Threatened Creek Gets a Flood of Support

Lita Bowles sometimes awakes late at night to a sound that few city dwellers hear: the gurgle of water running over rocks.

Now, Bowles has learned, San Marcos Creek, which serenades her when the traffic noise from nearby California 78 ceases, will run quiet and deep in a concrete flood channel.

“The thought of that creek becoming a concrete ditch sickens me,” Bowles said.

San Marcos city engineers released an environmental report Tuesday on the $100-million project that will put most of the 5.6-mile creek into a concrete sleeve, drying out the soggy meadows where ducks and egrets are found, but also removing the ever-present danger of flood from the rambling tributary.

The project is designed as flood protection for a proposed civic center and the development of a downtown for this sprawling city, which has never had an urban business core. Local approval already has been granted for a concrete channel at the creek’s eastern reaches, where the civic center is planned for the intersection of San Marcos Boulevard and Twin Oaks Valley Road.

The middle reaches of the meandering stream are scheduled to be buried in a box culvert to help pave the way for downtown development.

Jon Otten, who moved from the Los Angeles area 10 years ago in order to avoid the concrete jungle, find himself right back in its midst.

“I take the kids down there after a rain to see ‘the flood,’ ” Otten said. “It isn’t really a flood, but they are little and they are thrilled.

“I’ve seen egrets down there and a variety of ducks. Even white egrets, the big ones that are almost 5 feet tall,” Otten said.

The creek flows westward, south of the freeway and San Marcos Boulevard.

It is there that San Marcos Creek would be buried in a box culvert, retrieving dozens of acres of degraded flood plain for development, said Ken Gerdes, director of the city’s capital improvements program.

San Marcos Mayor Lee Thibadeau, said that he has “heard all the plans, but I refuse to take them seriously until I see something in writing. Of course, it would be nice to have a regional center there and there are plans for at least two large commercial centers in the area. But it’s not happening overnight.”

But to Bowles, the economic climate is a threat. “This economic downturn and this need for jobs gives developers just the reasons they need to relax environmental standards in order to push their projects,” she said. “Natural stream beds are stress-reducing. There is no reason to destroy the beauty of our city. We should preserve it.”

Bowles has formed a Save San Marcos Creek committee and Otten has taken over the chairmanship of the group with the intent of preserving “the best.”

“I think that we can do that through the sheer mass of outrage of the citizens of this city,” Bowles said.

Otten envisions a compromise in which the creek, contained within a deepened but naturally landscaped channel, can enhance commercial development along its path.

He maintains that citizens who want to preserve the environment and city leaders who want the city to grow “can come to some agreement on a realistic way to do both.”

Gerdes agrees that there could be “quite a bit of give and take” in the flood control channel project. Some of the creek bed will remain in its natural state, through the future City Hall site and through the golf course area leading into Lake San Marcos.

Mitigation areas also are planned along the creek branch which follows Twin Oaks Valley Road to replace on a two-for-one ratio all the riparian habitat lost to the flood control channel, he said.

There also are some major hurdles facing the project, including approvals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration, the state Department of Fish and Game, and other wildlife, water and environmental protection agencies.

“We felt that it was important to take the entire length of San Marcos Creek and develop a flood control plan, so that when developers come in to ask what’s going to happen to their land in any one part of it, we will be able to tell them,” Thibadeau said.

The biggest stumbling block, of course, is funding.

“There is no plan as yet on how this will be paid for,” Thibadeau said. “And like a lot of other plans we have for the city, there may have to be some trade-offs.

“The creek is a safety hazard and parts of it just aren’t worth saving, while it’s not too late to save some other areas. That’s what we must decide in future months and years. Nothing is set in concrete yet.”