The 1998 flooding also wiped out 101 for several days with overflow and silt. As I recall this was due to conditions of the Bay -- high tides or storm surge-- that impeded creek flow into the Bay during peak runoff.

There were many lawsuits over flooding liability.

One interesting suit was waged by PA residents against "the Pope-Chaucer" bridge. PA, had a nice insurance policy and settled, giving the litigants the cash they needed to persist against MP. MP agreed to settle on advice of the city attorney. I was concerned about setting a precedent for future litigation. During that conversation the City Attorney noted that litigation risk would persist with or without fixing the Chaucer St bridge since flood modeling showed different victims in either scenario. Keep the existing bridge, this group (PA) was vulnerable. Raise the bridge this other group (EPA) was vulnerable.

I trust the decision by the joint powers authority to raise the bridge was approved by the EPA rep. I wonder now if our city attorney had the modeling right and if they EPA rep was made aware of the data. Perhaps other improvements since that time have invalidated the 1998 results.

Was there flood modeling done for the Joint Powers decisions. Does anyone know?

The Chaucer/Pop street bridge has been redesigned (or still in design?)
The proposal will make the channel deeper on the downstream bridges to avoid floods downstream.
The JPA worked with Palo Alto, MP,East Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and San Mateo County to get the project designed to satisfy all 3 cities and the 2 counties.
I hope this gets done as scheduled with no further complaints from the community.

Some info:
Web Link