Countywide : Storm Repair Costs Put at $1.8 Million

Three months after a series of relentless storms battered the area, officials reported this week that emergency repairs on roads and storm channels will cost Orange County government more than $1.8 million.

“We think we’re in pretty good shape. We still have a lot of work to do, but if we had a heavy rain today, we think we’d do OK,” said Tom Connelie, a manager of public works for the county who has helped assess the damage from the January storms.

Government officials, now seeking federal and state disaster aid in the wake of the storms, estimate the damage countywide at more than $60 million. The heavy rains caused massive landslides, flooding and other damage in the county, with the city of Anaheim hit hardest.

Damage to county government facilities and property amounted to about $4.5 million. Public works officials plan to repair much of the damage in months to come, but they said in a report prepared for the Board of Supervisors that nine major repair projects involving damage to flood control channels and roadways could not be delayed that long.

As a result, officials bypassed government procedures that normally require such major projects to be put out to competitive bidding among contractors. These emergency repairs, spanning roads and flood channels countywide, have already begun.

With time at a premium, public works officials generally signed on with contractors that had worked for the county before, Connelie said. “We did not want any risks,” he said.

Connelie said county supervisors “gave us a blank check” to fix the damage as quickly as possible. In the end, the emergency repairs came to a total of $1.85 million. That money will come from an emergency flood fund built into the county’s annual budget, officials said.

The biggest question mark among county facilities is a flood-control channel in San Clemente that ruptured during the storms, destroying a hotel and other property. While interim repairs have already been made, Connelie said the channel may have to be reconstructed entirely at a cost that could reach $4 million. No funds have been budgeted for that project.