Guest opinion: The flood problem: What, if anything, is to be done about the creek? Guest opinion: The flood problem: What, if anything, is to be done about the creek? (October 12, 2005)

By Mickie Winkler
Editor's Note: The city councils of Menlo Park, East Palo Alto and Palo Alto recently met with the joint powers board that oversees San Francisquito Creek to discuss flood control options. Menlo Park Mayor Mickie Winkler shares her thoughts about the various options in the accompanying article.

Portions of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park are in the flood plain of the San Francisquito Creek. The three cities also share exposure to tidal flooding from the bay. What can be done to keep the creek in its banks and the bay in the bay?

Although we have long known every kind of animal that inhabits the creek, we did not know the number of homes and businesses affected by the potential floods until I asked the question at a meeting of the joint powers authority on the creek about a week ago. We learned that, with respect to creek flooding alone, there are probably some 4,300 properties, each paying some $800 annually for mandatory FEMA insurance. This amounts to an annual total of $3.4 million in insurance for our three cities combined. If we are looking at, alas, a 40-year fix, that's some $137 million paid out in insurance, not to mention the much greater cost when creek flooding actually occurs.

We have basically seven options for dealing with the creek per the discussion below. Fast forward to options three through seven if you want to know what can potentially be done in real time. Read options one and two if you prefer comprehensive options, that will take perhaps four decades to complete, assuming they are federally funded (or funded completely) at all. Read them all if you think we should be thinking both short term and long term.

Here are the seven options:

1. Store the water in dams upstream. This will quite likely be a part of any solution. Before the current creek joint powers board was created in 1998, an earlier report identified where those dams should be erected.

The downsides include the expense and disruption of building and maintaining the dams, and the objections from local entities.

2. Study solutions to both creek and tidal flooding. Embark on a four- to five-year study, such as is currently being proposed, that would create new levees in the bay and would control both creek and tidal flooding

Controlling flooding is also an excellent goal. There are possibly some 6,000 properties affected by the tides. The downsides include the huge expense; the potential ugliness of the emergent levees; the fact that such a solution is, conservatively, several decades away; and the fact that even after we commit local funds to the study, there is no guarantee that the project will receive federal support, all assuming that levees will actually help.

3. Build flood walls in strategic spots, starting with the end of the creek nearest the Bay. And where it is impossible to build flood walls, e.g. on the bridges that cross the creek, prepare to sandbag them when a flood threat occurs.

This is a potentially doable and "comparatively inexpensive" option. Walls can be built and landscaped attractively. And, in the two-hour flood-warning time they have, disaster response teams will be able to sandbag those areas that purposefully don't have a wall. This may be a real time and realistic solution. One I would like to see further discussed.

4. Raise affected homes above the flood plain.

5. Raise the floor level inside the home above the flood plain. Options four and five are probably options for individual home-owners to self-protect from floods and eliminate the FEMA flood-insurance assessment. However, there may be ways for cities to promote these options and they should certainly be considered in our own cost/benefit analysis.

6. Clean and maintain the creek and work with the fire districts on a disaster preparedness plan. This would be done with any or all of the options above.

7. For new construction and paving projects, use materials and techniques that reduce or even eliminate runoff into the creek. All new buildings must, by rules now in play, be built above the base elevations identified in the flood zones.

The downside of doing anything ourselves to alleviate the problem is perplexing. If we decrease potential flood damage locally now, it will negatively affect our ability to get federal help from the Corps of Engineers in the future. Corps aid is calculated on a cost/benefit basis. We will reduce or eliminate Corps participation if we take actions to alleviate the problem ourselves. And of course Corps funding, in any event, is not guaranteed.

And there is another issue about funding. Both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties have each committed a one-time offering of $1.5 million to address the flood problem. The cities will have to add $1 million to $1.2 million to the pot. But note, if we commit county funds to studying long-term programs, they will no longer be available for more actual immediate relief.

The three city councils will be asked to decide on whether to focus on creek flooding or to add in the tidal flooding alternative as well. I hope that in the month remaining, the Creek JPA will tell us what other Bay Area communities, such as Redwood City, are doing (we know Redwood City is not asking for Corps help); we will have bona fide figures on the number of residences and businesses exposed (we are closing in on that); and that we will be able to better address the pros and cons of flood-wall construction.

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