The prospect of a high-speed accident on a flooded western approach to the Dumbarton Bridge is worrying Harold Schapelhouman, the deputy chief of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, and Menlo Park City Councilwoman Kelly Fergusson.
A deteriorating earthen levee along San Francisco Bay on the north side of the bridge is broken in several places and during very high winter tides, sea water comes in, floods the frontage road and can lap at the edge of Highway 84 leading to the bridge.
At an April 7 walking-around meeting at the site, a consensus emerged among Menlo Park officials to find a way to build a levee that would protect both the frontage road and Highway 84, Mr. Schapelhouman told the Almanac.
In late December, a very high tide put a foot of water on the frontage road turn-around under the bridge, he said. The nearby Pacific Gas & Electric substation had standing water in it.
“You don’t want to be in standing water around electric power,” he said. When told that PG&E wasn’t worried, he replied that it is his job to take a “proactive” approach. “They’re going to tell you that the station was designed for (flooding),” he said. “I don’t always think that things are going to go right.”
“I am very concerned about the situation,” said Ms. Fergusson in an April 4 e-mail to the City Council and city staff, including Public Works Director Kent Steffens. “Car spin-outs due to a flooded roadway and flooding of a major electrical substation are very serious risks here. Should a state of emergency be declared”?
The potential for flooding at the substation was understood and planned for, said PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno. Equipment was elevated and sump pumps installed.
“The substation really is not in any jeopardy of failure, even if water gets into the facility,” he said. “Obviously, we’d rather not have water there. It makes it a little harder to get around.”
After the April 7 walk through the substation, Mr. Schapelhouman said that seeing the elevated equipment lessened his concern about standing water.
He also noted with some relief that Highway 84 is designed to be safe except in a 100-year flood. But everyone on the walk-through agreed that since the land behind the levee is being allowed to return to salt marsh, the frontage road should have a levee of its own, he said.
Ms. Fergusson said she and Mayor Nicholas Jellins will be contacting state Assemblyman Ira Ruskin to help move the process forward.
“It’s baby steps, but that’s the process,” said Mr. Schapelhouman.
Reclaiming a marsh
The tract of land next to the deteriorating levee is the property of the city of San Jose, which bought it in 1996 from the port of Oakland, said Lindsey Wolf, a spokeswoman for San Jose’s environmental services department.San Jose is allowing the tract to return to a salt marsh habitat as an offset to what was once an excessive discharge of fresh water into the bay from the city’s waste-water treatment plant, said Ms. Wolf.
The levee was not built to protect against floods, said Ms. Wolf, but to create a duck-hunting pond for use by the Mosley family, the tract’s original owners.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service now owns the levee, she said. Asked about its poor condition, she replied: “That’s how you reclaim a salt marsh. You allow the tides to come and go across that property.”
