Photo shows the flooding at Atascadero Road and the Embarcadero in January 2023. File photo courtesy Becka Kelly
The City of Morro Bay continues to deal with the fallout from the floods of January 2023 and is now embarking on a study to write a management plan for the Morro Creek Water Shed.
The City Council recently approved a $1.37 million contract with Stillwater Sciences, Inc., an engineering firm specializing in science-based water shed and environmental studies. Stillwater has offices up and down the state including one in Morro Bay.
Officially called the “Morro Creek Watershed Management Plan,” the new study seeks to encompass the entire Morro Creek water shed, which stretches to the east along Little Morro Creek Road and into County-controlled lands.
But it also will focus on protecting a key piece of Morro Bay’s drinking water system as well as look at the flooding issues that have plagued the area of Morro Creek at Main Street, with repeated flooding.
“Following the flood events of January and March 2023,” reads a report on the contract award, “the City successfully applied for funding under
FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) through the California Governor’s Office of
Emergency Services (CalOES).” The grants were for two specific projects:
• Flood-proofing the brackish water reverse osmosis (RO) plant; and,
• Storm drain assessment.
The City’s RO plant is located in the City Corp Yard on Atascadero Road. It was originally a desalination plant, but the City decided it didn’t need an RO desalination plant and instead turned it into a plant that filters brackish groundwater from its Morro Basin wells at Lila Keiser Park.
The plant’s filters were switched out several years ago to treat brackish groundwater (fresh water) rather than the water it was pulling from wells strung along the Embarcadero (seawater).
When the big floods of 2023 hit, the area along Atascadero Road was hit pretty hard.
“Although the RO building itself was not flooded during the 2023 storms,” the report said, “the building is within the 100-year floodplain as mapped by FEMA.”
As for the storm drainage problem, the focus is on the Main Street corridor adjacent to Morro Creek, which has flooded repeatedly in the past 30 years or so. Each flood leaves the private property in the area awash in mud.
“This initiative,” the report said, “focuses on conducting a hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, as well as identifying project alternatives to address flooding from Morro Creek in the Main Street, Radcliff Avenue, Preston Lane, Errol Street, and Atascadero Road areas.”
The State OES and FEMA grants won’t pay for more than studying the two problems. “The proposed grants,” the report said, “will not cover construction costs for the implementation of the solutions found in this study/preliminary engineering phase of the project. The City will need to seek additional funding for the construction phase of the proposed projects.”
The City also contracted with the Coastal San Luis Resources Conservation District (RCD) to have them manage the grants. According to the report, RCD would be paid $33,000 out of the RO plant flood-proofing grant; and $68,000 for the storm drain assessment portion, with Stillwater Services doing both studies.
The City also has skin in this game, as local matches for the grants topped $400,000 — $95,000 for the RO Plant portion and $336,000 for the storm drain assessment part. Overall, the budget for the study tops $1.72M.
Stillwater’s contract spells out an entire scope of services including several types of surveys and mapping, as well as conducting a series of public meetings to inform the public of the project and its progress.
The flooding along Main Street first happened in March 1995, when about 13-inches of rain fell overnight and overwhelmed the Morro Creek channel. In that case, debris piled up at the Main Street bridge, washed down from higher up in the water shed. The water backed up and flooded Main Street to Radcliff up to 6-feet deep in some spots.
It washed over onto Hwy 1, closing the highway and effectively cutting the town in half.
By morning the water had drained away leaving a thick, muddy mess from Radcliff to Atascadero Road and covering about a square mile.
In 2023, the creek flooded again, inundating the area at Main and the creek, though not to the same extent as the big one in ‘95.
The January 2023 flooding happened during two days of fierce rain. The same area along Main Street was hit again when runoff overwhelmed the creek channel, and along Atascadero Road, the heavy runoff collided with a storm surge on top of a high tide and also flooded the intersection of Atascadero Road and the Embarcadero, under about 4-feet of water.
In each of these flood events, the water drained away fairly quickly, as the natural flow to the sea returned once the rain let up.
