Officials Unveil First Section of Flood Channel

It was almost one year ago that about 2,000 residents of this city grabbed whatever personal possessions they could and headed for higher ground.

After several days of intense rain, the normally gentle Santa Paula Creek had turned violent and threatened to break through the old levees designed to protect the city’s southwest corner.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Public Works Director Norm Wilkenson, who stood atop the Telegraph Road bridge that day and watched the muddy creek water rise. “We were pretty lucky we didn’t get another quarter-inch of rain.”

Now, after more than 25 years of planning, legal wrangling and waiting on the part of residents, the first phase of a new flood channel has been completed and contractors are ready to break ground on the second. The first phase, a 1,800-foot-long sluice of concrete and rock running south from the Telegraph Road bridge, was unveiled Wednesday by city, county, state and federal officials, including Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley).

The second phase will complete the flood channel, which will run nearly the length of town, from the foothills near Fair Weather Crossing to the Santa Clara River.

“Last year’s storms were a real example of how destructive water and floods can be,” said Gallegly, who has helped secure $14.8 million in federal funding for the project. “For the first time, there is a ray of light at the end of this tunnel.”

The channel, the third-largest federally funded public-works project in the state, will cost a total of $16.4 million and was designed with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, the city and county. It is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The flood channel, or rather the plans for it, have a long and tangled history that includes a lengthy court-ordered delay.

The project was first authorized by Congress in 1948, and the Army Corps of Engineers was ready to begin construction in the early 1970s.

However, those plans called for a dam near Steckel Park and the construction of a box-like channel with a cement bottom.

But environmentalists attacked the plan, saying the city’s ground water was replenished by percolation from Santa Paula Creek, and in 1975, an injunction was issued that put the project on hold indefinitely.

Analysis also found that a channel with vertical walls might not be as strong as one with walls angled inward toward the bottom.

The project was redesigned to be more environmentally sensitive and will leave the bottom sandy to allow future percolation.

“It’s a pretty safe bet that if that project had gone through, we’d be here today trying to figure out a way to tear it down,” Wilkenson said. “I think the delay gave us a much better project and one that’s going to last a lot longer.”

For about 600 residents living near the creek, the new flood channel may end up saving them a bundle.

With increased flood-control measures, Mayor Jim Garfield expects that the $600 yearly premiums those residents pay for flood insurance will fall dramatically.

“It’s going to save a lot of money for people who really need it,” he said.

Although the full amount needed to complete the project has yet to be secured, Gallegly has promised that he will work to see that Congress approves the remaining $1.6 million.