Project Is Designed to Tame a River’s Devastating Floods : Public Works: In the past, floods from the San Luis Rey River have caused massive damage in Oceanside. The long-awaited construction will ease the threat of future floods.

There’s scant sign of rain, let alone the hint of flooding, but long-awaited work has begun on the main portion of a $66-million flood-control project in the notorious San Luis Rey River Valley.

Workers are building rock-walled levees, drainage ponds and habitat for the endangered least Bell’s vireo between Priory Road and the Foussat Bridge in Oceanside along a riverbed that’s prone to periodic flooding.

For more than a decade, city officials have pressed for the project that’s considered critical to protecting 4,000 homes and businesses along the 7.2-mile valley from the ocean to the Murray Road Bridge.

“I personally have witnessed an 18-foot-high wall of water come down that river,” Councilwoman Melba Bishop said. “Water is a powerful element. People don’t realize what it can do.”

Historically, the river has posed a threat to life and property, but nothing like in January, 1916, when a storm brought flood waters that killed three people, washed out bridges and flooded the whole valley floor.

Other storms in 1969, 1978 and 1980 in the now heavily developed valley damaged property and claimed one life.

In modern times, flood waters have reached a peak flow of about 12,000 cubic feet per second--enough to do millions of dollars in damage, yet nowhere near the 95,600 cubic feet per second that rampaged along the river in 1916.

“It doesn’t take much rain to have flooding problems,” Bishop said. “All of Oceanside’s streets drain into that river.”

With frightening memories of floods past, city officials have struggled to get limited state and federal money for the ambitious flood-control project designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Congress agreed to study the flooding problem back in 1951, but it has taken decades for funding to remedy the situation. Finally, bond revenue approved last year guaranteed a funding source for the project.

Ultimately, the estimated $66-million project will include $47 million from the federal government, $13 million from the state and $5.8 million from Oceanside.

The first phase, already completed, reinforced the river banks from the ocean to the Priory Road.

But the project’s most important phase, costing $18.8 million, was just dedicated this month. During this second phase workers will fill holes in the river bottom caused by upstream sand mining operations, build levees on the south side of the river west of Douglas Drive Bridge, and provide at least 35 acres of habitat for the least Bell’s vireo. This phase is scheduled to be finished in mid-1993.

A key part of the current work is creating additional bird habitat where none now exists.

Kerry Kenison, an owner of Kerr Landscape Inc., Native Habitat Restoration, said “we’re taking pockets of plants and pulling trees and moving them onto one large area” for the birds.

Kenison’s workers are taking Willow and Cottonwood trees, and Mulefat shrub from places along the riverbank where rock levees will be built.

The project’s final portion will begin next year and involve bolstering the riverbanks from Douglas Drive east to the Murray Bridge.