Heavy storms, flood risks renew sense of urgency over delayed San Francisquito Creek projects

Xenia Hammer and her neighbors in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood watched with anxiety as water toppled over the banks of San Francisquito Creek on Saturday morning, submerging streets around the volatile creek and sparking emergency warnings from the city.

For Hammer, who lives near Eleanor Pardee Park, the sight was both rare and familiar. Though normally tame during drought years, the creek is known for creating devastation during storms as water from the foothills and Stanford University land races downstream toward U.S. Highway 101 and through residential neighborhoods in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. Residents scarcely need to be reminded of the February 1998 storm, which flooded 1,700 properties, required hundreds of people to evacuate, caused tens of millions of dollars in property damage, and submerged the highway.

"It's very scary and stressful to watch the creek levels creeping up," Hammer said. "I saw so many neighbors outside looking at floodwater and being very worried. It's been 25 years since the last flood and there is no excuse for being in that situation here."

For Hammer and other residents near the creek, the anxiety comes with a palpable sense of frustration. The Pope-Chaucer Bridge, which crosses the creek and connects Crescent Park and Menlo Park's Willows neighborhood, remains vulnerable to flooding despite two decades of discussions about the need to rebuild the 1940s structure with one that has greater water-flow capacity.

Read the full story here.