 1 foot culvert completely buried with sand. County personnel opened this on 26 Oct. and cut away a flap which was closing it! |
 The ditch is filled with sand. |
One of the issues that led us to form our watershed council, was lack of progress with county Public Works Department over how Garrapatos Road was graded and maintained. The county graded it twice a year. Each fall it got graded just before the first rain. After a couple of big rains, the road would become almost impassable and a lot of sediment ran into the creek. (In '98 a huge slide closed the road for 2 months). We had several discussions with the county but we didn't appear to be getting anywhere.
Now as a watershed council we are receiving a lot more attention from the county. We have developed a very good dialogue with county Public Works personnel and meet with them about once a quarter along with our County Supervisor Dave Potter. Public Works has sent several supervisors to road workshops and is working on a new Road Operations and Maintenance Manual which will include many important changes in how roads are maintained in sensitive areas like our canyon. We also worked together with Public Works to include them in the road repair grant we submitted to California Department of Fish and Game in May 2002.
These photos show typical problems along the road after as little as 1 inch of rain
| 1 foot culvert completely buried with sand. County personnel opened this on 26 Oct. and cut away a flap which was closing it! |
The ditch is filled with sand. |
This ditch should be a foot deeper
El Niņo '98 affects
 This is what can happen when a section of the road gives way after heavy rains...this stuff went into the creek. |
This huge jumble of trees is what is left of
the slide that closed the road for 2 months in '98....there is a creek under there
somewhere!
|
All photos taken 15 October 2000
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This page was last updated on April 06, 2007
