are needed before any construction
work can begin.
Zlotnick and other district officials
answered questions about the Flood
of 1998 in front of an audience of
nearly 100 that gathered at the Cub-
berley Community Center auditori-
um last night. San Francisquito
Creek jumped its banks in the early
morning hours of Feb. 3, flooding
more than 400 Palo Alto homes.
Zlotnick started the meeting by
saying its purpose was to answer
questions about what happened Feb.
3 -- not to talk about long-term
solutions.
Questions from residents
But that didn't stop several audi-
ence members from asking the
question anyway.
"What's it going to take for work
to begin?" said Evan Economos,
who had two feet of water sweep
into his DeSoto Drive home on Feb.
3.
"We need results," said Hamilton
Hitchings of the Duveneck Neigh-
borhood Association.
"What's it going to take for work to begin ?"
Evan Economos, DeSoto Drive resident
The Duveneck group is distribut-
ing petitions to ask the city and
water district to get started immedi-
ately on a flood control study for
San Francisquito Creek. As reported
in yesterday's Daily News, the
group also turned out in full force at
Monday's City Council meeting.
Hitchings said the group has 135
signatures so far.
Hybrid solution
As a first step in working out a
long-term solution for San Francis-
quito Creek, the Coordinated
Resource Management and Plan-
ning group, or CRMP, released a
report last month that lists possible
solutions to the problem.
The report summarizes the rec-
ommendations from six engineering
studies that have been carried out
since the flood of 1955, said CRMP
Coordinator Pat Showalter.
But the proposed work was never
carried out, Showalter said.
"This time, we want to get some
solutions put together that are rea-
sonable and environmentally
sound," Showalter said.
Dredging not allowed
Water district board member
Zlotnick said the final San Francis-
quito Creek solution is likely to be
some combination of strategies out-
lined in the CRMP report.
But funding is a major issue for
the project, which may cost $100
million or more, Zlotnick said.
In the shorter term, maintenance
engineer Jose Ortiz said the district
has plans to raise some of the levees
along the creek this year.
But the district doesn't have
authority to dredge the channel of
sediment, which hasn't been done
for 40 years, Ortiz said.
