The Del Dios Town Council Board is very excited to announce that Reservoir Keeper, Conway Bowman, will be this month's guest speaker at the meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 10th at 7:00pm at the Old Fire House. He has worked for the city for many years and is a fixture here at Lake Hodges and will be coming to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience to make his presentation and answer your questions. Water level, fish count, affect of El Nino, impact of Colorado River water, inner-workings and goings-on of the administration of the Lake amongst other items will be on the agenda. Call board member Braden for more information about this meeting. 760.855.4232
The Lake Hodges Dam Flume remained in service until 2003, as the only means of delivering water from Lake Hodges to SFID. In August 2003, a new 36-inch transmission pipeline was placed in service and use of the 75 year-old flume ceased. A new Rancho Cielo Raw Water Pump Station located on Del Dios Highway was also placed into service at that time providing an alternative means of moving water from Lake Hodges directly to the R.E. Badger Filtration Plant.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District has 100% ownership of over 150 miles of pipelines, ranging from 8-inch to 36-inch diameter in size, as well as a six-million-gallon treated water reservoir in the City of Solana Beach called Larrick Reservoir. The reservoir was constructed in 1965 and named after H. G. Larrick, Senior, a Board Member of the Santa Fe Irrigation District from 1941 to 1957.
In addition to owning and operating a water distribution system, SFID is joint owner (along with the San Dieguito Water District) of the R.E. Badger Water Filtration Plant, San Dieguito Reservoir, a hydroelectric power plant, raw water pumping stations and nearly 8 miles of transmission pipelines up to 54 inch diameter.
During the construction of the Lake Hodges Dam, the San Dieguito Reservoir was also constructed in 1918. This terminal storage reservoir has the capacity to hold 550 acre feet of raw water. In 1967 the San Dieguito Reservoir Pump Station was constructed to pump water from the reservoir to the R.E. Badger Filtration Plant.