By MALISSA HATHAWAY MCKEITH,
Citizens United for Resources and the Environment, Inc., La Quinta

08 30 08 Imperial Valley Press

Several recent articles discussed the fight between farmers and IID over who controls the water.

The much bigger threat that the Valley needs to focus on is that the state is reneging on its agreement to mitigate all environmental impacts to the Salton Sea as water is transferred. This affects everyone alike regardless of whose “side” you are on. Your children are going to breathe worse and worse air and property values will plummet as the sea dries up.

Just last week, the Metropolitan Water District convinced Sen. Ducheny to take language out of legislation that links the state’s obligations to fix the sea to the QSA. Ducheny says that it does not matter and that you should be happy for the $47 million appropriation. Forty-seven million dollars sounds like a lot but its not even 1 cent on the dollar (.5 percent) of what is needed for the sea, according to the state.

Don’t be fooled again. Andy Horne refused to sign the QSA in 2002 because of Salton Sea damages. The state then guaranteed that it would fix all damages to the sea and the QSA was adopted. The problem is that that agreement was an unfunded sham and unenforceable. MWD knows it and wants to make sure it isn’t stuck with the liability for the water transfers. It wants YOU to bear the consequences.

The Salton Sea is the one issue that should unite Imperial. It’s time to stand together and to demand that the state and the outside water interests pay the true price of Imperial’s water. A deal is a deal. If the state won’t legally commit to the true costs of fixing the sea, the IID board should refuse to transfer water until they do. This may be the last chance the Valley has to stand together.

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South of the border between California and Mexico, vast farms grow scallions, lettuce and cotton, and hidden wetlands thrive on water that seeps underground from a leaky irrigation canal in the Imperial Valley.

North of the border, California water managers want to capture the leakage to supply the subdivisions sprawling onto the desert near San Diego, and more efficiently use their share of the Colorado River, by lining the canal with concrete.

California environmentalists and Mexican farmers took the cross-border water battle to federal court in 2005, saying the project to line the All-American Canal imperiled a crucial aquifer in the Mexicali Valley. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled last week that the project can proceed “without delay” and said plaintiffs’ concerns were made moot by a little-noticed provision in an omnibus tax-reform bill passed in the final hours of last year’s lame-duck congressional session.

The decision was a triumph for California and San Diego officials who say they are merely fixing “a leak in the hose that delivers California water to California,” in the words of San Diego County Water Authority attorney Daniel Hentschke, and ensuring that they don’t have to look to Northern California for additional water anytime soon.

But with a persistent drought that some scientists say is worsened by global warming, and booming populations on both sides of the border, the decision could exacerbate tensions over water between the two nations and spell trouble for Mexico’s fragile Colorado Delta ecosystem, which subsists only on leaks and wastewater.

The $300 million canal project, which would replace the earthen ditch with a concrete-lined channel for 23 of the canal’s 82 miles, is expected to recoup 67,000 acre-feet of water each year, enough for half a million people. Most of the water will go to the San Diego County Water Authority, with 17 percent reserved to settle water disputes with American Indian tribes in San Diego County.

The seven states that rely on the Colorado River consider the project key to a 2003 agreement that would reduce California’s historical overuse of the river’s water. But Mexican farmers have charged that lining the canal would unfairly deprive them of the seepage that has flowed across the border since the canal went into operation in 1942.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, insisted that federal environmental protection and endangered species laws required the United States to study the impact on wetlands in the Mexicali Valley, which are crucial habitat for the endangered Yuma clapper rail and other species.

The federal appeals court, which took up the case in August and issued an emergency injunction blocking the project, ruled Friday that it lacked jurisdiction over the Mexican claims, but that the Mexican plaintiffs could sue for monetary damages in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Plaintiffs are considering such a move.

But farmers in the Mexicali Valley say they are concerned about not only money but also the ability to remain on their desert lands.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said Nazario Ortiz, whose farming village depends on the seepage not only for irrigation but for drinking water. “The court’s drastic decision is taking away the means to support our children.”

The court also ruled that environmental concerns were trumped by the last-minute rider attached to the 279-page tax bill signed by President Bush in December. The law specifies that “notwithstanding any other provision of law … (the government) shall without delay, carry out the All-American Canal Lining Project.”

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, both Democrats, and Arizona Sen. John Kyl, a Republican, were “instrumental” in passing the law, said Hentschke.

