Posted by randy albin, a resident of Mountain View, on Aug 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm

back in the 1970s there was a drought in the bay area. the annual rainfall in the bay area is quite low compared to oregon, for example. if these researchers can come up with ways to conserve and supply water, then wish them well. just utilize low-cost ideas for this. the cost of living is already so incredibly high that these environmental applications need to be cost effective

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Aug 19, 2012 at 2:18 pm

I don't quite understand about these planters at street corners. I imagine that unless the planters and contents remain at less than 2' high, they will be a danger to visibility for drivers. Please don't make it impossible for drivers, pedestrians, children, and other road users to see each other at the places where it is most important to be visible and to see.

Posted by Searing-For-Those-Pesky-Ponds, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Aug 19, 2012 at 8:27 pm

It doesn’t rain much here in Palo Alto, so “heavy rains”, more-often-than-not, occur only a few times a decade. So, where are the “pesky ponds” in the Southgate area, how wide an area do they occupy, and how long does it take for the water to drain away via the current storm drain system? You’d think that a local paper like the Weekly would ask at least these basic questions before running an article like this one.

As the comments about the utility fees paid by the Southgate property owners being used to fund this project seems a little odd, since these fees go into the general fund, and aren’t generally segregated by neighborhood. The Utility could provide a list of addresses, with the UUT (Utility Users Tax) called out for each property/account, but that approach has not been used in the past. Is that really what the City is proposing this time, or did the Weekly just not understand what they were told?

It would be really nice if the City actually provided the residents of Palo Alto with some before/after metrics that would prove the value of this approach to storm water handling. Since it doesn’t rain much, that is going to be a bit of a problem. But with so many digital cameras around, perhaps some of the Southgate residents might take some pictures this winter if ponding actually occurs during the winter rains, and post those pictures/videos to Youtube, so we might have some sort of baseline to compare with how storm runoff is handled once these “improvements” are completed.