Thanks to the hard work of Croy Road-area residents, help from
the Santa Clara Valley Water District and some cooperation from
Mother Nature, the site of the September 2002 wildfires did not
fall victim to devastating landslides.
Thanks to the hard work of Croy Road-area residents, help from the Santa Clara Valley Water District and some cooperation from Mother Nature, the site of the September 2002 wildfires did not fall victim to devastating landslides. Unfortunately, the residents of the San Bernardino Mountains wildfire and subsequent landslide site weren’t so fortunate.
The 3,000-acre fire site in the hills just west of Morgan Hill was spared the fate of the denuded Southern California terrain in large part because residents in the Croy Road area worked to reinforce the hillsides with plantings and to dig culverts to direct water away from the dirt roads in the mountain community.
The water district helped by spending $125,000 to hydroseed the the Croy Road fire area just two months after the blaze, giving the plants whose roots help to hold back landslides a head start.
“It’s kind of a success story up there. The roots have gone wild. There are 30 or 40 types of indigenous plants growing well,” Croy Road resident Roy Guist told reporter Eric Leins. “Mother Nature really cooperated. We lucked out.”
Guist is right to give a tip of his hat to Mother Nature. She helped by not flooding the region with heavy rains immediately after the fire – unlike the fate that befell the residents of the San Bernardino Mountains. And she also provided ideal growing conditions that gave the seedlings such a strong start.
“The reseeding worked,” water district spokesman Mike DiMarco said. “We’re seeing indigenous plants grow there that haven’t been seen in the last eight decades.”
But we’re still troubled that Croy Road-area residents and the county seem to be working at cross-purposes rather than working together to craft a compromise that will allow reasonable public safety requirements to be enforced.
Unpermitted building is still occurring, and we’ve seen no movement from anyone toward forging a much-needed compromise. The county needs to have access for fire equipment, police cars and ambulances. It needs to ensure that all structures in the Croy Road area meet code. Croy Road-area residents need to have reasonable permitting processes, code requirements, zoning ordinances and fee structures in place so that they’ll be able to meet the county standards.
Without a compromise, the county will continue to turn a blind eye to unpermitted structures, which are an invitation to expensive public safety problems like the 3,000-acre Croy fire of 15 months ago.
We’ve seen what can happen when we work together – the lack of landslides during heavy New Year’s rains are a testament to the power of cooperation and compromise. Let’s apply that lesson to the problem of unpermitted structures in the Croy Road area and find a solution that county, taxpayers and Croy residents can all live with.