“The decision means we can proceed forward with this extremely important water supply program for California,” he said of the court ruling. “If this water were lost to California, then it would put additional demands on Northern California water, (which) all comes out of the delta.”

With the court injunction lifted, Hentschke said, construction could begin by June 1.

The congressional move outraged plaintiffs, who said they are contemplating an appeal to the full Ninth Circuit panel and potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The environmental piece is very disappointing,” said San Diego attorney Gaylord Smith, the plaintiffs’ lead trial lawyer. “It says that NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act), the law that says you have to do environmental impact studies, can be repealed by midnight legislation that no one in Congress knew they were voting for.”

Feinstein defended the rider, saying that “in a time of increasing population and decreasing water supplies as a result of global warming, I believe it is critical to save every drop of water — and this saved … water that would otherwise be lost to groundwater seepage.”

Water managers are increasingly concerned that the Colorado River is overcommitted — with promises of water to the U.S. states and Mexico exceeding the river’s annual flow. Meanwhile, the heavily managed river no longer reaches the Gulf of California, and its once-vast delta has been reduced to a smattering of wetlands fed by inadvertent waste, such as the seepage from the All-American Canal.

Pressure on water sources that benefit the environment is likely to grow, along with tensions among the river’s many users, as drought increases and human populations boom in the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico, scientists say.

Mexico has long opposed lining the canal and has pushed the United States for a diplomatic solution without success, said Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez, a professor of environmental science at UC Riverside and an expert on cross-border water issues who recently represented Mexico on a North American environmental commission.

“This situation really creates a significant precedent that could affect the relationship” between the two countries, he said. “It is a contentious issue and always has been. That’s likely to increase in the future.”

If the canal is lined with concrete, the accidental wetlands will dry up, eliminating the habitat for the Yuma clapper rail and a rare stopover for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway.

“All the remnant wetlands on the Mexican side of the delta are supported by leftovers, refused water deliveries and leakages from the All-American Canal and the Mexican canal system,” said Karl Flessa, a University of Arizona professor who studies the delta ecology. “Whenever you’re increasing the efficiency of water-delivery systems, you’re harming wetlands. It’s a terrible paradox: Nobody wants to waste water, but the water that goes to these habitats is not wasted.”

By Tyche Hendricks Staff Writer

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A court ruling in San Francisco could change the lives of farmers in Mexico. The ruling gives the go-ahead for a water conservation effort that aims to fix a leaky canal in Southern California. The seepage from the canal is a key source of water for farmers in the Mexicali Valley — just south of the US border. The World’s Jori Lewis travelled to the Mexicali Valley and found a community concerned about its future.

By Jori Lewis

Click below for Audio Report:

http://www.theworld.org/wma.php?id=0409074 

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07 15 07 L.A. Times, Page A1

Holtville, Calif. – At the far end of the Terrace Park Cemetery, between the grassy field of flower-dotted gravestones and a makeshift dump, lie rows of numbered bricks in the dirt, some with names and some that read “John Doe.” Among those buried here, mostly illegal immigrants, are at least 40 who drowned in the nearby All American Canal.The 82-mile canal that carries water west from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley has claimed the lives of more than 500 people since 1942, including almost 180 in the last 10 years. It’s about to get more treacherous.

About 23 miles of the canal are being lined with concrete to conserve water by preventing it from seeping into the ground. When the lining is complete, water will flow faster and the canal sides will be steeper, slicker and harder to scale. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began work in June.

The original 1994 plan for the lining project called for “large mammal escape ridges,” or steps, to make it easier for both humans and animals to get out of the water. But the Bureau of Reclamation no longer intends to include escape ridges, saying they cause structural instability and leakage.

Critics of the lining say it is illegal to drop the safety provisions. And they say there are reasons, not stated in the official record, why the escape ridges aren’t being included. The canal, which is operated by the Imperial Irrigation District, runs parallel to the Mexican border – less than a mile from it in places – and is a long barrier to people trying to make their way north.

“If the IID’s kids were playing in the canal, I assure you they would put those ridges in,” said John Hunter of Poway, in San Diego County. He is founder of Water Station, an organization that provides water in the desert for migrants. Hunter said that, at the very least, the bureau should roughen the surface of the concrete lining, as was done with the Central Arizona Project, a long canal that takes water from the Colorado River east to Phoenix and Tucson.

