After decades of delays, MH still susceptible to Llagas
flooding
Morgan Hill – Thwarted in his efforts to press the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers to protect Morgan Hill from flooding, U.S. Representative Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said he will take another path to deliver the project the city has awaited for decades.
“We have to figure out what language we need and stick it in a bill somehow,” Pombo said in a recent visit to the district. “I don’t know what else to do. We have to keep pushing.”
A project to prevent flooding along 16.6 miles of the Llagas and Little Llagas creeks has been tied up in the federal bureaucracy for about 50 years. Work on the Lower Llagas project in Gilroy and San Martin was completed in 1996.
In 2002, the Army Corps gave the Upper Llagas project a cost-benefit score of 0.23, meaning every dollar spent on Llagas flood protection would save only 23 cents in cleanup and other flood damage costs. It takes a one-to-one ratio to be considered for federal financing.
Last year, Pombo promised to deliver the project to Morgan Hill. He is chairman of the House Resources Committee, which controls the Corps funding, but that power hasn’t yet translated into money for the $105-million project. In a recent letter to Pombo, the Corps advised the congressman that it is still not able to support flood prevention work on the Llagas because the cost outweighs any potential benefits.
“I’m not extremely encouraged by the responses I’ve gotten when I’ve talked to them,” said Pombo, who has been in the House since 1994, but has represented Morgan Hill since 2002. “It just baffles me you’ve spent so many years on it and it’s still not done.”
Pombo has already inserted language authorizing the Upper Llagas project in the House’s Water Resources Development Act of 2005.
The bill has not advanced through the U.S. Senate, but the flooding disaster following Hurricane Katrina appears to have inspired senators to back more flood control projects.
Recently, 80 senators signed a letter urging the chamber to add more projects to the House’s bill, but that’s no guarantee the Llagas project will be funded. Once the project is authorized, it will still have to compete with hundreds of other projects for space in an appropriations, or funding bill.
“That’s the other job of our elected officials,” said Scott Wilson, an engineer with the Santa Clara Valley Water District. “You’ve got to get them authorized and you’ve got to get them appropriated.”
The Upper Llagas project includes enlarging both creeks and constructing a diversion channel between them. Wilson said the Army Corps reevaluation of the project was necessary because its original plans were so old.
“It’s a good project,” he said, “but it was an old project with an old design and needed to be reworked.”
Portions of the Upper Llagas project have moved forward in recent years. The larger project has actually been completed south of Morgan Hill, and the city is working with the water district on preliminary engineering work in Morgan Hill. Last month, the district pledged $17 million to the project, but it will languish without $65 million in federal dollars.
The project is necessary because 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 Little Llagas, which runs two blocks west of Monterey Road, last flooded in 2002 and there have been four floods in the last decade. The worst flood, a 33-year event, occurred in 1955.
But 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.
“Our challenge is to get the support of the [U.S.] Senate to get some language to allow the project to go forward, to keep it moving,” Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy said. “It’s like trying to push a boulder uphill. If you miss a step, it rolls back down a little bit. It’s just a real tough battle.”
Tired of waiting for federal funding for the entire project, city leaders are now contemplating using redevelopment agency funds to construct a network of parks and trails along the Llagas and Little Llagas connecting the site of the new Indoor Recreation Center to the Paradise and Silveira parks on the west side of town.
The hope is that tapping into the city’s redevelopment budget to clean up the blighted creeks and build a trail system will inspire the federal government to provide its share of the funding. Councilman Mark Grzan has said he 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 recently. “We could probably do a better job than [the Corps]. It wouldn’t be a drainage ditch, it would be a park.”
Flood Control Facts:
What’s the Army Corps?
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is part of the Executive branch of government. It’s run by military and civilian officials and oversees the nation’s waterways and related environmental resources.
How Does it Decide Which Projects to Fund?
The Corps has a cost-benefit analysis that it uses to assess the financial sense of flood projects. To qualify, a project must save at least as much as it will cost in flood damages avoided, clean up and other costs over the first 50 years of its project life.
How Do Projects Get Funded?
The Army Corps submits its proposed budget to the Administration in August, recommending the projects it would like to work on in the following fiscal year. The administration considers the Corps submission and releases a budget request to Congress in February. Usually, the budget request sent to Congress contains very few of the projects submitted by the Corps. During the federal budget process, legislators typically add scores of new projects to the Administration budget request. To fund a project, the House and Senate must agree on two pieces of legislation. The project must be included in an authorization bill and an appropriations bill. It’s not unusual for authorized projects to fail in the appropriations round.
Where does the Llagas Project Stand?
Llagas Creek needs to be included in an authorization bill to begin construction. Special language for Llagas Creek has been included in a House authorization bill. The Senate will consider its version of the bill it in the coming months.
