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A new grass-roots lobbying effort made up of neighborhood groups from three cities could snag millions of dollars to help prevent future flooding caused by San Francisquito Creek.

The group, consists of neighborhood leaders from Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park, launched a recent letter-writing campaign to inundate federal politicians with mail.

The lobbying group, called Three for the Creek, wants more than $2 million in federal stimulus money to apply to a long-term feasibility study to prevent flooding and for environmental planning and design to decrease significantly the risk of flooding in East Palo Alto.

The letter-writing campaign begun in April targeted U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo; it has made the elected officials take note. Eshoo's office responded by e-mail to each writer. Eshoo put in a request for $700,000 to fund the feasibility study for 2010, according to Len Materman, executive director of the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority (JPA). That sum is needed annually to fund the $7.5 million study through at least 2013 or 2015.

If the funding comes through, JPA would match it for a $1.4 million total, Materman said.

Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment Subcommittee, has also taken note of the letters, according to Materman. Her staff has requested more detail about JPA's efforts, he said.

The funding could revitalize efforts to tame the creek, which has a volatile history due to numerous feeder creeks that run up short canyons -- meaning a heavy rain turns into a deep torrent downstream in a short time.

Funding for the Army Corps of Engineers study, begun in 2005, was stalled when federal money was cut to fund Homeland Security priorities. Eshoo helped to restore part of the money for the 2009 fiscal year with a $335,000 appropriation, Materman said.

"The feasibility study project will result in the protection of several thousand homes and businesses in the cities of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and portions of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It has been estimated that a 1 percent flood here would cause $800 million in damages," he said. A 1 percent flood is also called a "100-year flood," meaning that there is a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year.

Three for the Creek, which has launched a website, www.threeforthecreek.com, formed in part because of the Obama administration's funding of "shovel-ready" projects, said Karen White, president of Palo Alto's Duveneck/St. Francis Neighborhood Association, who started the coalition.

"Now's the time to come together, coalesce and move ahead," White said.

The letter-writing campaign also asks for $1.5 million for environmental planning, design and environmental review to improve levees in East Palo Alto. The city received emergency levee repair when the mud berms cracked in 2006, but they remain substandard, Materman said. A local fund match would be $1 million.

With or without federal funding, the levee-upgrade project will begin this project this summer with funds from JPA member agencies, Materman said.

He characterized the area as highly to catastrophic flooding and loss of human life.

The study would also benefit Palo Alto neighborhoods. "The construction of this project is necessary for the implementation of later projects that will protect thousands of more homes upstream within the Palo Alto and Menlo Park," he said.

Approximately one quarter of East Palo Alto could be inundated in a major flood, with a potentially devastating loss of life, according to Dennis Parker, Gardens Neighborhood Association president in East Palo Alto.

"Standing on the levee, you're looking down on rooftops. ... You can see the water running backwards on high-tide days," he said.

Parker said the coalition is a way to ensure that changes benefiting one community won't be detrimental to another.

Jim Wiley, who lives in the Menlo Park's Willows neighborhood next to the creek, said his concerns are three-fold: he wants the flood problem solved, but not at the expense of homeowners living next to the creek and not at the expense of the creek's ecology.

Previously proposed plans included razing homes in Menlo Park and Palo Alto that abut the creek. Turning the creek into a cement culvert, as some upstream are suggesting, could reduce the flooding risk it would be devastate to the creek's ecology, including the steelhead salmon that migrate up the creek, he said.

"It's the only natural creek remaining in the Bay Area with a steelhead run. ... I'm in the coalition to solve the flood problem, but I represent the part [of the community that wants to make sure we're not destroying the habitat," he said.

Rebuilding the Pope/Chaucer Street Bridge in Crescent Park is a priority for other coalition members, said Norm Beamer, president of the Crescent Park Neighborhood Association in Palo Alto. Residents there blame the deep waters that reached to Greer Park in 1998 on restricted flow under the bridge. But to Wiley and others fixing the bridge alone could just pass the problem further downstream.

Beamer said any solution has to take into consideration the effect on downstream communities. The group is "a constructive way to try to get a solution to the problem," he said.

Wiley said federal money is crucial to solving the problem. A long-term solution could reach $150 million, according to previous JPA estimates.

"Could you see getting San Mateo County (governing Menlo Park) passing a county-wide bond to solve this problem? Hell no. It affects only a few hundred people," he said.

Parker agreed that the push is on, with the letter-writing campaign the opening salvo.

"We've created a pretty aggressive blitz. That's what you need these days. Everyone's competing for money. You have to separate yourself from the rest," he said.

The JPA will hold a public meeting on May 28 at 4 p.m., with San Francisco-based consultants Philip Williams and Associates, to discuss alternatives for upstream areas in and around Stanford University land and potential sites for detention basins. The meeting will take place at the East Palo Alto City Hall, 2415 University Ave., East Palo Alto.