Hunter’s views are shared by his brother, congressman and Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter of El Cajon. Although he takes a hard line against illegal immigration, Duncan Hunter wrote a letter last month to officials in charge of the canal advocating the safety ridges. He wrote that “the loss of human life in the canal to date has been a costly consequence to past indifference.”

Lining the earthen canal will provide California more water at a time when the state has been ordered to reduce its take from the Colorado River. The unlined canal has been losing millions of gallons a year to seepage. But that water has been flowing underground to Mexico, where it has sustained wetlands and been used by farmers since the early 1940s. When that supply dries up, critics of the lining project, including Mexican President Felipe Calderon, warn that fields will be fallowed, possibly prompting even more unemployed Mexicans to risk crossing the border and the canal.

“The lining ignores the serious environmental, safety or economic consequences to the region,” said Malissa Hathaway McKeith, a Los Angeles lawyer and Colorado River water expert who represented an alliance of Mexican business and environmental interests opposed to the lining.

The All American Canal is surrounded by desert, soft sand dotted with a few shrubs and virtually no shade. The temperature in the summer routinely hits 115 degrees. Most people attempt to cross the 175-foot-wide canal at night. Some use flimsy rafts. Many of the victims have died in the section of the canal that is to be lined.

Drowning victims who can be identified and claimed by family members are returned to their home countries – primarily Mexico. The others are buried in the potter’s field at the rear of the Terrace Park Cemetery.

Bureau of Reclamation officials say they will reduce the risk of drowning by installing ladders along the lined portion of the All American at 375–foot intervals on both sides of the canal. Jim Cherry, the bureau’s Yuma, Ariz., area manager, said, “I believe these ladders will make the canal more safe. Right now, there is no way for people in the water to get out. My concern as an operator is that those ridges would become full of algae – I’d much rather have a ladder to grab on to.”

But ladders were of no help to U.S. Border Patrol agent Richard Goldstein, who drowned in May in the nearby Coachella Canal, which was completely lined and fitted with ladders by 2006. Authorities believe Goldstein had gone into the water to rescue his dog, which was found wet but alive next to Goldstein’s vehicle.

The Coachella Canal claims about one person a year. But that canal, which joins the All American near Yuma, runs at a northwesterly angle toward the Coachella Valley and isn’t a barrier to most migrants.

However, wildlife casualties in the Coachella have been higher. More than 170 deer drowned in the canal within the first few years after part of it was lined in the 1980s, according to Leon Lesicka, founder of Desert Wildlife Unlimited. Lesicka said animal mortality dropped after California Department of Fish and Game and other organizations, including his, helped finance and install wildlife drinking stations near the canal.

Last year, the bureau said such “off site mitigation” would be considered as part of the All American lining project if surveys found evidence of deer in the area. But that only further provoked critics of the project.

“I used to work there. We’ve never pulled out a deer, bobcat, raccoon – it was human bodies. It is tragic,” said Rudy Maldonado, a former board member and employee of the Imperial Irrigation District.

“Every one of God’s species, mammals, what have you, deserves the right to live and shouldn’t die … of thirst or in trying to better themselves,” said Mike Abatti, an Imperial Valley farmer and a recently elected Imperial Irrigation District board member.

Calls for safety measures date back at least to 1991, when the chief patrol agent in the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, which covers 41 miles of the All American, sent a letter to the bureau in favor of using escape ridges to make the canal as safe as possible for law enforcement agents and “Mexican nationals.”

Last week, Border Patrol spokesman Quinn Palmer said that neither he nor his superiors were aware of the letter, but he added, “Generally, we’re going to be in favor of anything that promotes public safety.”

A 1994 joint study of canal drownings by state and federal public health officials stated, “In the future, drownings of illegal entrants are likely to increase. Most crossed the All American Canal, and their rate of drowning increased as the water’s velocity increased…. Lining a canal decreases the drag on the water and increases the average water velocity.” The study listed safety measures that could be taken, including building steps into the canal sides.

John Hunter has been pushing unsuccessfully for additional safety measures for several years, bringing the issue to the attention of the irrigation district board in 2001. At that time the panel voted down a proposal to put lifelines across the canal, citing a risk of liability if the lines failed to save lives.

