The Belmont City Council is moving forward on stormwater mitigation efforts around the 1,900-acre Belmont Creek watershed, specifically with the installation of an underground stormwater detention facility at Twin Pines Park.
The construction would be part of a broader effort to mitigate increasingly intense stormwater flooding over the last several years, both within the city of Belmont and the nearby Harbor Industrial Area. The latter is technically unincorporated, though the city hopes to annex it in the near future, but it has seen some of the worst effects of the area’s most severe storms as of late. The nearby Belmont Creek serves as a primary storm collector that feeds into the San Francisco Bay, and while its design capacity was meant for a severe weather event anticipated every 10 years, “more intense events currently exceed the capacity of the system downstream,” according to a staff report.
The next step in the process, approved by the City Council Tuesday, Sept. 9, is approving the environmental impact report, a requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act for certain projects. According to the EIR, constructing the underground stormwater facility near Twin Pines Park would lead to several significant environmental impacts on both air and water quality. While there are proposed efforts to mitigate such disruption, unavoidable effects on tribal and cultural resources were also listed in the report.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe continues to work with the city on how to deal with potential findings once construction begins, according to the presentation.
“The tribe is aware of the project, and they were on site when we did our original borings to see what was on the site,” said Darcy Kremin, lead environmental scientist at Environmental Associates. “The finds are confidential. There are cultural resources on the site, but the reason that they don't want it to be broadly cast to the public is they don't want people to loot the site.”
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There is also a plan to add signs to the area detailing the tribe’s history and cultural significance in the area.
The 9-acre below-ground facility would be situated under the parking lot of Twin Pines Park and would mark an important step before the city makes room for its long-term redevelopment goal at the HIA, including plans to incorporate more housing, commercial and retail space to the area. The stormwater effort would include agreements between San Carlos and the county. Construction is expected to take two years to complete and would require the closure of certain parts of the park.
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