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Engineers: Park Fire burn scar magnified creek flows; city and county eye sediment work
Summary
Public Works engineers told the Parks Commission that the 2024 Park Fire scar increased runoff across the Big Chico Creek watershed, producing creek flows far above pre-fire forecasts and prompting renewed focus on sediment removal and additional stream gauges.
City of Chico Public Works engineers presented data on March 3 showing that the July 2024 Park Fire burn scar in the Big Chico Creek watershed magnified runoff during winter storms, producing flow peaks well above pre-fire expectations.
“The burn scar will magnify runoff from a rain event,” David Keane, Public Works Engineering Department, told the Parks, Well and Playground Commission. Keane and staff summarized state and federal modeling, local gauge records and aerial observations that together showed measured peak flows that exceeded standard design assumptions for the diversion system that protects Chico.
Keane described how the watershed funnels to the Five-Mile diversion, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project maintained locally by Butte County. Design capacities cited in the presentation were about 1,500 cubic feet per second (cfs) for flows routed down Big Chico Creek and 6,000 cfs for Lindo Channel,…
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