VOTERS GET OPPORTUNITY TO DECIDE ON STORM DRAIN COST TO BE RELEASED LATER THIS SUMMER.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Quartz Hill property owners will vote in October on whether to tax themselves to help pay for a multimillion-dollar storm drain to alleviate floods like last winter's that repeatedly inundated homes and streets.

Assessment rates for individual properties in the proposed drainage benefit assessment district are still being determined and should be announced later this summer, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said.

``We are going to ask if they want a flood control district either via annexation with the county flood control district or through a separate district,'' Antonovich said during a breakfast meeting Tuesday with Lancaster city officials.

It would be faster, probably by a year, for Quartz Hill to join the existing county district whose northern boundary is now Avenue S. It would also likely be cheaper, said Paul Novak, planning deputy for Antonovich.

If the Quartz Hill residents opt for either district, county officials are working to expedite getting the improvements in place, Novak said.

``I'm guardedly optimistic it will pass,'' Novak said.

The Quartz Hill vote will be done by mail-in ballot. It will be followed by an advisory vote in November among Antelope Valley voters for a valleywide flood control district. If there is interest, a formal vote on forming a district is probably about three years away, Novak said.

County officials said it would cost about $4 million to prepare an Antelope Valley-wide district and that they want to see interest before spending that kind of money for a formal vote.

County officials said they would like to see support from city officials on the districtwide vote.

Lancaster City Manager Bob LaSala said he wants city and county officials to work out details of a flood control district, which he said would make it easier to determine whether the city could support it.

Flooding in Quartz Hill has been a problem for years. Downtown Quartz Hill is in the middle of a funnel-shape watershed, much of it filled with homes over the past two decades. The wide top is along the ridge south of Rancho Vista, from Godde Hill Road almost to Highland High School. The narrow funnel opening is at 52nd Street West and Avenue K.

Dozens of homes, businesses and garages - even the Quartz Hill library - flooded during two series of storms over 15 days in late December and early January. Residents say more flooding occurred after the last storm when work crews pumped out brimming catch basins to get ready for future rain.

Prepared at the request of Antonovich to re-examine an idea that has been considered at least twice since the 1990s, a county report calls for a 6-foot-diameter, 1.6-mile-long underground storm drain running beneath 50th Street West from about Avenue M-4 to Avenue L.

A smaller pipe could be extended a half-mile to the Quartz Hill basin that collects storm water flowing down Avenue N from Palmdale.

In January, county officials introduced the drainage proposal before a meeting of the Quartz Hill Town Council meeting that drew some 150 people. Many of them own homes or other property damaged by this winter's storms.

Some said the community passed up a good deal when it failed to support a 1996 storm-drain plan, in part because property owners would have been assessed for maintenance.

But others said the latest plan is unfair if Quartz Hill property owners are expected to pay to control water they blame on housing tracts built since the late 1980s in neighboring Palmdale and Lancaster.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Leftover sandbags from the heavy winter rains still sit on the northwest corner of 50th Street West and Avenue N.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer