WATER RELEASED FROM EL CAPITAN RESERVOIR IN LAKESIDE AS PRECAUTION

By Miriam Raftery

File photo: El Captain reservoir and dam, by BIlly Ortiz

August 20, 2023 (Lakeside) – The City of San Diego has announced that today it has begun releasing water from El Capitan Reservoir in Lakeside, in anticipation of a potential spill due to Tropical Storm Hilary. 

Flowing water will be visible downstream from the dam in El Monte Valley and beyond. The notice is posted on the city’s webpage for El Capitan Reservoir.

El Capitan is an aging dam made of rocks, built in 1934. The dam is 237 feet tall and 1,170 feet wide, but no longer meets state standards, ECM warned back in 2017.

The aging dam is considered in poor condition and would pose a high risk of loss of life downstream if it were kept full and should rupture. Last year, NPR reported that El Capitan dam “is capable of storing over 36 billion gallons of water — enough to supply every resident in San Diego for most of a year. Today, it's three-quarters empty — intentionally kept low because of concerns it could fail under the strain of too much water.”

So ironically, though California in many years is prone to drought, lack of investment to repair El Capitan Dam means the heaviest rain in years will be largely wasted, released to flow into the San Diego river and ultimately out to sea.

Republican state Sen. Brian Jones, whose district includes El Capitan Dam, stated, "We need to start spending the money on them to retrofit them, to get them up again back to full capacity,” NPR reported last year.

But despite a major infrastructure bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa voted against the infrastructure bill and did not put in any request to fund repair of this dangerous dam in his district.