El Camino Flooding: Where's Roto-Rooter?

Here's one more water-related post to follow the last two on sea-levels and drinking water.  We had two nice, moderately heavy storms over the weekend and into Monday.  We needed the rain everywhere except on El Camino.  Bad flooding in a dozen spots on our main thoroughfare has been a known issue for decades.  I just don't get why Caltrans won't do something simple to fix the known hot spots.  Yes, we have a multi-hundreds of millions of dollars upgrade in the works, but with the massive state shortfall from COVID-19 I'll bet roads drop down the priority list.

In the meantime, why can't Caltrans just get into some of the drains and clear them out?  We know the drains drain--just not fast enough.  I don't want to put it back on the city's Public Works who have already stepped up on ECR maintenance beyond their remit, but it might have to come to that.  "All plumbing is local" to paraphrase Tip O'Neill.  Here's the recurring flood at the end of my street.  There's a drain right there.  The drain on the other corner drains well enough if I keep it clear, which I do.  The flooded one drains after about a day--there had been no rain for more than 12 hours when I took this photo.  Where's Roto-Rooter?

Comments

[Nate Lyday]

Is this a highway or somehow otherwise Caltrans' right of way? If not, it's not for them to handle.

[Joe]

Yes, it's a state highway -- 82. Otherwise B'game Public Works would be on it fast.

[Cassandra]

Let’s just get on it- better to apologize than ask permission?

[BMW]

Joe - A lot of this is Caltrans' to fix no question.

But check out the catchment area of the drain in the photo. It's the entire long block of Newlands, Central and most of Crescent and Pershing Park. All of that surface water drains to this corner. That's a lot for just two drains to process.

http://bgmaps.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=bdf2afe0084b4527be99c7a6b2e0941d

If there were intermediate drains on the Burlingame part of the neighborhood this wouldn't be as big a problem. Same problem all the way up and down ECR.

For fun, check out how many drains the City has on Broadway. There's easily 50 on that short commercial section. No flooding there, but maybe a tad overdone.

[Joe]

As usual Bimmer, you have amazing insights to add. Thank you. When I walk the dog this afternoon I will just double check that the map doesn't miss any, but I'm betting not.

That explains the initial overflow perfectly. I still have the question of why 12 hours after the last rainfall and well after the gutters are dry there is such a large pool of water there. I'll bet a roll of Charmin that if we ran a camera down there we would see roots, debris or something partially clogging it up.