Fixes lower flood risk

With emergency work finished on a levee that flood control officials feared would crumble in a major storm, county officials are already planning to shore up the rest of the flood control channel it’s a part of even more thoroughly.

Officials held a public meeting this week to inform residents who live near Graham Street and Kenilworth Drive about the repairs to the north side of the East Garden Grove Wintersburg Channel, just below Graham Street. With the emergency repairs done, workers can do heavier work on the channel, said Orange County Flood Control District Manager Nadeem Majaj.

Assuming permits are granted, work is expected to begin in early 2009 on the south wall of the channel just below Graham Street, Majaj said. Both walls of the channel will get the full treatment north of Graham Street to Warner Avenue, he added.

The East Garden Grove Wintersburg Channel runs miles from near where the Bolsa Chica wetlands meet the ocean up across Warner Avenue and Beach Boulevard, even past the 405 Freeway and up to Garden Grove. Outside of the Santa Ana River, it’s the biggest concern for flooding in the county, Majaj said.

Driving metal sheets into the eroding dirt of the levee took care of fears that it would collapse, Majaj said of the emergency work finished Feb. 9. What risk remains is the much lower chance of a flood so big it spills out of the channel, he said. To fight that, workers will shore up these new areas with two solid walls and mix cement into the dirt between them, he said.

“Before we may have had a levee collapse at any time during a storm,” he said. “After this project, we are certain that scenario will not occur.”

One thing this work won’t do is save neighbors from paying flood insurance, he said. Neither the county’s work nor the repairs once promised by nearby developer Shea Homes would alter the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s map of the flood zone.

“Unfortunately, we will not be able to change the flood plain with this work,” Majaj said. “We would need to do substantial amount of work upstream,” reaching far north beyond even the San Diego Freeway, he added.