For many San Jose residents, Lake Cunningham Park is a great spot to enjoy family picnics and recreational activities in a natural environment.
Valley Water has nearly completed work on an $11.6 million flood protection project at Lake Cunningham Park that, when combined with homes and businesses
Our flood protection efforts will allow waters in Lower Silver Creek downstream of Cunningham Park to safely pass during a 100-year flow event. Our improvements at the park will ensure the detention facility functions as designed and can be certified with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
But the manmade lake and surrounding open space, built in coordination with the city of San Jose in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, serves another important function for our community. During strong storms, Lake Cunningham Park acts as a temporary flood detention facility and Valley Water invested $191 million in both flood protection projects for our neighborhoods along Lower Silver Creek.
By completing both projects, the homes and businesses in the floodplain around and downstream of the park will be protected from a 100 year-flood event, or a flood that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.helps capture excess flows of water from nearby creeks, reducing flood risks for neighboring homes and businesses. benefits from the completed Lower Silver Creek Project, will protect approximately 3,800 residents in East San Jose from a 100-year flood event.
Our flood protection work at Lake Cunningham Park is expected to be completed in late October. Once it’s done, Valley Water will work with FEMA to revise the flood insurance maps associated with the 3,800 parcels near the creeks. When FEMA updates the map, residents and businesses near the creeks will no longer be required by law to purchase flood insurance. That could result in savings of hundreds of dollars annually for families in East San Jose who choose to no longer purchase flood insurance.
Lake Cunningham Park is in the Lower Silver Creek Watershed, itself a sub-basin of the Coyote Watershed. The park is flanked by Lower Silver Creek on the northwest edge, Flint Creek on the northern border and Ruby Creek on the eastern border.
In its entirety, Lower Silver Creek flows generally northward from Silver Creek Road at Barberry Flint and Ruby Creeks are tributary streams rising in the hills east of the park and flowing westward to the eastern portion of Lake
Cunningham Park, where they join and empty into Lower Silver Creek within the park. Lower Silver Creek carries the combined flows from all three creeks northwards out of Lake Cunningham Park Lane to Coyote Creek near Highway 101 and McKee Road.
Flood detention improvements at the park were initiated in the 1980s to regulate the maximum storm water that could safely flow into Lower Silver Creek north of the park. Further studies by Valley Water in 2015 indicated that flood protection improvements at Lake Cunningham Park were necessary to provide 100-year flood protection.
Recorded flooding events within the Lower Silver Creek Watershed include storms in December 1889, January and March 1911, January 1952, December 1955, April 1958, January 1963, February 1983, March 1983, and close calls during the February 1998 El Niño. To meet FEMA’s certification requirements, an existing levee was raised up to four feet high adjacent to Capitol Expressway and Cunningham Avenue. A flood wall ranging from one to four feet high was also constructed on the top of existing berms from the Cunningham Avenue Bridge toward the east to White Road.
The improvements at Lake Cunningham Park are an example of Valley Water’s dedication to keeping residents and businesses safe through our flood protection programs. Our work in Lake Cunningham Park also included the installation of native plants to restore and improve habitat, and the relocation and replacement of a trash compactor to south of the White Road entrance and across from the Skate Park. This new location is away from the major pedestrian park entrance and allows for the flood wall to continue along Flint Creek unabated.
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I want to thank the East San Jose communities for their patience and support as we completed this project, which began in 2002 with the work along Lower Silver Creek.
Tony Estremera serves on the Valley Water Board of Directors, representing District 6, which spans the San Jose neighborhoods of Alum Rock, Seven Trees and other areas of San Jose (generally City Council districts 5, 7 and parts of 3). Opinions are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of San Jose Inside. Send op-ed pitches to
je*******@me*******.com
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I think Valley Water’s board members are true public servants always striving to improve our community. Another daunting task that requires attention is the exploding homeless epidemic, with the city’s and county’s programs encouraging more homeless to move to the area along the creeks. They expect a water and flood protection agency to solve their incompetence.
> Another daunting task that requires attention is the exploding homeless epidemic, with the city’s and county’s programs encouraging more homeless to move to the area along the creeks.
The “homeless epidemic” is very destructive to Santa Clara County creeks and very expensive for taxpayers.
ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/06/14/san-jose-agrees-to-100-million-pollution-cleanup-program-to-reduce-trash-sewage-spills/
“San Jose agrees to $100 million pollution cleanup program to reduce trash, sewage spills”
So that’s really great news. What’s going to happen next winter when we get a thousand year flood, or the polar ice caps melt in 2033 and the sea’s are 300ft deeper ?
Now this IS a surprise. I’m shocked. Shocked!
A Goverment agency, FEMA, has decreed, with a stroke of it’s unchallegeable Govermental authority, that many “economically challenged”, “racially diverse” residents of east San Jose are no longer at flood risk, have benefitted from a government program, and now owe a debt of gratitude to guess what… the Government! Good work, Goverment!
Now what about us affluent, white, privileged Willow Glenners who, despite funding decades of goverment SCVWD and Army Corps of Engineers projects on Guadalupe River, STILL have not yet been the beneficiary of such a strategic, politically calculated Government decision nor had the opportunity to realize the enormous satisfaction that our many “disadvantaged” fellow citizens in San Jose’s “poorer” neighborhoods must now be feeling, but must instead press on and continue paying our protection money to the Goverment pig trough, writing our checks to the pig trough dummy subsidiary, The National Flood Insurance Program.
Our Government. What a colossal racket.