Residents seek flood control action in San Mateo

Danielle Cwirko-Godycki has helped form the Shoreview Parkside Association, which has grown to 150 members in four months, and is part of Future Ready San Mateo, a community organization of people throughout the city working to address problems. The Shoreview Parkside Association has brought together community members looking to address issues like infrastructure and streetlights, but the highest priority remains flooding concerns. It formed following the January storms when many of its members had homes and property damaged and areas near San Mateo Creek and Marina Lagoon got extensive flooding. The longtime San Mateo resident lives on Shoreview Avenue and never imagined getting involved in city issues until the floods when she suffered $20,000 in damages to her property and saw many residents dealing with the effects and cleanup.

“I think the flood was a wake-up call that we as residents need to be more active in the community and engage with our leaders,” Cwirko-Godycki said.

She and many members want to see the council fund dredging Marina Lagoon and work on creek cleanup and improvements to tunnel culverts. The lagoon is a remnant of a tidal slough that has been dredged in the past to help protect the city from flooding and helps with flood control for the entire city. According to city staff, the lagoon was built in 1952 and last dredged in 1982 at the south end of the lagoon. The lagoon water level is regulated seasonally for flood control and recreation, with pump stations on the north end.

Cwirko-Godycki believes immediate action is needed because more storms are coming in the years ahead that threaten the city’s emergency preparedness. Cwirko-Godycki noted they want to find concrete solutions and actions with the city and the council, noting many feel the city is not moving fast enough to find and prioritize solutions.

“If we continue to do nothing, what happened this winter will happen again,” Cwirko-Godycki said.

Her calls are echoed by many in the community, with a recent council meeting featuring public comment from those in the district and in the city who want more tangible action. Mareva Godfrey is on the Laguna Vista Homeowners Association Marina Lagoon Committee, working with Cwirko-Godycki and others on common goals around dredging the lagoon and decreasing flood risk. Godfrey said many people are worried about how much sediment has built up in the lagoon and how it might impact lagoon containment capacity during a large storm. She noted she and others are looking into flood insurance that can cost $700 to $800 a year, a significant cost for a retiree on a fixed income. However, they believe it could be necessary, given last year.

“We didn’t flood here, but if the situation worsens and we have more storms one after the another, there is a good possibility that we will flood or have partial flooding,” Godfrey said.

Public Works Director Azalea Mitch said dredging the entire lagoon would take two summers and cost around $80 million, with disposal costs and worst-case scenarios factored into the overall price based on a 2017 assessment. Mitch said the city understood that residents were upset, and addressing concerns remains a key priority.

“We have worked with the Marina Lagoon residents over the last six months and understand their concerns are real,” Mitch said. “Dredging the lagoon is complicated, and funding is needed. We share those same concerns.”

Dredging would require a long permit process from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and others to determine the best method of dredging and approval. The city has worked on assessing strategies for funding so it can be provided in perpetuity instead of a one-time fee. Mitch said that while dredging was important, it was just one piece in the overall need to improve the city storm system as a whole, noting dredging wouldn’t solve the citywide flooding issues. She stressed more upstream infrastructure improvements are needed to prevent flooding, like increasing pipe sizes and making culverts bigger, with around $68 million in funding required.

The city will present a report in August to the council that reconstructs the New Year’s Eve storm and confirm why the flooding happened and highlight the constraints within the system. Mitch said preliminary reports show the city had multiple pump failures that resulted in water not being pumped out of the lagoon during the storm. If those pumps had not failed, they would have prevented flooding around the lagoon, she said.

Councilmember Rich Hedges, who lives in District 4 on the Bayfront, has been pushing for lagoon dredging for 20 years for flood control and to keep people out of Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zones, pointing to his previous work on Measure S to raise a quarter-cent sales tax to generate revenue for public services and to repair city infrastructure. Hedges said he is open to the City Council discussing using some of the city’s reserves for dredging. He noted the recent floods have increased community awareness and organization and led to more people from District 4 advocating for flood control, something seen in the city’s June 5 meeting.

“One of the reasons I got on the council was to be a voice for District 4, to get involved and raise people’s level of awareness,” Hedges said.

Mike Dillon has lived near the lagoon for 55 years and supported dredging the basin and for the council to view it as an emergency. He argued everyone needs the flood lagoon basin to work.

“We don’t need ballot measures,” he said. “We need action.”

The city plans to have community meetings to provide an overview to the public of the draft analysis of the New Year’s Eve storm impacts. The first meeting is June 21 at City Hall in conference room C from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The second meeting is July 18 at the San Mateo Library on Third Avenue from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.