Earlier this month, irrigation district spokesman Kevin Kelley said that the Bureau of Reclamation had final say over whether to install safety ridges and that the district did not have the authority to demand additional safety measures.

The San Diego County Water Authority and California Department of Water Resources are sharing the $290-million cost of the lining, and San Diego will receive most of the water that is conserved.

Halla Razak, Colorado River program manager for the San Diego water authority, echoed the irrigation district that the issue of the ridges was a bureau decision, but added, “We have put in whatever is required for safety. It is against the law to be in the canal.”

The lining project has long been a sore spot for farmers like Abatti in the Imperial Valley who have benefited from some of the seepage. Abatti and his brother sued unsuccessfully to stop the lining.

“This project gives no benefits to Imperial Valley,” Abatti said recently. “If we have no benefits to this lining, we ought to at least make it safe.”

By Alison Williams

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07 21 07 L.A. Times

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE a less aptly named water project than the All American Canal in Imperial County. There’s nothing American about watching people drown by the hundreds while doing next to nothing to save them, but that is precisely what managers of the canal have been doing for decades.

The 82-mile canal carries water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley and runs parallel to the U.S.-Mexico border. That makes it a barrier for illegal immigrants, one that many are desperate enough to cross. More than 500 people have drowned in the canal since 1942, and it is about to become a lot more dangerous. About 23 miles of the waterway along a route particularly popular with migrants is being lined with concrete to prevent water seepage. As a result, the water will flow faster, while the canal sides will become nearly impossible to scale.
A study by state and federal public health officials concluded that steps should be built into the canal sides to avoid drownings of humans and large mammals, but the federal Bureau of Reclamation refuses to include them, saying they would cause structural instability and leakage. Meanwhile, the Imperial Irrigation District, which operates the canal, has refused to add even such basic safety measures as lifelines — cables with buoys that cross the canal, which people can grab to avoid being swept away. The district’s bizarre justification is that adding lifelines would increase its liability, which is like saying you shouldn’t throw a buoy to a drowning man because he might sue you if he survives. Other parts of the canal have lifelines to protect district workers.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the water district’s board is more concerned about illegal immigration than about human lives. Border security is a good thing, but crossing shouldn’t be a death sentence. Even Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon, who is no friend to illegal immigrants, is appalled by the drownings; last month he wrote a letter to water officials calling the deaths “a costly consequence to past indifference.”

The Bureau of Reclamation’s sole concession to safety is to add ladders up the canal sides at 375-foot intervals. Past experience with such ladders has shown they aren’t very effective. Unless more safety features are added, water officials will have more deaths on their consciences.

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LOS ANGELES, The Department of Interior announced Aug. 13 that U.S. and Mexican authorities agreed to collaborate on issues related to the Colorado River, which flows through both countries.

The Department of Interior said in a statement, “U.S. and Mexican authorities have agreed that cooperative, innovative, and holistic measures should be considered to ensure that the Colorado River is able to continue to meet environmental agricultural, and urban demands of both nations.”

River management is governed by the 1944 U.S.-Mexico Treaty on the Utilization of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and Rio Grande, which is, in turn, administered by the binational International Boundary and Water Commission.

The statement said the commission’s U.S. and Mexico sections should take the lead “to expedite discussions in coming weeks to further Colorado River cooperation.” Areas of focus enumerated by the department included:

- study of the hydrological system and the impacts of climate change, “including the effects of the ongoing historic Colorado River drought”;

- environmental priorities, such as habitat protection or enhancement in the Colorado River Delta;

- water conservation, storage, supply augmentation, and seawater desalination; and

- potential efficiencies in river water deliveries.

Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the U.S. Section, International Boundary and Water Commission, said the above issues have been addressed in recent years and that the announcement amounts to an expression of “renewed commitment.”

The practical effects will be an expedited scheduling of binational meetings on the part of the commission sections and the different workgroups formed to address river issues between the two countries.

“We don’t expect anything specific tomorrow, but any breakthroughs will be announced in coming weeks,” Spener said.

Advocates Weigh Pros, Cons

“We’re pleased to see that the administration is reinforcing the idea that Colorado River management at the border deserves a closer look right now.” Jennifer Pitt, senior research analyst at Environmental Defense, told BNA Aug. 14. “And we are pleased to see it broaden the site beyond the strict, narrow criteria of the shortage problem.”

The Interior statement, she noted, “puts the Colorado River Delta front and center.”

