Measure for Measure

The Clean, Safe Creeks and Natural Flood Protection Program Independent Monitoring Committee (whew!) met tonight. This body was established as part of Measure B, passed by 2/3 of the voters back in 2000, and due to run until 2015. The presentations are not available online, as far as I can tell.

The Clean, Safe Creeks program promised outcomes in four areas:

Of the four, the flood protection is, by far, the biggest, most expensive component. The first part of the meeting was a status report by District staff, in the persons of Jim Fiedler and Katherine Oven, of projects in all of the outcomes. The District has removed 95 kilograms of mercury from county waterways!

This led to quite a spirited and lengthy discussion of trails, the focus of outcome 4. Some excellent ideas that came out of that discussion were the revival of a countywide trail committee to coordinate and disseminate trail access information, and a collaboration with “a large, high-tech company with experience in maps” to present even just the creekside trails in a form usable by the public. Of course, this wasn’t actually on the agenda, but it did lead to Chair Kamei’s agreeing to present it as a Board Member report on Tuesday, and the Chair of the IMC, David Ginsborg, also said he’d take up the countywide committee idea with contacts at the county.

The discussion then turned to the projected deficit in Measure B funding. There are nine capital projects in outcome 1 of the Clean, Safe Creeks program, and two of them, Sunnyvale East and West channels are now projected to cost more (much more in the case of the East channel, to the tune of $106 million) than the monies alloted in the 2000 ballot measure.

This is due to the inexorable rise of construction costs, which the District now estimates at 7% per year as opposed to the 3% assumed when the measure was written in 1999.

The District’s preferred way of dealing with these projected deficits, which the IMC approved tonight, is to rescope projects as needed, concentrating dollars on projects that will protect property of the most value. The Sunnyvale East channel is crossed by 19 bridges and culverts, with the projected $143 million cost assuming that all would have to be raised. This might not turn out to be the case.

As an aside, these two channels in Sunnyvale are not natural stream systems, but, rather, wholly artificial storm drains carrying only urban runoff. There was some surprise that the District was therefor still responsible for them.

While Chair Ginsborg was uncomfortable with the idea that some parcels promised protection in 2000 might be left out, while other outcomes such as trails and habitat have exceeded promises, others on the IMC pointed out how very much more expensive flood protection is, and how little flood protection could be bought with trails money.

It was a good meeting; the IMC members are clearly engaged and committed, and have done a lot of hard work.