In the City of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, aka Redwood City, Age Appropriate Technologies!

Last December the San Francisco Bay Area was hit by a rain storm that soaked the area. Locally in Redwood City, Le Mar Trailer Park and Redwood City Trailer Park flooded. The fact is that the creek that runs behind the trailer parks that is supposed to be maintained by Redwood City was clogged with reeds and other vegetation so instead of draining properly it simply overflowed into the neighboring trailer parks.

But as has already been exposed, the City of Redwood City at first denied that they were to blame and insisted that they had maintained the creek but pictures of the real condition of the creek soon made it clear that whatever maintenance had been done the creek is in desperate need of additional clearing. Just this past week, I visited the trailer parks and walked alongside the creek.

According to the City Manager, Mr. Bob Bell, the City cannot because of other regulatory agency constraints remove vegetation in periods other than during the April through October time period; but we are barely at the beginning of this winter season and although we may not have another super storm we hopefully (we are in a drought and hoping that it ends) will get some more rain. Given however the amount of vegetation currently in the creek, the likelihood of even a small amount of rain doing real damage by again flooding the nearby parks is great.

According to residents for years the city used prison labor to clean the creek but about five years ago they did away with prison labor and instead began to bring in herds of ruminants to eat through the grasses. The reason however that this technology has been obsoleted is that it is not very discriminating. To protect themselves from the periodic floods, the residents had built up a wall of sandbags; unfortunately, the ruminants did not realize that the sandbags were not to be touched and so along with eating some of the local grasses which was what they were supposed to do they also destroyed the sand bags and the wall that had been built with them. Another problem with this ancient canal cleaning technology is that it doesn’t wade into the creek itself and eat and remove the growth in the water but only eats and cleans the creek sides.

I have to wonder if this problem existed in Redwood Shores or up in the hills, whether the same technologies would be used. Just as importantly, is necessary maintenance of canals and waterways in Redwood Shores (home to three of the Council members) also delayed until such a time as some supposed other agency constraint allows or are these issues handled in a much more expedient fashion?