Safety Be Dammed

Residents of arid Littlerock, Calif, (pop. 1,500), a farm community northeast of Los Angeles, have a choice of potential disasters. Would they rather risk being drowned, or drying up and blowing away? State officials want to drain the 521 million-gal, reservoir behind the nearby Littlerock Dam, whose water irrigates the peach and pear groves and melon fields that give the town what little prosperity it has. But the 53-year-old dam sits virtually atop the San Andreas Fault. Although the structure has survived severe tremors in the past, seismologists say it is located where the next big quake is most likely to strike--and state engineers believe the dam could collapse when that happens.

Officials are expected to order that the reservoir be drained after an environmental impact study is concluded. But the town's farmers are determined to fight such an order in the courts. Says Don Bones, president of the Citizens' Committee to Save the Littlerock Dam, Inc.: "Without water, Littlerock would revert to the desert it was 100 years ago. It would wither and die." It appears that Littlerock will be damned if the courts do approve drainage and dammed if they don't.

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