Lake Casitas

Lake Casitas is a reservoir in Ventura County, California, built by the United States Bureau of Reclamation and completed in 1959. The project provides drinking water and water for irrigation. A secondary benefit is flood control.

Casitas Dam was constructed on Coyote Creek, two miles before it joins the Ventura River. Santa Ana Creek and North Fork Coyote Creek also flow into the lake. The system was designed for water from the Ventura River to be diverted into a canal under specific conditions since the impounded watershed is not sufficient to fill the lake. The dam is 279 ft creating a lake capacity of 254,000 acre/ft. The dam was built as part of the Ventura River Project. In the center of Lake Casitas is 2 km Main Island, whose peak rises more than 500 feet (150 m) from the lake surface.

The lake filled and overflowed for the first time around the 1970s.

During the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Lake Casitas hosted the canoeing and rowing events.

The Thomas Fire at the end of 2017 had a significant impact on operations since the wildfire burned a large area within the watershed of the Ventura River. Rainstorms brought a lot of ash, sandy silt, gravel, and debris into the Robles diversion facility that had collected over several years since the fire resulting in some temporary shutdowns of water from the Ventura River.