SAN DIEGO — A flood channel that overflowed causing massive property damage in Mountain View and Southcrest last month was scheduled to be cleaned out before the storm. That's according to a city of San Diego storm water report, and the city’s storm water director, Todd Snyder.
At a news conference Tuesday, Snyder said the city did not have the manpower to complete the task.
The flood channel did get cleaned out in a matter of days, however, after the storm hit on January 22.
In 2019, the city released a Municipal Waterways Maintenance Plan that stated "Routine maintenance is not recommended at this time,” referring to the South Collas Creek flood channel.
The same 2019 report said the Collas Creek flood channel only had capacity to handle a 5-year storm, far below the “gold standard” for flood channels, according to Snyder, the city storm water director.
“So, the gold standard, generally, if you're going to be building a channel today is a 100-year flood. That's generally what's seen as the appropriate level of channel design,” Snyder said during a city news conference Tuesday.
“Most of our inventory, it's true, is set up to handle somewhere between a five and a 10-year storm,” he added.
There are about 200 flood channels in the city of San Diego. Snyder said the city only has the money and manpower to clean out four channels per year.
A city Waterways Maintenance Plan from October 2023 said portions of Chollas Creek were scheduled to be cleaned out in the “Fall/Winter of 2023.”
Asked about the delay in the channel’s maintenance during Tuesday’s news conference, Snyder responded, “The storm water department has one crew of 15 staff that do channel maintenance. That crew has to be fully deployed. Maintaining a channel is a very involved process.”
“We know that after the January 22 flood the city went and removed over 150 tons of debris from Chollas Creek, days later when we had another heavy rainfall, Southcrest didn't flood,” said flood attorney Evan Walker.
“This city, first and foremost, has a duty to its citizens, the people who pay taxes here, the people that have been telling the city you need to clean these canals, these drains because our homes flood,” said Walker.
Walker said he was looking into the ability of flooded-out homeowners to file a mass tort against the city for lack of flood channel maintenance.
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