Way back during the confusing parts of the subcommittee meeting, I remember Mitch Avalon and Igor Skaredoff trying to explain to me how the water table was lower in the creeks and higher in the banks. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, but they explained that the saturation in the creek made for a lower height of the table, and the vegetation in the bank operated as a sponge and sopped the water as it was pushed higher on either side of the bank.
If you want to see this happen with your own two eyes, take a look at the destruction project at the creek.
Yesterday the top of the soil was removed by about two feet in the north of the scrape. The plan is to take that soil off to Nancy Boyd park for fill. Without its “sponge” the water table pushed up, almost to the height the soil had been. Now there is a huge pond separated from the stream by a two foot bank and a very lonely silt fence.
Exactly how will this be re-vegetated? Water lily’s? Beavers like water lily’s.
More importantly, how will a water level, two feet higher than the standing creek, help with floodwaters? There is something in this more than natural if philosophy could find it out. (Hamlet always helps)
In the mean time the higher creek pressure has punched a hole in the too skinny berm and silty water is draining back into the creek. That can’t be good. Gary Bogue was kind enough to feature us this morning, and offered his concern that a permit from DFG was needed. Do you think Martinez has one? Do you think silt falling back into the water could be a problem?
Photo: Cheryl Reynolds 9-18-08
Maybe the city is worrying about the wrong lawsuit.
