Santa Cruz Public Works continues efforts on San Lorenzo Flood Control Project

El Nio preparations continue across the central coast. Today, the City of Santa Cruz focused its efforts on the flood control project for the San Lorenzo River.

Back in September, Santa Cruz Public Works went into the San Lorenzo River, clearing out brush. But as the threat of a strong El Nio increases, they’ve gone in a second time, ripping up the sediment in the river bed, to really prepare.

The San Lorenzo River has been as dry as a desert, only a small creek flows through the bed. But when strong winter storms hit the bay, this dried up river bed clogs up with water, and causes major flooding problems.

“We need to remove, approximately 50,000 cubic yards of material to create a river that will self-scour. And that’ll be the channel that the water will flow through and keep the material moving so it doesn’t build back up again,” said Steve Wolfman, the Senior Civil Engineer on the project.

The ripping of the sediment in the dried up San Lorenzo river will allow the river bed to hold a higher capacity of water, especially going into an El Nio winter.

“We want to disk it up and loosen it up so when we get the high flows from El Nio, that’ll move more sediment down and actually add more capacity to the river,” said Mark Dettle, the Director of Public Works with the City of Santa Cruz.

This will prevent the river from overflowing the levees, and flooding into neighborhood streets.