SAN DIEGO — City crews cleared brush and debris from the stormwater channel behind Beta Street next to Southcrest Trails Park Thursday as they look to keep it cleared out ahead of the next rainy season. Using chainsaws and weedwhackers, they removed vegetation and hauled it away by the truckload.
“They’re out there with the hand tools cutting off the vegetation, they’re walking it to our vehicles so that they can be loaded in and dumped to a landfill,” said Lester Del Rosario, Senior Engineer with the City of San Diego's Stormwater Department.
Days after the flooding on January 22, the city cleared 18 miles of storm channel, removing more than 9,800 tons of debris and vegetation. Over the past 7 months, much of the vegetation has been growing back, so the city workers have been busy trying to trim back the overgrowth.
"It’s an invasive species that’s aggressive, it grows back quickly so it does require staff to be out here consistently to remove that type of vegetation,” said Del Rosario.
People in Southcrest, Mountain View, and other neighborhoods remain traumatized by the January floods.
“I’m really scared because it went up five feet. This is a nightmare what we lived. All my kids, we lost everything, four cars, furniture, bedroom set, everything,” said Lucy Rios who bought her house near Beta Street 40 years ago. “For all my neighbors, it was a nightmare for everybody.”
The city has been making progress in neighborhoods like Southcrest, Mountain View, Encanto, and Jamacha Skyline, but there is still much more work to do.
Del Rosario told CBS 8 that without an emergency declaration, crews are limited to hand tools in the creeks, but they’re hoping to have permits by October that will allow them to use mechanized equipment in the channels in order to perform more aggressive maintenance.
Rios is happy to see crews working to clear brush from the channel in Southcrest, but she hopes they stick with it and keep it maintained.
“Keep our creek clean, take bushes out and just keep everything clean so we don’t get flooded and we don’t get nightmares," said Rios.
Mayor Todd Gloria has included more than $8 million in funding in the Stormwater Department budget this fiscal year to continue maintaining the stormwater channels in flood-prone areas ahead of the upcoming rainy season.
WATCH RELATED: City efforts to clean storm channels in southeast San Diego