“Stabilizing” San Ramon Canyon
July 21st, 2010 § 5 Comments
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The Palos Verdes Peninsula is mostly developed – but canyons, with their wily waters and sediment movement – and landslides – remain – to the chagrin of whoever lives in their path downstream, or whoever carves a road through their eroding banks. Today that would be a senior citizen’s mobile home park in San Pedro, and Palos Verdes Drive East, respectively.
Tonight there will be a meeting to discuss, as the Daily Breeze puts it, “stabilization” of San Ramon Canyon. I went out a few weeks ago to look at the offending canyon with a creekfreaky friend and what we noticed is that there are relatively small catch basins at Palos Verdes Drive, which can easily be blocked by the rocks coming down from the canyon. (We didn’t hike up to view the landslide area or potential impact to Palos Verdes Drive East, so no comment there. Photos in a Palos Verdes city powerpoint are illustrative of the problem-link below) But for the flooding part of the issue, as so often seems to be the case, it’s the catch basin that’s the problem, a hydraulic constriction interfering with the flow’s path. It was almost as if the road’s drainage system had been designed to flood.
It’ll be interesting to find out what their stabilization concept is, my hope is that the city’s experts know how to think creek.
Meeting: Miraleste Intermediate School, 29323 Palos Verdes Drive East, 7PM
And click here for a link to the City of Palos Verdes’ information about the project, including a link to a powerpoint presentation.
Earlier Breeze coverage here.
The seasonal (and permanent!) watercourses of “P.V.” (as most of us South Bay types call it) have intrigued me since I was a kid growing up in Redondo. I know that the Conservancy is trying to restore some of them. Thanks for a post about the Peninsula.
Hope to have more posts on South Bay/PVP creeks in the future!
Great!
BTW, after my initial reaction to your story, I read the Daily Breeze stuff on the flooding of the canyon, and realized that I had explored that canyon many times but didn’t know its history or name. Fascinating.
Just looking at the aerial photo I see at least one huge gully coming down the hill near the end of a cul de sac. I would guess that all the water from that pavement and those rooftops is concentrated and dumped down the canyon wall there, filling the canyon with sediment and causing flooding downstream. It looks to me like they need to do something about that concentrated runoff.
For what it’s worth, there are species living in that exact area that are quite difficult to find anywhere else on the PV Peninsula.