Did the tower look different to you this month? If you've done a lap around the Lakeside Nature Trail recently, you've probably noticed the top of the reservoir's outlet tower is missing. No cap, no gazebo-like crown, just a flat, netted stub where a 170-foot landmark used to sit against the hills. That's not a photo you imagined. Crews spent July and August taking the top 40 feet off the tower that's watched over your walks, runs, and dog-park detours for as long as you've lived in Lafayette.
Here's the part almost nobody circling the loop this summer knew: the tower was never actually supposed to be that tall. What's happening at the reservoir right now isn't really a renovation. It's a correction to a mistake made during the original construction, one that sat unaddressed for nearly a century.
A Century-Old Measurement Error
When construction on the reservoir began in 1927, engineers planned to build the dam 33 feet taller than the one that exists today. Somewhere along the way, that plan changed and the dam ended up shorter. The tower, though, kept its original dimensions. The result is a spillway structure standing roughly 40 feet higher than the reservoir it actually serves needs it to be.
For most of the tower's life, that mismatch was cosmetic. It's part of why the thing looks so striking against the water, jutting up well past what a functional outlet tower would require. But height on a structure like this isn't neutral. The taller the tower, the more it flexes and the more force it carries at its base during ground movement, and this particular tower happens to be tied into the dam's only drain system. If it cracked, EBMUD would lose the ability to safely release water from the reservoir at all.
That's the kind of detail that turns a quirky landmark into a genuine safety liability, and it's exactly what the California Division of Safety of Dams flagged when it reviewed the structure.
Why This Wasn't Optional
Dam safety regulation got a lot less forgiving after 2017, when the Oroville Dam spillway failure in Butte County forced 180,000 people to evacuate and pushed DSOD to tighten seismic standards statewide. The Lafayette tower, built in 1929 and never retrofitted, didn't meet the new bar. State flood mapping tied to the project shows that a failure at the dam could send water downstream into parts of Lafayette and Walnut Creek, an area that includes a K-8 school, the Lafayette Police Department, and the Lafayette BART station. EBMUD has said the odds of that happening are low, but the consequences if it did are severe enough that the agency treated the fix as non-negotiable.
That framing matters, because it explains why a community with real organizing power still couldn't stop the project.
The Fight Nobody Outside Lafayette Heard About
Starting in 2023, a group of Lafayette residents with backgrounds in structural engineering and architecture volunteered to independently review EBMUD's design. Their conclusion, delivered to the City Council that summer, was that the tower could be retrofitted at its existing height without shortening it. Over the following year, the committee and EBMUD traded technical reports. By May 2024, the committee had gone further, arguing that shortening the tower could actually increase seismic risk for residents downstream rather than reduce it.
The City Council sided with its own committee and asked EBMUD to pause construction and appeal to DSOD for an alternative. EBMUD's general manager responded that the state agency had already reaffirmed the shortening plan as the only approved path forward. The project moved ahead in 2025 and broke ground on the physical work this year.
It's a rare thing to watch: a well-resourced, engineering-literate community mount a serious technical challenge to a public utility and still lose, not because their argument was dismissed but because a state regulator's authority simply sits above local preference on questions of dam safety.
One longtime visitor put the mood at the reservoir this summer about as plainly as it can be put.
"They took the cap off."
That was Juan Pineda, talking to CBS News while walking the loop with his husband Glen, who added that the change felt sad but understandable from a safety standpoint. That mix, a little grief, a little acceptance, is probably close to how most regulars feel watching the skyline they know shift shape.
What's Actually Different on Your Next Lap
Here's where things stand as of this month. A barge-mounted crane began lifting sections off the top of the tower in July. By around August 21, the tower had reached its new shortened height, somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 feet instead of 170. What's still missing is the cap.
The rough timeline from here:
- July 2026: Crane and barge crews begin removing the tower's upper sections
- Late August 2026: Tower reaches its new, shortened height
- November 2026 (targeted): New metal operating house installed on top
- Fall 2026 (targeted): Tower modifications and construction substantially complete
- Fall 2027 (targeted): Tower fully tested, commissioned, and returned to operational service
So if you're expecting the finished look by the time the leaves turn this year, that's not quite the schedule. The new operating house, designed to closely resemble the tower's original 100-year-old profile, won't go up until closer to November. Full commissioning stretches another year past that.
You'll also notice this isn't the only work happening out there. EBMUD is running a separate wastewater collection system upgrade at the recreation area on a similar fall 2025 through fall 2026 window, replacing the sanitary lift station and piping that serves the Visitor Center, Ranger Residence, and Maintenance Building, along with adding a backup generator and a new radio tower for site communications. Both projects are active near the Lakeside Nature Trail and the barge ramp at the same time, which is why you might catch flaggers directing pedestrian and vehicle traffic and occasional 10 to 15 minute delays at the entrance gate. Demolition debris is being trucked out via the Acalanes Road onramp specifically to keep those loads off downtown Lafayette streets.
If you'd planned to reserve one of the 35 picnic sites around the reservoir, reservations were unavailable from February through July while construction ramped up. EBMUD has said it expects to reopen select dates as the timeline firms up, so it's worth checking directly before you plan a group gathering out there this fall.
What Stays the Same
Not everything about the reservoir is in flux. The Rim Trail's 4.7 unpaved miles and the rest of the more than 10 miles of connector trails are running as they always have. Fishing season resumes on its normal schedule too, with the state planting trout from November through March in the areas away from the active construction zone. The dogs are still off-leash-adjacent at 6 feet of lead, the rowboats still rent for the afternoon, and the loop is still the loop, just with a shorter landmark at its center for a while.
EBMUD has also said it's salvaging pieces of the original 1929 structure as it comes down, including a window installed in the late 1920s, and is discussing some kind of public historic token from the material. Nothing formal has been announced yet, but it's a small signal that the agency understands what this tower has meant to people who've circled it for decades, even while moving forward with a design the community's own experts argued against.
If you live here, none of this changes your morning routine much beyond a few minutes of patience near the barge ramp and a landmark that looks unfamiliar through most of 2027. But next time you're on the trail and someone asks why the tower looks different, you'll have the actual answer: it was never built to the height the reservoir needed in the first place, and it's taken a century and a change in dam safety law to finally get it right.
If you're weighing what else is shifting in Lafayette this year, from the reservoir to the neighborhoods around it, Julie Whitmer has spent her career paying attention to exactly this kind of local detail. Reach out anytime for a grounded, no-pressure conversation about the town you already call home.