March 30, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Residents worry about creek project

by Carol Palinkas

A flood-prevention project for San Francisquito Creek and surrounding areas is making some local residents nervous -- not because they don't want the help, but because they fear it will take too long.

The project would encompass the entire local watershed, which is 45 square miles and extends from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the San Francisco Bay. It drains water from the five municipalities of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Portola Valley and Woodside.

The cost could exceed $100 million, authorities estimate, and would be funded through local, state and federal funds. The Joint Powers Authority and the Santa Clara County Water District would supervise the design and planning, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be involved in construction.

Residents worry the new approach accomplishes nothing, costs a fortune and perhaps will never get funded or completed.

"They're talking about 40 years," said Duncan Mason, a Forest Avenue resident.

When the San Francisquito Creek overran its banks in 1998, Mason's Forest Avenue home suffered extensive damage.

His water heater died, electricity was out for two weeks and Mason, a physician, lost a week of work dealing with the cleanup and mold.

"One wing of the house was flooded," he said. "It was really only because the tide was going down that we didn't lose the rest of the house to the flooding."

Residents like Mason hoped the conditions that caused the flooding would be fixed in a relatively short period of time. In this case, they envisioned the widening of the Chaucer Street bridge and the bolstering and raising of levees from the bay to that same bridge.

Mike DiMarco, spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, said it's a waste of taxpayer dollars to do short-term work, and that since most of the county has the same flood risk, it would, he said, be unfair to focus on one project at the expense of others.

"You can't prevent flooding until a long-term, well-thought-out flood protection project is constructed," he said. "Until that day comes, and we're working toward that day, the best we can do is coordinate emergency responses that hopefully can prevent flood damage from occurring."

DiMarco added that according to a 1998 reconnaissance report, a 100-year flood along San Francisquito Creek would cause an estimated $155 million in damage and affect an estimated 4,800 homes and businesses, far exceeding the costs of the long-term project.

Art Kraemer, a Forest Avenue resident who sustained several thousand dollars worth of damage during the 1998 flood, said the Joint Powers Authority's reliance on a long-term project is cost prohibitive. He's hoping the city of Palo Alto will step in to work on the Chaucer Street bridge.

But Palo Alto City Council member Dena Mossar said in an official statement that a reconstructed computer model showed that the Chaucer Street bridge caused only very localized flooding immediately upstream of the bridge. Furthermore, it indicated flood waters would have escaped downstream of the bridge in the same or greater quantities if the bridge had not existed.

She also said that if short-term work went forward, it would undercut the city's ability to qualify for funding on any further work on the creek.

Greg Zlotnick, Water District representative for District 5, believes that continuing with short-term project at the expense of the long-term solution is too simplistic.

"This is a very complex watershed -- the last steelhead run in the South Bay -- and a typical (Army) Corps of Engineers project like this is like $100 million and usually takes about 40 years. We're going to try to do it in 20," he said.

He said that when the original bridge project was conceived and authorized under the federal Continuing Authorizations Program, it was the only funding available. An opportunity arose later to do the far more comprehensive project now being considered.

"It was what the (Joint Powers Authority) was intended to do. It made sense to move forward with a comprehensive project rather than just that little project," Zlotnick said.

Cynthia D'Agosta, executive director of the Joint Powers Authority, explained that the short-term project would have taken seven to 10 years. Although the long-term project will take longer, it doesn't mean that work on the creek won't happen quickly enough.

"In a long-term project we can phase a project, and almost all flood-control projects begin at the mouth of the creek or river, so we will be addressing the same area; it's simply encompassed in a larger project," she said.

To provide relief to local homeowners in the meantime, a new stream-maintenance program has been put in place and will be done from June through October to prepare the creeks for the rainy season, DiMarco said.

Before rainy season approaches, city officials, emergency management personnel and the Water District meet to discuss what's been done throughout the year and identify areas prone to flooding.

"Once we've identified those," he said, "then we coordinate our emergency responses. If it looks like a creek could spill its banks, we already have in place a response protocol so that working together we can try to minimize the risk of flooding to a neighborhood or specific homes."

But if the creek floods again, residents said they will participate in a lawsuit against the city for failure to make the needed changes to the Chaucer Street bridge.

"We just want it fixed," said Mason. "We don't want to harm the community. We want to be protected."

Editorial Intern Carol Palinkas can be reached at cpalinkas@paweekly.com.

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