Officials say money could be used to reimburse past projects so
work can continue along Llagas Creek
Morgan Hil – Flood prone cities in Santa Clara County, including Morgan Hill, could see $32 million in state funds used to reimburse past flood control projects, thanks to propositions 1E and 84 passing.
Proposition 84, which passed 59 percent to 41 percent, in a vote of 203,157 to 142,851, authorizes California to issue $5.4 billion in bonds for variety of projects related to water safety, rivers, beaches, levees and watersheds.
Proposition 1E, which passed 67 percent to 33 percent, in a vote of 231,632 to 114,543, authorizes $4.1 billion in bonds for disaster preparedness and flood prevention projects.
Santa Clara Valley Water District CEO Stan Williams said the propositions are expected to yield $700 million statewide for flood prevention funding, including $32 million for the Santa Clara Valley Water District to pay for past projects so work can continue along the Llagas Creek in Morgan Hill and other flooding trouble spots in the Bay Area.
The district, which manages the county’s water supply, also hopes a portion of the $138 million Proposition 84 earmarks for the Bay Area goes to repairing its system of levees, through which the county imports $77.2 billion gallons of water annually – about half of its total supply.
“Rather than dramatically increasing water rates or other fees to pay those costs, we should be able to tap into this newly created state funding to benefit Silicon Valley’s residents and businesses,” Williams said.
Flooding has long been a problem for Santa Clara County residents, with yearly damages in cities such as Morgan Hill, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and San Jose costing millions of dollars. The worst flooding incident in recent history occurred eight years ago when the San Francisquito Creek spilled over its banks in Palo Alto and caused $28 million in damages.
There was also massive flooding along Llagas Creek in 1997 and Guadalupe River in San Jose in 1995 – the latter of which shut down Lightrail service.
“People may have either forgotten we flood, or are new to the area, and don’t know that quite a bit of Santa Clara County is prone to flooding,” said water district spokesman Mike DiMarco.
In South County, the district has spent more than $34 million trying to fix flooding along Llagas Creek from Gilroy to Morgan Hill – a project that’s dragged on since 1954 with little visible progress in the last 10 years, despite work behind the scenes by the water district to get the project into the purview of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
DiMarco pegged the remaining cost of the project at $110 million.
Officials hope the new funding sources – including the Water Resources Development Act pending in a Congressional committee – gets the work done by 2010. The work would include building more levees, channels and bridges along a 13-mile stretch of the creek north of Buena Vista Avenue in Gilroy.
