Santa Clara presents Hetch Hetchy corridor options in Creek Trail master plan meeting

City of Santa Clara staff and their consultants on Tuesday presented preliminary designs and constraints for a proposed Creek Trail along the Hetch Hetchy corridor, describing potential alignments from Calabasas Creek across Great America and Levi’s Stadium to the Guadalupe River and Ulistac Natural Area.

At the virtual meeting, Ralph Garcia, senior civil engineer with the City of Santa Clara Public Works Department and project manager for the Creek Trail Master Plan, opened the presentation and turned it over to Jonna Sokal, principal trail planner for the consultant team, who reviewed corridors, constraints and next steps. “It is a large interdisciplinary team of engineers, landscape architects, planners, environmental consultants, geotech consultants, hydrologic consultants, traffic planners, and survey folks who are working on this project to investigate 3 trail corridors,” Sokal said.

The plan focuses on three corridors—Saratoga Creek, Calabasas Creek and the Hetch Hetchy lands—with the Hetch Hetchy segment discussed in detail. Sokal said most of the Hetch Hetchy corridor right of way within the city is owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), describing it as “approximately an 80 foot wide right of way” that contains large pipelines conveying drinking water from Yosemite to the Santa Clara Valley. Valley Water was identified as the owner and manager of the creeks the trail would cross and has issued guidance affecting trail placement in creek corridors.

Why it matters: the corridor could…