Marin tidal flooding prompts renewed push for fortification

As another wave of rain hit Marin County on Monday morning, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman and top county officials toured sites hit hardest by the weekend flooding and pledged to continue their efforts to shore up vulnerable infrastructure.

“This area has been worried about events like this for a long time,” said Huffman, standing on a raised road to Santa Margarita Island in the Santa Venetia neighborhood of San Rafael. Behind Huffman was a muddy creek bordered by an earthen levee that abutted the backyards of dozens of homes on Vendola Drive.

The 75-year-old levee had multiple failures in recent days, from seepage and water overtopping it to a partial collapse at one home, county officials said.

“This is not sustainable in the long term, a levee like this,” Huffman said of the berm that was reinforced with timber after a mid-1980s flood. “Especially with these tides and all of the volatility with our weather. We’re not going to give up on funding that longer-term solution.”

“The neighborhood hopes we do not give up,” said Supervisor Mary Sackett, speaking of the community of 600 homes. “We’ve just got too many people living in this neighborhood that, with any overtopping, not only would the homes right on Vendola be flooded, but the network of roads for everyone who’s out there.”

The officials also visited flood sites in Corte Madera and Larkspur near Lucky Drive and Highway 101, and sites along the northern tip of Sausalito that were inundated by the weekend’s mix of king tides, an atmospheric river storm system and already-saturated grounds.

In some instances, they saw where efforts by public works and public safety crews prevented worse scenarios, such as a recently installed pumping system at the entrance to Marin City. In other cases, however, such as in Santa Venetia, pumps set up by public works crews and efforts by homeowners barely kept pace.

“Every fall, we do repair the sections, the most vulnerable sections of the berm,” said Sackett, speaking of the levee on the south fork of Gallinas Creek. “That cost is going up and the degradation of the berm is getting worse. It’s really putting a Band-Aid on a very significant issue.”

The Santa Venetia berm is one of several levees in Marin that were in line for multimillion-dollar Federal Emergency Management Agency reconstruction grants until last year, when the Trump Administration abruptly shut down its infrastructure and flood mitigation assistance programs.

“It’s been a scorched-earth campaign of cancellation and retraction for infrastructure funding by this administration,” said Huffman. “We’re going to claw and scratch and fight for that funding. We’re also going to try to win an election and put some checks and balances back in place so that projects like this can get funded again.”

“This is not the only community in harm’s way,” he said. “We’re hearing about flooding to the north in the Novato area, Highway 37, obviously, is a problem. But further down, Lucky Drive. … In almost every direction, in a place like Marin County, you’ve got vulnerability.”

“We have a plan that is shovel-ready,” Sackett said of the Santa Venetia levee. “It’s an engineered very narrow sheet pile wall that will go much deeper.”

County emergency management officials said they are looking at ways to fortify the infrastructure and emergency response systems.

County officials said they are not waiting for funding from Washington to address the most pressing needs.

“We’re looking at all the options,” said Steven Torrence, emergency management director. “First and foremost is not just chasing grants, but also looking at other avenues to get people to do those intermittent things, like making sure they’re not creating more harm to a levee system that is existing.”

Sackett said the cost of rebuilding the Santa Venetia levee could approach $25 million. In the interim, she said more pumping systems could be installed.

“There just needs to be funding,” she said. “And that might include increasing the parcel tax for this flood zone in particular – Flood Zone 7. Because they do have a small tax, which generates, I want to say $600,000.”

“It’s really to maintain pump stations, like right here,” she said, pointing to a motorized pump and pipes in a ditch by the roadside. “It’s not going to cover the cost of a new project.”