This story was first printed Thursday, Dec. 13, in the Daily Post. To get important local news stories first, pick up the print edition of the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations.
BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A decades-long, drama-filled effort to stop flooding from the San Francisquito Creek has taken another turn.
Valley Water, the agency tasked with flood control in Santa Clara County, is talking about pulling out of a multi-agency collaborative unless the other agencies take more financial responsibility.
“The key issue for the project to move forward is the funding,” Valley Water board member Nai Hsueh said at a committee meeting on Dec. 5.
Valley Water is one of five agencies in the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, along with the cities of Menlo Park, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto and the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District.
Hsueh’s position has taken the other members by surprise. Menlo Park Councilman Drew Combs, who represents Menlo Park on the creek authority, said he wishes that Hsueh announced that she was exploring a major change at the creek authority’s last board meeting on Nov. 21.
Combs said he’s hoping to have a substantive discussion at the creek authority’s next meeting on Thursday.
“First, I want to understand and give the opportunity for (Hsueh), if she so chooses, to share more fully with the JPA board,” Combs said yesterday.
Eisenberg reacts
Valley Water board member Rebecca Eisenberg, of Palo Alto, said yesterday that she just learned that Valley Water was considering withdrawal from the creek authority.
Eisenberg’s board voted to remove her from all committees in March after an investigator found she made inappropriate comments about her colleagues’ age, gender and language.
Eisenberg was replaced on the creek authority by Hsueh, who represents Cupertino, Saratoga and parts of Sunnyvale and San Jose.
Eisenberg said her colleagues used the investigation as a way to sideline her. Valley Water and its CEO Rick Callender have a long history of corruption and taking money away from projects in northern Santa Clara County, Eisenberg said.
“They want to exclude me from decision-making because I’m standing up to them, because I believe what they’re doing is wrong and harming the public,” Eisenberg said. “It’s infuriating in Palo Alto because we pay the taxes and don’t get any benefit.”
How it works
Each member agency appoints a board member and pays $350,000 for the creek authority’s team of three to four employees, who are looking at how to widen the creek and remove the Pope-Chaucer Bridge that limits how much water the creek can hold during a storm.
Hsueh, who replaced Eisenberg on the creek authority’s board in March, raised concerns to Valley Water’s Board Policy and Monitoring Committee on Dec. 5.
Hsueh said the creek authority is pursuing a project that doesn’t meet Valley Water’s standard to protect from a 70-year-flood, or a flood that has a one in 70 chance of happening each year.
The creek authority hasn’t completed an audit in five years, and its employees are spending time on plans to protect against seal level rise in San Mateo County, Hsueh said.
Changes since NYE 2022
Hsueh was supported by Deputy Operating Officer Bhavani Yerrapotu, who said Valley Water’s role has changed since a storm on New Year’s Eve 2022, when flooding happened in unexpected areas.
The creek authority hired WRA Environmental Consultants to verify Valley Water’s work and to update the flood control plans.
“The consultant is being driven and managed by the (creek authority) staff. So in that sense, I think it’s changed significantly,” Yerrapotu told the Valley Water committee.
Margaret Bruce, executive director of the creek authority, pushed back on Hsueh’s claims.
Valley Water pays more because more properties are vulnerable to flooding on Santa Clara County’s side of the creek, Bruce said.
The creek authority is billing its work on sea level rise in San Mateo County to agencies that gave grants, and not Valley Water, Bruce said.
“It is a clear delineation,” Bruce said.
Problem acknowledged
Bruce agreed the creek authority’s lack of auditing is a problem.
“We have been beset by technical and IT difficulties that would blow your mind. The audits are in process,” she said.
Senior Project Manager Tess Byler implored Valley Water to stay involved.
“We just cannot let anything torpedo our efforts to really get the Reach 2 project built,” Byler said. Reach 2 refers to the area that floods between Middlefield Road and Highway 101.
The creek authority is looking at excavating parts of the channel and adding three-foot walls at the top of the bank, but the exact design of the project hasn’t been decided.
Rough cost estimates for widening the channel are $106 million, and construction could happen as soon as 2026, consulting engineer Andrew Smith told the creek authority board on Nov. 21.
Need to agree
Hsueh said the agencies in the creek authority need to agree on “high-level principles” for funding any construction.
“When people have flooding problems, they come to us,” Hsueh said. “On the San Mateo County side, I don’t even know which agency has that responsibility, and also which agency actually collects revenue associated with flood protection … So that’s another challenge.”
The committee made a recommendation to the full Valley Water board to have Yerrapotu meet with executives from the cities and discuss their financial responsibility.
“It doesn’t sound like we can really do much until we find out, if there is a project, what the project is,” board member Tony Estremera said at the meeting.
Valley Water needs to give notice by May 1 to leave the creek authority on June 30, Yerrapotu said.
That’s around the same time the creek authority is expecting to have estimated costs and a design for widening the creek, Bruce said.
“By the end of summer, we will have a package tied up in a bow with full costs and preliminary plans,” Bruce said.
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