Roger Haley grew up at the bottom of Lake Casitas. “It was one of the most beautiful locations in the county. Just magnificent,” he says. “We have a lot of the newcomers to the Ojai Valley, they have no idea. They think that what they see [in this lake] is all that’s good and natural. And they just have no idea.” The lake Haley is describing is a bowl of land that, a half century ago, became a giant, man-made bucket to serve Ventura, a Southern California coastal community midway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.