A Sepulveda Challenge

Here’s the perfect senior project for future engineers or architects at Cal State Northridge: Find a simple, affordable way to keep a $6,000 traffic controller safe and dry during heavy rains. The problem is real. Since Feb. 3, a traffic control box in the Sepulveda Basin has been replaced three times because of flooding. Over the past 20 years, the box near the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue has been replaced at least eight times as the basin fills with water.

Of course, that’s what the Sepulveda Basin is designed to do. Moving the box won’t work because it needs to be next to the signals it controls. Over the years, city engineers have devised all sorts of unsuccessful ideas for keeping the unit dry. A watertight cabinet would cause the electronic equipment to overheat. Stilts would make the wiring too tough to service. A flotation device has problems of its own. Still under consideration is a 17-foot high chimney that allows air to circulate, but keeps water out.

Surely here, in a region that helped put men on the moon and a scooter on Mars, lives someone with a solution to a problem that seems only slightly less vexing than how to break the grip of Earth’s orbit. It’s your money washing out with the rain, so dust off those T-squares.