HomeMy WebLinkAbout1/17/2023 Item PC, Schmidt
From:Richard Schmidt <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Agenda Correspondence Public Comment
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Re: The “Flood”
Dear Council,
You will be hearing much about our recent “flood:” facts, non-facts, opinions, propaganda, and probably diatribe. Since all
of you, and key staff, are “newcomers” since our last flood, what you hear may be confusing, confounding, or worse.
I’d like to give you some background which I’m uniquely able to provide about the last flood and flood prevention policies
and actions stemming from it. You may not know that at the time of the 1973 flood I was a full-time SLO city hall reporter
for the Telegram-Tribune; that we’d purchased our home, on a creek, just in time to experience the flood; and that
following the flood the council set up a Waterways Planning Board (WWPB) to do pioneering city waterways planning and
help devise flood management policies and that I was asked to serve on it, which I did for 7 years. So that’s where my
perspective about local flooding comes from.
First of all, let’s be clear on what’s just happened. We’ve had a huge quantity of rain, and there has been damage from it.
But have we in the city of SLO experienced a “flood?” I say no, because a systemic flood occurs when a watercourse is so
overfull it spills over its banks and inundates normally dry land. What we in the city just experienced was localized urban
flooding with three main causes:
1. Human-made obstructions that diverted water from natural waterways, or obstructed flow causing backup of high
flows (example: Marsh Street/101 bridge, which is a perennial problem).
2. Constraint of free flow by vegetation allowed to grow up where it shouldn’t have been allowed to grow (example:
Laguna Lake outlet at Madonna and downstream overgrowth in Prefumo Creek channel).
3. Rain falling on urban surfaces in such quantity and with sufficient speed that it can’t percolate downward or enter storm
water disposal system fast enough to avoid accumulating on urban surfaces.
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These are classic causes of SLO flooding. They were also among principal causes of the great 1973 flood, though built
obstructions were by far the most serious cause back then. The WWPB noted throughout the city that most spots of
serious flooding were due to human-made obstructions.
To me what’s sad is while the WWPB studied flooding’s causes and developed antidotes for these problems, antidotes
that were used successfully for several decades to lessen flood potential, today these are largely ignored and no longer
implemented. And thus, problems once more or less mitigated are with us again.
Our city was very, very lucky this time around. Rainfall was great, but it was well-behaved: steady, without prolonged
downpours. Had there been downpours, we’d have had a major flood, like we had in 1973.
So what I want you to understand is to prevent avoidable catastrophe the city must return to doing its due diligence
regarding flood preparation and land planning. This doesn’t mean big spending; it doesn’t involve big engineering
projects or other upsets of our creeks’ natural ecology (like the engineering contingent’s favorite zombie project, the mid-
Higuera bypass, which for some reason refuses to die even though the “Bush 41” administration found it so
environmentally destructive and of slim benefit the then Army Corps supposedly scotched it); it involves increased
caring and an end to administrative rationalizations for doing otherwise. Our wealthy city has the wherewithal to
do this low-cost work, and to do it well.
Much will probably be said in the future on this subject, but for now I. want to highlight two important WWPB-originated
preventive policies that stood the city in good stead for decades, but are now not being followed:
1. Annual inspection and cleanup of creeks and the lake to ascertain where new vegetation blocks flow, and to spot,
and subsequently remove, loose junk that will wash downstream and plug culverts and cause other flood mischief. It was
policy for several decades to assign a city staff member to walk all the creeks each year in late summer to spot issues.
Property owners with junk problems could be given a 30-day fixit notice, and city crews could remove growing things that
obstruct flow near culverts and the like. If the latter is done regularly, at least once a year, the vegetation never gets to the
point where its removal requires an Army Corps permit, and it never gets to the point it would cause flooding. This simple
and effective program has been abandoned, and I now see early winter creeks filled with junk (palm fronds, branches)
waiting to be washed away. That’s why your staff have to risk their lives in the middle of a storm to deal with what the city
used to -- and should -- deal with in dry weather. (The recent between-storm plugging-up issues at the Broad/Old Garden
Creek culvert entry are a great example of the sorts of storm season problems annual inspection and cleanup can
prevent.)
2. Enforcing the legislatively-established minimum setback from top of bank. (I don’t think anyone at the city today
can imagine the destructive fury a flood can unleash on seemingly stable creek banks.) This was one of the chief WWPB
recommendations implemented in 1973 after we walked the entire creek system, noting where banks had failed, where
buildings had been dangerously undermined, where life safety was compromised because things were built too close to
banks that a flood could instantly liquefy and cause to disappear. This was no joke, and we found it was shockingly
prevalent, and thus was deemed a major life safety issue (imagine the outcome if a building, even a part of a building, fell
into a creek in the middle of flood flow!). Today planning staff have been instructed to ignore these matters, to grant
“exceptions” even when we’re talking about raw acreage where no exceptions are justified. (Exceptions are supposed to
be rare, reserved for situations wherein there is no other way to reasonably develop a property, not as a goodie to be
handed out for the asking.)
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These are both matters the council should deal with immediately, the first by directing staff to restart the annual inspection
and cleanup of waterways, the other by directing planning staff to follow the setback law and then for the council to stop
approving routine setback exceptions recommended by staff.
Thank you. And good luck.
Richard Schmidt
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