Lake Balboa Park

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took the blame Friday for the leakage of millions of gallons of reclaimed water that vanished down a long-abandoned sewer pipe when city workers began filling Lake Balboa in the Sepulveda Basin this week. The corps simply lost track of the five-mile-long pipe it sealed off about 1940, a corps official said, adding: "I don't know if you'd call it a goof or not."

Water will begin flowing Monday into Lake Balboa in Sepulveda Basin, enabling the San Fernando Valley's only public boating and fishing lake to be open for use by late next week, city and federal officials have announced. Reclaimed water from the Tillman sewage treatment plant will be pumped into the 27.5-acre, 10-foot-deep lake, topping it off at 72 million gallons by Thursday. "It's wonderful.

With grins, handshakes and backslaps all around, city and federal officials Thursday dedicated a new fishing and boating lake in Encino. That the lake had no water in it bothered them not at all. Indeed, the 26-acre Lake Balboa will not be filled--making it usable for fishing and paddle boating--for another two years.