The City of Orange is ready to make another mistake.
Orange City Hall has turned a blind eye, ignored residents, and chosen not to use their enforcement authority to protect the public on the former Sully Miller site.
Our city has made one mistake after another over the last twenty years. They are ready to make another mistake, but this time it is at the 14-acre parcel behind the Blue Ribbon Nursery. The Public Works Department is poised to issue a grading permit that would allow the dumping of construction waste on this parcel.
This property was recently purchased by Chandler Sand & Gravel, the same company operating the illegal disposal on Sully Miller for Milan Capital. If city staff gets their way Public Works will be sanctioning the destruction of what Nature has carefully restored over the last 60 years, including completely wiping out a treasured wetland ecosystem.
The impacts are too significant to sidestep the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the public’s right to know what is happening in our neighborhood. Chandler needs to come clean and circulate an EIR that provides a full project description so that the public can participate.
We need to demand that our city protect our neighborhoods and quality of life.
This is an important commentary: REVIEW OF CITY COUNCIL’S MISTAKES & LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES
SANTIAGO CREEK SAFETY VALVE SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED
By Douglas Westfall, National Historian
September 26, 2020|FEATURED, Measure AA, Milan Capital, Sully Miller
The watershed of the Santiago Creek encompasses over 100 square miles of the Santa Ana Mountains and has 10 major tributaries throughout its course.
The creek is harnessed by two upstream damsplain but is still subject to periodic flooding. Until recently, there was an additional safety valve, an open flood plain bordering Santiago Canyon Road and Cannon Street. For years, that property was a sand and gravel mine, some 500 feet across and one mile long. Undeveloped, it gave Santiago Creek a place to spread out and slow down when it overflowed its banks.
Now it is piled high with construction waste that would effectively block any overflow from the creek. Without that buffer, a raging Santiago Creek would threaten Villa Park and Orange.
The last catastrophic Santiago Creek flood was in 1969. What are the chances it could happen again? There are three factors to consider: rainfall, heavy rain frequency, and water storage.
Over the last 140 years, the average rainfall in Orange County has been 14½ inches. Since then, every quarter-century shows averages of 14 to 16 inches, and the area has cracked 30 inches of seasonal rainfall five times since record-taking began. The last time was in the 2004-05 season when we received 31 inches of rain between November and February.
We’ve had 125 percent above average rainfall, 40 times in the 140 years with an average span of just three years in between. During the flood of 1969, we had 16 to 27 inches for three years — all back-to-back.
Through our recent drought starting in 2012, we had four consecutive years ranging from 5 to 9 inches ending in 2015 — all back-to-back again, and all way below average. Yet in the fifth year ending with 2016, we hit almost 21 inches, then had two low years of 4 inches each but rebounded the next year with near 21 inches again.
The Santiago Reservoir, known as Irvine Lake, is often full. The dam, opened in 1931, is compacted earth with a rock fill. It holds up to 38,800 acre-feet of water, or more than 12 billion gallons. This represents two-thirds of the watershed — with but one foot of rain.
The Villa Park Dam is usually kept low to allow a back-up system for the Irvine Lake. It holds 15,600 acre-feet, or 40 percent of the total volume of Irvine Lake. Together, the dams are there to contain 84 square miles of runoff. At even one-foot depth of water, that represents nearly 54,000 acre-feet — or exactly what the two reservoirs hold together.
When the two reservoirs overflowed in 1969, they could not contain the 84 square miles of water surface — which was far above the one-foot level. The sand and gravel mine site helped contain the Santiago water flow by allowing the creek to spread out.
And there is one more thing. There is a 1¼ mile-long earthquake fault directly under the Santiago earth-filled dam. No one could have known it was there when the dam was constructed, and for over 40 years, it went undetected. If a large earthquake should ever happen in the area – especially in winter – all 12 billion gallons of Irvine Lake will immediately fill the Villa Park Reservoir. The remaining 60 percent of that water will bypass the former floodplain relief valve and flood Orange Park Acres, Villa Park and Orange until it reaches the Santa Ana River. If the rainfall is that heavy, the Santa Ana River will already be overflowing.
Santiago Creek is a great resource to the northern Orange County area, in the way of preservation, recreation, and history. Yet it can be a raging torrent, taking out roads, homes, mile-long and bridges. We should really consider just staying out of its way.