Creek clearing should be done with care, but with a sense of
responsibility by the SCVWD
According to the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s Web site, the agency “is the primary water resources agency for Santa Clara County, California. It acts not only as the county’s water wholesaler, but also as its flood protection agency and is the steward for its streams and creeks, underground aquifers and district-built reservoirs.”
Given that, it’s hard to understand why it’s so difficult for property owners whose land includes creeks and streams to get help from the water district in clearing them.
Everyone – property owners, water district officials, and environmentalists – agrees that removing debris and nonnative species from creeks is an important part of flood control.
But getting the agency that serves as our “flood protection agency” and as our “steward for … streams and creeks” to take care of the problem is a slow, painful process requiring the patience of Job.
“It’s a mess down there,” property owner Joe Rizzuto, whose property borders Uvas Creek in south Gilroy, told reporter Perry Shirley. “The overgrowth, the Eucalyptus, the bamboo, stuff like this should have been taken out years ago.”
It shouldn’t be that way. Our water district representatives, board members Rosemary Kamei and Sig Sanchez, should take personal responsibility in seeing that the problem is being adequately addressed.
District officials like to point to state and federal regulations that limit the creek-clearing methods they can use as a reason why it takes so long to get a response from district officials. Those regulations grew out of efforts to protect threatened species like steelhead trout.
But the bigger problem is that the water district puts too many resources into its top-heavy administration – more than 30 senior staff members, for just one example – and not enough into programs that make real, quality- and protection-of-life differences for ratepayers, like efforts to keep the creeks clear.
The district knows how to clear creeks with minimum impact to threatened species. It just needs to put the manpower into getting the job done.
Ms. Kamei and Mr. Sanchez should be using their board positions to ease the bureaucracy associated with getting a creek cleared. How about establishing a hot line that the public can use to report creek blockages, and how about if the board demands regular, frequent reports on how long it takes for those reports to be resolved? How about moving funding from top-heavy, well-compensated administrative positions to lower-level, less-well-compensated manual labor positions so that the overgrowth clogging creeks actually is removed and floods are actually prevented?
After all, the water district is supposed to be our “flood protection agency” and our “steward for … streams and creeks” – let’s demand that they start acting like it.
