Seems it never rains in Southern California

VIC LEIPZIG AND LOU MURRAY

The first sign of trouble was the pair of mallards swimming in our

front yard. The ducks thought our flooded front yard was a fine place

to spend a rainy morning.

When it rains as much as it did this past weekend, excess water

flows from our little pond in front, across the driveway, and down a

small drain that keeps storm water out of our garage.

Well, usually the drain keeps water out of the garage. Not on

Monday.

According to the weather station at Golden West College

(https://weather.gwc.cccd.edu/), rain fell at a rate of 4 1/2 inches

of rain per hour for a short time here in Huntington Beach. That was

too much for our little storm drain to handle. Water backed up into

the garage.

Dealing with that mess seemed too much like work, so we headed out

to look at storm damage elsewhere.

Our first stop was the Shipley Nature Center. Our little puddle of

water in the garage was nothing compared to what was going on there.

The city-owned Slater Flood Control channel was filled to overflowing

with storm runoff from Central Park and surrounding neighborhoods.

Our parks act as storm water retention basins. Talbert Lake overflows

its normal boundaries during major storms, cascading into the old

Freeman Creek channel near the Jack Green Nature Area. Floodwaters go

under Goldenwest Street, and enter the Slater channel.

Vic had told me the south side of the Slater channel was

deliberately built low so that excess floodwater would flow into

Shipley Nature Center. But until Monday morning, we had never seen it

happen. Water gushed over the channel banks like someone had blown a

dam.

We estimated that tiny Blackbird Pond had expanded from less than

one acre to more than eight acres. Better to the Shipley side than to

the homes on the north side, but the floodwaters put most of the

trails at the nature center under water.

We hadn’t had our fill of storm damage so we drove on, looking for

more flooding. The Shea property, known as the bean field at Graham

between Slater and Warner, was filled with water.

I asked Vic why it wasn’t designated as a wetland since it

obviously was one. He replied that it had been converted to

agricultural land prior to passage of the Clean Water Act. That’s how

a wetland becomes a non-wetland. Legal semantics.

Since it was “prior converted cropland,” it missed out on being

classified as a wetland. But biologically and hydrologically, that

bean field was and still is a wetland. It lies below the water level

of the Wintersburg flood control channel. Just like the wetlands of

Central Park, this area could function as both a storm water

retention basin and a great wildlife habitat. Maybe someday it will

happen. We continued with our survey of parks.

The little lake at Carr Park looked fine. The next real sign of

trouble was the Channel 7 News van parked on McFadden Avenue by Greer

Park. Water flowed over the sidewalk surrounding the lake and poured

into the streets of the surrounding subdivision, much to the delight

of the neighborhood children and to the dismay of the homeowners

whose properties were flooded. According to a later news report, a

storm drain designed to handle overflow from the lake had clogged.

We saw a really unhappy looking city worker dangling head first

down the storm drain, reaching in to clear debris. It seemed a bad

time to interview him, so we continued on our way.

Bartlett Park was our last stop. That wild and neglected swale

below the historic Newland House at Beach and Adams was full of storm

water too. The county pump station was behaving as planned, pumping

the water from the retention wetlands into the flood control channel

at Adams Street. The wetlands of Bartlett Park could be turned into

really nice habitat if some group would take an interest in it.

While we were at the Newland Shopping Center, we stopped by Jan

Smith’s Wild Birds Unlimited store. She had some bags of birdseed

that she wanted to donate to Shipley Nature Center, which we

gratefully accepted. Vic loaded the bags into the car, and we headed

back to the nature center.

The water level had gone down in the Slater channel, and water was

flowing out of Shipley Nature Center back into the channel. But once

the water level inside the nature center reached the level of the

levee, it ceased to drain. The rest of the water was trapped in the

nature center. This improves the wetland habitat and recharges the

groundwater tables. Those are good things.

But when Vic and I put on our knee-high rubber boots to monitor

the flooding, we were dismayed to discover that the trails were under

more than a foot of water. We saw that a debris barrier was blocking

water flow from Central Park into the nature center. Water was taking

the path of least resistance and was washing out one of the trails.

We grabbed a McLeod and a pitchfork and began clearing a channel

through the debris so the water could flow into the low part of the

nature center. I guess we would have been better off staying at home

and dealing with the tiny puddle in our garage.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.