Central Reservoir

Central Reservoir is operated by EBMUD, but it’s much older. It’s the weird-looking steel-covered field north of Sausal Creek. This is a view looking over the reservoir from Ardley Avenue toward the hills.

That’s the Altenheim on the left, across I-580, and of course the LDS temple with Redwood Peak behind it.

The reservoir was built in 1910 by the Peoples Water Company, which took the existing valley of a Sausal Creek tributary, hollowed out the top of its watershed and made an earthen dam. Later EBMUD assumed control of it and upgraded things considerably. However, landslides plagued the steep west bank of Sausal Creek directly east of the reservoir starting in the 1930s.

The latest set of slides, in 2006, led to a tangle of lawsuits initially aimed at EBMUD and blaming leakage from the reservoir. The lawsuits were consolidated and went to a jury trial in 2012 (case number RG07316213), with Alameda County as the main defendant and the damaged land owners (two homeowners and a church) as the remaining plaintiffs. The jury found for the County. None of the media that announced the lawsuit bothered to report the outcome, and the City of Oakland never bothered to clear EBMUD’s name, but the jury dispensed justice as designed.

For 17 MB of geotechnical detail, see EBMUD’s Central Reservoir Seismic Final Report, issued in 2008. As far as engineers can tell, even the Big One on the Hayward fault won’t break the dam. But if I lived downstream, I’d keep a close eye on the dam after a truly major quake and be ready to relocate. And in the aftermath, that emergency water supply may save our lives.