A 75 percent reduction in flows to the delta since 1921 has caused considerable erosion and threatened its capacity for supporting marine and avian life (104 DEN A-7, 6/01/04).

Pitt was en route to San Diego for a discussion with local interests sparked by the announcement. “We hope to get a hearing from federal authorities on both sides of the border,” she said.

Attorney Malissa McKeith of Los Angeles-based Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith was less sanguine.

“The International Boundary and Water Commission is the same nontransparent, antiquated process that brought us the All-American [Canal] lining project,” she told BNA Aug. 15. “Since Congress has
blocked the rights of private citizens to the courts, Mexico has no choice but to accept whatever crumbs the U.S. offers.”

McKeith represented a Mexicali, Mexico, commercial group in an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to block the lining of the All-American Canal, which runs along the border on the U.S. side (69 DEN A-3, 4/11/07).

The lawsuit claimed the loss of escaped water from the earthen canal seeping into Mexican aquifers would affect agricultural commerce and environmental stability alike in that country.

In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a request for an injunction on the project (Consejo de Desarollo Economico de Mexicali v. Norton, 9th Cir., No. 06-16345, injunction 8/24/06).

But the disposition of the case was altered when President Bush signed a tax bill (H.R. 6111) with a provision requiring the project to proceed, “notwithstanding any provision of law” (246 DEN A-5, 12/22/-06).

Think Tank, Not Wildly Optimistic.

Michael Cohern, senior research associate with the Oakland, Calif.-based think tank Pacific Institute, said the group “welcomes the focus on the Colorado River, Mexico, and the river’s delta but is not wildly optimistic.” He said the planned discussions provide an opportunity for the
consideration of the “intentionally created surplus” concept, which is part of the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lakes Powell and Mead currently under review by the Bureau of Reclamation.

“It allows Las Vegas, which has no shortage of money, to invest in efficiency improvements in Mexico in exchange for increased water deliveries,” he explained. “We’d like to see it expanded to Mexico and to nongovernmental organizations.”

The expansion, he said might permit a nongovernmental organization to make a conservation investment in exchange for water that could then be dedicated to the river delta’s benefit or give Mexico storage rights in Lake Mead, given its lack of surface water storage capacity.

“That’s a reasonable expectation to have from this initiative,” he said, although familiar national obstacles must still be overcome such as the Mexican perception “that rich U.S. interests are coming in and buying up all their water.

By Stephen Siciliano

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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Tons of boulders are perched in burned mountain watersheds, ready to move when the next heavy rain comes.

The threat of more post-fire flooding is as immediate as the summer monsoon season, and flood control officials are quietly preparing for the worst. But no one knows what will come out of the mountains, or whether it can be stopped.

When the storms strike, they are capable of producing devastating debris flows from Highland to Upland.

“It’s still a very serious situation,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Ed Clark, the county’s storm warning coordinator. “There’s always a potential for loss of life and property.”

Five years ago, a summer storm triggered a fatal debris avalanche that killed a woman in Forest Falls and wiped out several homes.

Flood control officials are reluctant to identify specific debris basins considered least adequate to keep flash floods and debris flows from entering vulnerable neighborhoods. Research by The Sun shows more than a third of the basins are scheduled to be enlarged.

Five basins that are supposed to protect neighborhoods in north San Bernardino — Daley, Little Sand Canyon, Sand Canyon, Small Canyon and Dynamite Basin — are considered too small, according to Department of Public Works records.

In addition, at least five basins above Highland, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga and Upland have been identified for possible expansion. Work on some of these projects is under way.

Asked about his department’s reluctance to identify specific basins in need of upgrading, Interim Public Works Director Pat Mead said, “It’s nearly all of them across of the front.”

The Inland region has weathered some of the most intense rains in U.S. records.

The biggest daily rainstorm on record was Jan. 24, 1969, when a Lytle Creek gauge measured 24.92 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, said former state climatologist Jim Goodridge.

A gauge on Mount Baldy measured 50.85 inches over 10 days in January 1969, Goodridge said.

Gauge records can be disputed, but it’s fact that killer floods have swept out of the mountains several times since Europeans arrived in the region in the 18th century. The floods of 1862, 1938 and 1969 remain benchmarks.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers the Santa Ana watershed, with its headwaters in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains, the nation’s greatest flood threat west of the Mississippi. The $450 million Seven Oaks Dam east of Highland, a mile thick and 550 feet tall, is there for a reason.

