Politics & Government

Cities Come Together in First Flood Discussion of the Year

After initial resistance, Menlo Park and Atherton agreed to work with Redwood City to produce regional solutions.

The glorious 80-degree weather in Menlo Park may have temporarily washed away memories of last week’s constant downpours, but the persistent flooding problem in Redwood City will continue again once the next big storm hits. Councilmembers and city engineers finally rounded up neighboring jurisdictions last Friday to discuss potential solutions.

Councilmembers and city staff from the County, Menlo Park, Woodside and Atherton sat with Councilmembers Jeff Gee, Iain Bain and Barbara Pierce and city engineers in the first of many meetings to find long-term solutions.

“This isn’t just a Band-Aid fix,” said Gee, who chaired the meeting. “We’re looking for the most viable alternatives that city staffs come up with.”

Find out what's happening in Menlo Park-Athertonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

City engineer Chu Chang said that staff members and city councilmembers had to be careful when using the word “solution” to label the actions the region would take.

“The better word is ‘mitigation,’” he said. “There is no actual solution because FEMA determined that Redwood City’s elevation would naturally cause flooding in some areas.”

Find out what's happening in Menlo Park-Athertonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In November 2010 during a stretch of rainy weather, councilmembers said they were frustrated about the lack of communication between cities regarding what they called a regional issue, not just a problem that Redwood City should solve.

Councilmembers said flooding was equally Menlo Park's and Atherton’s responsibility because of the two cities’ large contribution of water flowing into the Bayfront Canal and Fifth Avenue basin. 

Of the areas that contribute water run-off to basins, only five percent of the Fifth Avenue area contributes to the basins, four percent of Broadway contributes and three percent of Douglas contributes. Conversely, 69 percent of the land area in Atherton, Menlo Park and unincorporated areas contribute water run-off into the basins. These percentages aren’t a measure of the actual water amounts flowing into the basins.

City engineer Peter Vorametsanti said that there were no specific funds to improve flooding prevention infrastructure. Money comes from the city’s general fund. Because the large storm drains are used only 10 to 15 times a year during the heavy rain season, these systems don’t receive as much maintenance or updates as the wastewater systems, which are used daily.

The city has approximately $6 million to spend on flooding mitigation, which is not enough to pay for the solutions they are looking at, according to city engineer Grace Le. In fiscal year 2001-2002, the council allocated $8.7 million for the Fifth Avenue drainage improvement. In 2002, the city spent $1.5 million on a 66-inch pipe to carry water through Highway 101. In 2005, phase 2 was implemented with a storm pipes and system replacement, costing $1 million. The $150,000 outfall structure was constructed in 2007.

“Particularly in these tough economic times, solutions are going to take resources and maybe even ordinances,” Gee said.

But ordinances have a timeline of at least a year, which includes the writing, the public hearing and approval. In the town of Atherton, whatever rain falls on a resident’s property, it is the resident’s responsibility to dispose of it properly. It can’t drain off into the streets, Gee said.

“We’re going to share some of those best practices,” he said. “That is part of a solution.”

Another possible mitigation is to create a retention area up in the hills to store the water then release it more slowly during drier periods.

“This requires property acquisition and construction, which won’t just happen overnight,” Gee said.

Le said an assessment district was a funding alternative. All parties in the area would have to pay into a certain district for a specific purpose. In this case, the Bellehaven area, Fifth Avenue and other flood-prone areas would contribute to a district.

Le said that Menlo Park had come to the table offering financial assistance, though it was too early to pinpoint exact numbers, Le said.

“The point of the meeting was not to nail down who would pay for what,” she said.

Redwood City is currently applying for grant money from the State Department of Water Resources, and Le said she hoped cities would participate in these grant applications.

But this regional issue would require much more than money to solve the problem. To first ensure that all jurisdictions were on the same page, Gee set three goals for the meeting and said all were achieved:

  1. Establish a common understanding of the challenge of the flooding issues amongst the municipalities. Gee said all parties offered stories of floods in their cities and towns. 
  2. This is a regional issue, so a regional solution is required. All parties agreed to work together to identify the most feasible solutions. “Even Woodside who is rarely the recipient of flooding—because it starts up in the hills and rolls down—agreed to produce comprehensive solutions,” Le said.
  3. Plan next steps.

The next step was sending for representatives to organize a meeting with their respective staffs to draft possible solutions. Then in June, the larger group would reconvene to pool the propositions, according to Le.  

Redwood City had already drafted an extensive list of solutions, from a flood wall to water pump upgrades, Le said. A list of the proposed mitigations could not be published because not all councilmembers had reviewed them.

“We’ve done our homework, but we want to make sure we’re not in our own box,” Le said. “We want to hear what other cities suggest.”

“There’s no easy solution that will fix it right now,” Gee said. “But we’re working to make it a lot better than what it is.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here