SAN DIEGO — Record rainstorms across the county have forced the City of San Diego to release hundreds of millions of gallons of water from Lake Hodges dam in recent weeks.
The city of San Diego is under a state order to keep the water level low in the lake -- at about 30 percent of capacity -- due to safety concerns over Lake Hodges dam. It’s more than 100 years old.
The city says it will take at least a decade to replace the dam, meaning the release of water will continue when large rainstorms roll in.
“I’ve seen them releasing tons of water at the dam,” a mountain biker at Lake Hodges told CBS 8. “It’s like just the waste of money. Taxpayers money too, because we got to pay for that.”
The city of San Diego owns the Lake Hodges dam and is in charge of maintaining it.
Since January 24, the city said approximately 619 million gallons of water have been released down the San Dieguito River to the ocean, due to the state order requiring the city to keep the water level at 280 feet.
“I think we should make up our mind. Either we should restore Lake Hodges to when the way that it was as a lake, or we should get rid of the dam and let it go back to being a creek or stream the way the Native Americans had it,” said Arcy Douglass, a local mountain biker at the lake.
"Almost every time that we have a rainstorm, the very next day, they're always talking about the drought. The drought is coming back. Okay, well, we just let billions of gallons just go right over the dam. If the drought is really that severe, let's be more proactive in terms of saving water,” said Douglass.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District emailed CBS 8 the following statement:
“Due to recent rainfall, the City of San Diego, the owner of Lake Hodges Dam and Reservoir, has been using Santa Fe Irrigation District facilities to release water from Lake Hodges. The release began on January 24 and will continue for the foreseeable future… The Department of Safety of Dams requires the City to maintain a maximum capacity of 30% due to the dam's condition. Some of the released water could have been stored by the Santa Fe Irrigation District and San Dieguito Water District for use by their customers later this year if this restriction wasn’t in place due to the poor condition of the dam.”
WATCH PREVIOUS REPORT: 11 billion gallons of water released from Lake Hodges dam.