Despite more than 60 years of federal, state and local flood control efforts in southwest San Bernardino County, incidents such as Christmas Day still happen. Sixteen people perished in the deadliest day of flooding in county history.

County officials said afterward they did everything to warn of the flash flood danger existing after the October fires. They didn’t.

At least two county officials, including then-County Administrative Officer Wally Hill and County Fire Marshal Pete Brierty, admitted not reading or acting on reports that recommended patrolling areas where flood dangers existed.

Two of the areas listed were Waterman Canyon and Devore, which were not protected by permanent flood control structures.

Even if there were basins or check dams in place, there is no guarantee they’d have worked. W.A. Sidler, the county flood control engineer in the 1950s and ’60s, made this point 40 years ago.

“Residents of Southern California should realize that in spite of the application of our most advanced technical and scientific knowledge of flood control structures and practices, those who continue to occupy natural flood channels, flood plains and debris cones (alluvial fans) are defying the inexorable laws of nature,” Sidler said in November 1963, addressing real estate students at Chaffey College.

“As certain as we sit here tonight (on the alluvial fan below Deer Creek), the mountains will erode and the valley floors will be buried under water-borne debris, the same as has transpired through past ages,” Sidler said.

Today, million-dollar homes stand near Chaffey College on the alluvial fan below Deer Creek Basin in Rancho Cucamonga. Close by is a high school that opened less than two years ago and an elementary school that opened in 2001.

Some residents and public officials dispute the existing level of flood protection for the schools and 20,000 homes on the fan. Part of a levee above the neighborhood was dismantled in 2001.

“Essentially, about a third of the basin is useless,” said Doug Hamilton, an engineer with Exponent Failure Anlysis who accurately predicted debris flows in San Bernardino after the 1997 Hemlock Fire. More than 60 homes and 20 apartments were damaged. “It’s not capable of holding a 25-year flood.”

Hamilton’s work was cited in a 2000 report titled “Alluvial Amnesia: How Public Officials Imperil Communities by Downplaying Flood Risks.” Flood control officials respect Hamilton’s work. But they say “Alluvial Amnesia” is one-sided.

The Corps of Engineers, which designed and completed the basin in 1983, maintains the structure can hold back debris from a 100-year flood. Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority officials are mediating the dispute between residents and flood control.

This is not the first time San Bernardino County residents and public officials questioned the level of flood protection in a specific neighborhood.

Decades earlier, homes were built in the path of destruction, and public agencies were held accountable.

In 1991, a former state geologist reviewed a series of oversights in San Bernardino that contributed to damage and destruction of more than 40 homes built below a debris basin that failed four times in two months.

“It was predictable and preventable,” said James E. Slosson, who served under Gov. Ronald Reagan in the 1970s.

Slosson’s report documented the following: In August 1944, Harrison Canyon burned north of San Bernardino. Three months later damaging debris flows spilled out of the canyon. County flood control started building a debris basin in 1945.

Nearly 20 years later, a San Bernardino city zoning committee approved a proposal to build homes below the basin. Original plans called for a barricade across 40th Street. But a vice-president of the bank backing the project — John W. Savage of the Santa Fe Federal Savings & Loan Association — claimed the barrier devalued the property and implied there was a flood hazard. The barrier was eliminated and the homes were built on Hampshire Avenue.

In September 1979, Harrison Canyon burned again. In January and February 1980, four different storms unleashed debris flows that overwhelmed the basin each time. Forty homes on and near Hampshire Avenue were damaged or destroyed. The fourth storm buried homes up their eaves.

A group of 32 homeowners sued. After a nine-month trial in 1986, the city of San Bernardino and the flood control district were found liable for $4 million in damages.

The case was appealed, then dropped. Payments commenced seven years after the floods.

The jurors found the flood control district negligent for failing to remove debris from Harrison Basin. They also found the city negligent for allowing a housing tract to be built below the basin in a potentially dangerous flood zone.

Slosson concluded the land-use decision “failed to take into account the potential for debris flows resulting from a fire-flood sequence.”

About 25 homes on Hampshire Avenue were subsequently removed. A grassy flood channel stands below Harrison Basin today.

By Guy McCarthy Staff Writers

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