Hansen Dam Recreation Area

The Hansen Dam Recreation Center is an intersection in the San Fernando Valley where open space and the suburbs clash head-on, a place blessed with willows and water and plagued by homeless encampments, crack dens and off-roaders. It is also prone to fires, such as one May 13 that destroyed 80 acres of nesting grounds for a remarkably diverse avian population, including one of the world's rarest songbirds, the federally endangered least Bell's vireo.

Helicopters are scheduled to begin an aerial pesticide assault at 6:30 a.m. today to eradicate potential West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes at Hansen Dam Recreation Area. The two to three hours of spraying by the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District will cover about 100 acres.

Early on New Year's morning, when most people were burrowed deep beneath their blankets, a few brave souls stripped down to their swimsuits and jumped into Hansen Dam Swim Lake in Lake View Terrace. After absorbing the initial shock of the 46-degree water, they gingerly waded into waist-high water the length of the 200-yard, man-made lake as a handful of spectators cheered. It was over in five minutes. The swimmers emerged shivering but exhilarated.

Congress has approved $3.16 million for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to help restore the environment and develop more recreational facilities at Hansen Dam, officials said Friday The money, which was secured by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Van Nuys), is part of the omnibus appropriations bill passed Thursday.

After a year of disappointing attendance in Castaic Lake, the San Fernando Valley Fair will return in 2004 to the Hansen Dam Recreation Center, organizers said Thursday. The fair was relocated last June to Castaic Lake in the Santa Clarita Valley mainly because renovations at Hansen Dam had left inadequate parking, organizers said.

A proposed sports academy for low-income youths at the Hansen Dam Recreation Center has been scrapped at least temporarily and a popular swimming lake at the site is unavailable because it needs repairs, authorities said Monday. Major League Baseball officials halted plans to build a $10-million sports academy for low-income kids after Southern California Edison expressed concerns about the proposed project site.

Work crews at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area have been ordered to stop dumping concrete and rebar into a popular swimming hole, an official with the Army Corps of Engineers said Friday. The Corps has not yet determined what to do with the debris, a spokesman said. Officials say the area used by swimmers is a pit meant to catch runoff from the foothills. Residents were upset after seeing trucks dump debris from a swimming lake that is under repair into the pit.

The Hansen Dam Aquatic Center's 1.5-acre swimming lake will reopen today after being closed for repairs since January, officials said. More than $2.5 million in work on leaking pipes and a cracked concrete floor was completed and the lake was refilled Wednesday, said Fred Egeler, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the site in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Once-fuzzy concepts for exhibits at the city's new Children's Museum have been nailed down to the last high-tech detail and are ready to be built. New York-based designer Edwin Schlossberg unveiled his ideas late last year for exhibits for the $20-million, energy-efficient structure to be built in the Hansen Dam Recreation Area in the northeast San Fernando Valley. Museum Director Candace Barrett admitted that the proposed exhibits were difficult to visualize.

No sooner had major league baseball and the Dodgers announced Tuesday a first-of-its-kind, $10-million sports academy for at-risk youth than Lake View Terrace neighbors of the project's site in the Hansen Dam Recreation Area raised objections. Some area residents are not sold on the multimillion-dollar Youth Baseball Academy, questioning how at-risk youth in Los Angeles will be identified and selected to attend the facility and fearing the criteria will be exclusionary.