reservoirs.

Chuck Hand also suggested that the giant storage tank might be sunk lower into the ground so as to be less of an eyesore, with pumps, rather than gravity, employed to transport any overflow back into the reservoir.

“We haven’t explored all the options, and with new knowledge, new options keep popping up,” he said.

As the exploration continues, the deadline approaches. Completing the environmental impact report will probably take most of 1998. Construction of the project will likely run through 2001 or 2002--assuming no major glitches occur.

Despite the outcry from some residents, there are those who think the Encino Reservoir filtration plant is a public works project that just makes sense.

“My feeling is there are a very small handful of homeowners who don’t want anything built, no matter how good for the community,” said Gerald Silver, president of the Homeowners of Encino.

“I think the more responsible homeowners want to get high-quality water and meet state and federal standards. There’s no reason not to do it.”