City, EBMUD At Odds Over Lafayette Reservoir Tower, An Iconic Landmark

LAFAYETTE, CA—The city of Lafayette and the East Bay Municipal Utility District remained at odds this week over an impending earthquake-safety project involving the Lafayette Reservoir Tower.

According to city officials, despite requests from the city and public input in favor of retaining the current look of the tower, EBMUD plans to start the project this spring and shorten the 170-foot-tall tower by 40 feet.

The nearly 100-year-old tower serves as both an outlet and a spillway for the Lafayette Reservoir. EBMUD owns the tower and the dam and is responsible for maintaining them. When EBMUD presented its design for the project to the Lafayette City Council in January 2023, it featured a tower shortened by 40 feet.

The City Council and the community expressed concerns about the proposed design and the potential loss of the local landmark that has symbolized Lafayette for decades.

A group of Lafayette residents who are professional engineers and architects volunteered to review the design independently as a citizen’s committee. After conducting extensive analysis for 21 months, the group found that the tower could be retrofitted at its current height, the city said.

The committee also expressed concerns that in the event of an earthquake, the proposed shortening of the tower could increase the seismic risk for Lafayette residents who live downstream from the reservoir.

The committee asked EBMUD to approach the necessary seismic updates with sensitivity to the tower's architectural and community significance within the larger civic context.

The city said the committee and city representatives met multiple times with EBMUD to advocate for alternative solutions. According to city officials, EBMUD disagreed with the committee's technical findings and has kept its plan to reduce the tower's height.

The committee and city representatives also met with the California Department of Water Resources’s Division of Safety of Dams—DSOD—the state division that regulates dams. They shared the committee's concerns and the community's sentiment to retain the tower.

Last week, City Manager Niroop Srivatsa received a response from DSOD acknowledging the city’s concerns and providing more time for EBMUD to propose an alternate design, the city said.

DSOD indicated the currently proposed shortened tower design satisfactorily addresses the division's concerns about seismic retrofitting. However, the city said that because the city is concerned over the current design, the state would allow EBMUD to propose an alternate design concept by April 1, 2025. If approved by DSOD, the state would allow EBMUD to delay the start of construction to 2027.

City staff proposes that the City Council request to hold a joint community meeting with the EBMUD Board in early 2025 to solicit public input on the retrofit design.

Before then, the Lafayette City Council invites the public to give feedback on the tower design during the council meeting, which starts at 6 p.m. Monday at the Lafayette Library & Learning Center-Don Tatzin Community Hall, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd.

The meeting will be broadcast on the city's YouTube channel.

City officials said members of the public who wish to provide comments before the meeting can send their input in an email to cityhall@lovelafayette.org no later than noon on Monday. The emails will be distributed to council members, the city manager, and the city attorney and will be posted as part of the public record for the meeting.

The City Council plans to accept live remote public comments via Zoom, technology permitting. The city posted information about how to join the Zoom meeting using a smartphone, computer, or tablet or by calling in on a regular phone.

The agenda for Monday's meeting includes a staff report on the matter with a timeline of communications between the city and EBMUD starting in January 2023. The report included a petition signed by over 110 people hoping to keep the tower at its current height.

In a statement Wednesday night to Patch, EBMUD Spokesperson Andrea Pook indicated the agency was not wavering in its stance.

"EBMUD is the owner and operator of the Lafayette Reservoir and tower," Pook said. "As a public agency, we are committed first and foremost to public safety. While EBMUD understands the City of Lafayette’s and some of the residents' special connection with the tower, the project is required for seismic safety as determined by the California Division of the Safety of Dams (DSOD), which regulates dams around the state. DSOD considers the tower to be a critical structure for dam safety because it also serves as the spillway."

According to Pook, "EBMUD evaluated three alternatives, including some innovative designs, that maintain the height of the tower, but all those alternatives were found to be inadequate by DSOD. EBMUD has been coordinating with the City on this project since 2015."

"After DSOD approved of EBMUD’s shortened tower proposal in 2021, EBMUD worked with the community to collaborate on some of the aesthetic elements of the new, shorter tower, resulting in an operating house on top of the tower that closely resembles the current structure. EBMUD planned to begin the construction in the summer of 2024," she said.

"Instead, at the request of the City, the District spent significant time and resources over the last year to develop and analyze a fourth proposal put forward by a group of local residents interested in keeping the tower at its original height. EBMUD’s detailed analysis showed that the alternative put forward by the community group did not meet safety standards."

"EBMUD has determined that attempting to develop a fifth alternative that satisfies dam safety standards and retains the taller tower height— one that would likely not likely meet DSOD criteria— would not be a wise use of customers’ rate dollars," Pook said.

"EBMUD plans to move ahead with the tower shortening project in 2025. It is EBMUD’s responsibility to move this critical project forward as quickly as possible, given that a failure of the Lafayette Tower poses severe health and safety risks to residents, schools and businesses from Lafayette to Martinez."