Council will discuss building flood control with RDA money
Morgan Hill – Frustrated by federal resistance to protect the city against flooding of the Llagas and Little Llagas creeks, city council members are talking about taking on the project themselves.
“That would give us a lovely restored stream, jogging trails, connect the parks, connect trails and give us alternative transportation to get people off Monterey [Road],” said Councilman Mark Grzan, who envisions a network of parks and trails connecting the site of the new Indoor Recreation Center to the Paradise and Silveira parks on the west side of town. “If kids want to use the youth center, they could ride their bike along Llagas Creek trail.”
But with the vision comes the project’s $120 million price tag. A flood control project, financed by the U.S. Army Corps, has been in the works for decades. But last year, the Corps said it wouldn’t provide the city with $55 million because the project doesn’t meet cost-efficiency requirements.
Morgan Hill’s downtown sits on what’s known as a 100-year flood plain, meaning there’s a 1 percent chance each year that the city will flood. The creeks last flooded in 2002 and there have been four floods in the last decade. The worst flood, a 33-year event, occurred in 1955.
In federal eyes, the cost of preventing floods outweighs the destruction they could cause Morgan Hill’s downtown. The worst-case flood scenario would cause at least $8.5 million in damage. The city has teamed with the Santa Clara Valley Water District on some preliminary engineering work. Those efforts date to 1993, but no significant flood protection has been achieved. This week, the water district promised to provide $17 million for the project.
“We’ve made some progress but it’s very difficult to keep it moving,” Mayor Dennis Kennedy said. “To the extent that we can provide funds to do parks and trails work as we develop along the creek we should do it.”
The hope is that tapping into the city’s redevelopment agency budget to clean up the blighted creeks and build a trail system will inspire the federal government to provide its share of the funding. Grzan also wants beautifying the stream channels to be the project’s focus, with flood protection as an added benefit.
“The creeks have tires and shopping carts in them,” Grzan said. “We could probably do a better job than [the Corps]. It wouldn’t be a drainage ditch, it would be a park.”
The flood project would provide protection along 16.6 miles of creek, an earth diversion channel, 35 road crossings, fish ladders and trout migration channels.
City officials will meet Friday with district engineers and elected representatives to discuss the next steps in the project.
U.S. Representative Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, has vowed to deliver the project for his Morgan Hill constituents. Last week, in a letter to the Corps, the chairman of the powerful House Resources Committee urged the Corps director to put aside the cost-efficiency requirements “and focus its efforts with the dollars Congress has provided on design and necessary pre-construction activities to prepare the project for a new construction start in 2007.”
