Santa Cruz County preps for upcoming rain and flooding

It’s been a very busy day for public works crews in Santa Cruz. They’ve been around the city looking for areas of local flooding, cleaning storm drains, and clearing hazards in the streets. Preparation for these types of floods is critical, and the City of Santa Cruz has been ready.

“We’ve been working on this for months, we’ve been waiting for this and this is just the start and the ground is just now starting to get saturated so anything that hits the ground is going to runoff”, said Mark Dettle, the director of public works for the City of Santa Cruz.

The biggest concern as of now is localized urban flooding, but with more rain on the way, the next challenge is runoff on local roads, streams and rivers

“So when we go into tomorrow’s rains and subsequent rains later on this week, we should see runoff quicker and more water in the rivers than we did with this storm”, said Bruce Laclergue, the Flood Control Program Manager for Santa Cruz County.

Laclergue monitors water levels across the county remotely, so he keeps an eye on any rapid rise in water levels.

“So if the rivers are coming up and the next sequence of storms come in and the rivers are high to start with, then you’re building from a higher level. There’s also issues at the river mouths with high tides and drainage issues at the rivers at the bottom end trying to get out when there’s high tides.”

The Public Works Department of Santa Cruz is also urging business owners and residents to keep sidewalks and storm drains on their properties clear.