Santa Barbara County spent the weekend before Christmas defending its actions prior to the Montecito debris flow after an extensive LA Times report said county officials didn’t do enough to help mitigate the disaster.
According to the report published on Dec. 20, county officials “did not heed decades-old warnings to build bigger basins” above Montecito for many years, and the current county Public Works/Flood Control Department “failed to thoroughly empty the existing basins before the disaster, reducing their capacity to trap debris.”
The county issued an official statement on Dec. 22, characterizing the report as inaccurate. The county also included a video of Public Works Deputy Director Tom Fayram, who spoke from one of the basins above Montecito while addressing the report.
“I want to assure all of you that each of these basins was completely cleaned out prior to the [Jan. 9, 2018] debris flow,” Fayram said.
The Times report went on to detail the capacity of the 11 basins above the affluent mountainside city after the county’s clearing of the basins before Jan. 9, citing a surveyor’s report that showed the basins were at a lower capacity than they were designed to hold. In the article, Fayram was quoted as saying, “Sorry, it’s flat out wrong.”
The article also reported that only five out of the 11 basins were cleared of sediment and debris, and that some basins were only cleared partially. According to the county’s written statement, the basins were “cleared of debris and silt consistent with our basin maintenance plan.”
“No aspects of fire or storm preparation or response, including emergency basin and channel cleanouts, were restricted by budgetary or personnel constraints,” the statement reads. “We have been in constant response, preparedness, and recovery since Dec. 6, 2017. Protecting life, property, and infrastructure is our first priority. If necessary, emergency reserves would be released to cover the cost of this critical work.”
The day after the report came out, Santa Barbara County issued an emergency permit to The Partnership for Resilient Communities for a project to install steel ring nets designed to mitigate debris flows in Montecito.
According to the nonprofit’s founder, Patrick McElroy, a former Santa Barbara city fire chief, the nonprofit and the county had been working closely with other regulatory agencies to streamline the permitting process.
“We were incredibly close,” McElroy told the Sun. “I think more than anything the timing was coincidental. I know how it looks, but I know how close we were to getting the permits.”
The emergency ordinance will allow The Partnership for Resilient Communities to install several high-tensile steel wire ring nets in strategic areas along the steep watershed. The nets “allow water, mud, soil, fine sediment, ash, et cetera to go through the nets and capture large rock and woody material,” McElroy explained. The nets are designed by Swiss company Geobrugg and have been applied in places like Camarillo and Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, according to the organization’s website.
The nonprofit has 60 days to install the nets since approval on Dec. 21, McElroy said, but the organization still needs nearly $3 million in donations to help cover the costs for 11 proposed nets.
The need is dire, McElroy said, especially as the wet season continues.
“There’s three things you need for debris flow,” he said. “The available material, and we’ve been told we have an inexhaustible supply of material in these mountains; the second thing you need is intensity of rainfall, and the National Weather Service is now predicting an 80 percent chance for an El Niño for our area, which would include, historically, intense rainfall; and the third you need is a recently-burned landscape. We’ve got all three.”
When asked about the Times report and the county’s efforts before the Jan. 9 debris flows, McElroy voiced his support for the county.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Santa Barbara County Flood Control staff,” he said. “And I feel like they did a far better job than anybody realizes.
“My concern right now is getting something up that supports what flood control is doing and augments the existing debris basin,” he added.
This article appears in Jan 3-10, 2019.