The Santa Clara Valley Water District and the City of Morgan
Hill are moving forward with the next stages of a flood control
project to prevent calamitous flooding in the city’s downtown, even
though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hasn’t committed to funding
the languishing project.
Gilroy – The Santa Clara Valley Water District and the City of Morgan Hill are moving forward with the next stages of a flood control project to prevent calamitous flooding in the city’s downtown, even though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hasn’t committed to funding the languishing project.
Morgan Hill and the district are investing $656,000 in a geological investigation, hoping the Army Corps will eventually decide that the benefits of the $95-million project is worth its costs.
“It’s still on the burner,” district spokesman Mike DiMarco said. “Before we can even get to that point we need to finish the design and planning work, and before we can do that, we need to do the geotechnical work. It’s moving forward, but it’s not moving forward as fast as some people would like, including the water district.”
The projects include enlarging the Llagas Creek, and it’s offshoot, the Little Llagas, and constructing a diversion channel between them. They’re necessary because Morgan Hill sits in what’s known as a 100-year flood plain, meaning every year there’s a 1 percent chance the entire downtown area will end up under water. There’s some flooding almost every year.
The projects have gained the support of Morgan Hill’s congressman, Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who is lobbying the Army Corps to take another look at it.
“I believe continuing to fund this important project will provide the means necessary to prevent damaging flooding in Morgan Hill,” Pombo said Tuesday. “We’ve got the money appropriated, we just need to push the Army Corps to finish it.”
The district has been working with state and federal partners to improve the Llagas from north of Wright Avenue in Morgan Hill for 50 years. A $52-million phase improving the creek as far north as Buena Vista Avenue in San Martin was completed in 1996, but the project has been in limbo ever since.
Budget trouble has imperiled federal and state funding, and the project was complicated when the steelhead trout was placed on the endangered species list. Still, the district hoped to start work in 2007 with federal funds, $27 million in state money and $12.7 million raised by 2000’s Measure B, a property tax to promote clean and safe creeks.
A 100-year flood would damage about 1,600 homes and business and cost about $8 million. In an average year, flooding costs about $900,000.
