Seal Beach Treading Rainwater

Welcome to soggy Seal Beach -- average elevation, 15 feet.

In this mile-wide beachfront community of 25,000, residents typically have a surfboard in their garage and sand in their carpet.

It’s also a place where the kind of rain that has fallen this week means buckling hardwood floors and calls to insurance companies. That has been the case since Sunday, when 3 1/2 inches of rain fell -- about half what the city usually receives annually -- with more in store today as another storm passes through.

The city is prone to flooding because of its low elevation, poor natural drainage and the limited capacity of two pumping stations to clear streets of storm water, city officials say.

Each winter, homeowners along oceanfront Seal Way brace for flooding from ocean storms, and hope for protection from a 10-foot-high sand berm. This week, however, it was homes away from the beach that fell victim to Mother Nature.

“I just think that something could have been done to avoid this,” said Dave Colton, 35, whose apartment is so mildewed that he has been living in a hotel with his wife and two toddlers.

Something could be done, officials say -- for a price.

The city could spend $10 million to widen underground pipes that channel water from the streets to the San Gabriel River, or it could spend $20 million to install faster storm drain pumps to accomplish the same, said Mark Vukojevic, the city’s public works director.

City Manager John Bahorski questions whether residents would approve bond measures to improve the pumps and storm drains, because flooding is not that frequent.

“If we want a higher standard, we will have to look at the price tag,” Bahorski said.

The city has already made $350,000 in improvements to its 1st Street storm water pump station and plans $2 million more, including the addition of two electric pumps next to the existing two.

Because the downtown district is so close to sea level and the ability for water to run off suffers for lack of a strong gravity feed, the added pumps are needed to help suck water from storm drains into the San Gabriel River.

Few cities across the nation need storm drain pumps to carry off flood waters. In Orange County, they are used in the low-lying parts of Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley, said Herb Nakasone, Orange County’s public works director.

Compared with surrounding communities at a higher elevation, Seal Beach is something of a sump and especially prone to flooding, officials note. About 25% of the city lies in a federally designated flood plain, Vukojevic said.

The city’s pumps are more than 40 years old.

Huntington Beach, by comparison, has been spared the kind of flooding that struck Seal Beach because even though parts of it are lower, its storm water pump system is newer and more efficient.

Sunday’s rainfall triggered the city and county pumps in Seal Beach to turn on automatically, and “we feel confident that they were working,” Nakasone said.

But some residents and business owners were not convinced.

Among the hardest-hit areas were homes and businesses near Seal Beach Boulevard, where the elevation is the lowest in the city -- 9 feet -- Vukojevic said.

Residents said the water was up to 3 feet deep after Sunday’s deluge, and they complained that officials seemed oblivious to the growing problem. Some charged that at least one pump didn’t seem to be operating, because the water in the street didn’t appear to be dropping.

Bahorski said the pumps were operating when he and city employees checked on them. The water finally began to drop when the rain let up, he said.

On Tuesday, low-slung apartments still reeked of mildew and carpets were waterlogged while residents owners braced for more rain.

Landlord Steve Gerschultz said two of his four units needed new baseboards, drywall and carpeting, and that he would be replacing them all.

“It creates a dent in the budget,” Gerschultz said. “It’s somewhat frustrating because it seems the pumps don’t work. It would be nice for someone to accept responsibility.”

Some veteran residents and business owners near Seal Beach Boulevard and Electric Avenue keep garage refrigerators on elevated platforms.

When Seretta Fielding heard the rain, she rushed to the Learning Tree, the Seal Beach Boulevard preschool she owns, to get toys off the floor. She lost only the carpeting when water rushed in the door.

Old-timers say this week’s flooding ranks among the four or five worst such periods in 30 years.

“When you have a deluge of water,” Vukojevic said, “the improvements may not be able to handle them no matter how great they are. Infrastructure improvements, if the community wanted to fund them, could help.”