City wins funding to advance Lower Sycamore Creek flood mitigation and habitat restoration design
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Summary
Creeks staff said they received just over $2 million from the State Coastal Conservancy to advance 60% designs for channel and bridge work, study habitat restoration options and begin community outreach; staff emphasized trade-offs such as removing parking to expand the channel.
Erin Markey, the city's creeks division manager, updated the committee on the Lower Sycamore Creek flood mitigation and habitat restoration project and reported a recent grant award to move designs and permitting work forward.
"We were just awarded in February a little over $2,000,000 from the State Coastal Conservancy to really dig into this a lot further," Markey said, describing the funding's purpose: advancing 60% designs for the channel and bridges, completing technical studies needed for CEQA and permitting, and making the project more competitive for implementation funding.
Scope and goals: The project focuses on the lower stretch of Sycamore Creek from the freeway to the creek mouth through the Lower East Side. Markey described chronic downstream constrictions and undersized bridges that limit conveyance capacity and contribute to localized flooding. The city's target design capacity for the corridor is roughly 3,000 cubic feet per second; some bridges currently pass much less (Markey cited the railroad bridge rebuilt to 3,000 cfs design capacity but currently conveying about 2,000 cfs and a Zoo Bridge passing roughly 1,200 cfs).
Habitat and design trade-offs: Preliminary feasibility work modeled scenarios to replace armored banks with naturalized riparian sections and found one segment could require about 25 feet of channel expansion into the roadway; that expansion could be feasible if parking is removed and two traffic lanes are retained. Markey emphasized the division's intent to avoid additive concrete channelization and to pursue multi-benefit habitat restoration where feasible.
Community process and next steps: Markey said the grant supports extensive community outreach (including bilingual engagement), production of 60% designs for the channel and bridges, and drafting an RFP to begin consultant work once the final grant agreement is complete. The project team will then pursue discrete bridge projects for implementation funding from federal or other sources.
What remains unresolved: Community trade-offs (parking removal, traffic impacts) and final design choices will be refined through the technical work and public outreach; Markey said the team will report back as designs and feasibility are refined.
