Photos

Editor's Note: This story was originally published with an incorrect phone number for Kurt Lueneburger, which has since been corrected.


An environmental impact report commissioned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District has found few "significant and unavoidable" environmental consequences to digging flood basins at two city parks — though some residents disagreed at a public hearing on the report last week.

The draft report, written for the water district by San Jose firm ICF Jones and Stokes, predicts that the only big impacts from the project will involve noise and traffic during construction along already congested Grant Road. During the project, trucks would carry dirt pulled from 15-foot-deep flood basins proposed for the Cuesta Park Annex and for Blach Middle School in Los Altos.

On Thursday, Oct. 29, a dozen people showed up at a hearing on the report to oppose the controversial flood basins in Mountain View, one at the Annex and another at McKelvey Park. The flood basins have gained support from some groups in the city — including sports leagues which would be getting new sports facilities at McKelvey in the deal — but others say the basins are unnecessary and will ruin the landscape.

The City Council has already expressed its support for the two flood basin concepts in Mountain View, though detailed plans have yet to be approved. The Cuesta Annex basin would be 7.5 acres in size, the McKelvey Park basin would be five acres, and the Blach School basin would be 4.5 acres.

The basins were designed as water retention in the event of a so-called "100-year-flood" of Permanente Creek. By definition, such an extreme flood has a 1 percent chance of happening every year, and has yet to happen in Mountain View. But the water district says its plan would protect 2,220 parcels in Mountain View and 250 parcels in Los Altos, and would keep those property owners from having to buy flood insurance.

The district says it is mandated to provide the flood protection by Measure B, which voters passed in the late 1990s and which provides the project with $35 million in today's dollars.

The water district will be taking comments on the report until Nov. 16. A final environmental impact report will be released sometime next year.

The report lists several endangered species that potentially would be affected, including the native dusky footed wood rat, special-status bats, the western pond turtle, the burrowing owl, the yellow legged frog and the red legged frog.

The endangered species habitat is largely at Rancho San Antonio in Los Altos, where an eight-acre flood basin has been proposed just south of the creek near the park's main parking lot, and at Mountain View's Shoreline area, where Permanente Creek would be modified with flood walls north of Highway 101 through Google's headquarters and Shoreline Park.

Several mitigation measures are described for dealing with any endangered species, and those measures will be studied further. A paleontologist would also be on hand during excavation of the basins in case any "vertebrate remains" are found.

The project will likely take five to six years to complete, the report says, with individual projects taking six months to two years.

INFORMATION:
The full draft EIR can be viewed at valleywater.org/PublicReviewDocuments.aspx. For more information, contact Kurt Lueneburger by phone at (408) 265-2607, ext. 3055 or by e-mail at klueneburger@valleywater.org. Written comments on the draft EIR can be e-mailed to Lueneburger or sent by mail to:

Santa Clara Valley Water District
Attention: Kurt Lueneburger
5750 Almaden Expressway
San Jose, CA 95118