Oakland's Forgotten Creeks
By Dave Hope
(Last in a series of five articles.)
Never let it be inferred that Oakland's forgotten creeks gave up their identities without a struggle.
Man could dry up their sources and shunt them underground. He could encase them in steel pipes, bury them under slabs of concrete, cross them with streets, hide their banks with buildings. But he didn't find it an easy job.
They hibernated in quiet through long summer months waiting patiently for the days when skies opened up and poured rain water into their channels. Then they exacted heavy toll for the indignities they had suffered.
Forgotten creeks were suddenly and painfully remembered as flood waters inundated business and residential areas. No extensive memory is required to recall the Berkeley store that found a geyser erupting from its basement, with merchandise floating out the front door and bobbing down the street.
ANNUAL VISITATION
Businessmen and home owners of the Grand Lake district, among others, came to regard the flooding of their properties as an annual visitation. Even today storm waters inundate Cypress Street and some other sections during every heavy rain.This happens in a city which has a gentle slope to the bay, and "soil of so porous a quality as to afford sufficient drainage and entirely obviate the necessity for artificial drains and sewers."
That was the somewhat unduly optimistic opinion of Mayor Horace W. Carpentier, stormy petrel of Oakland's incorporation, as he became the city's first executive in 1854. His claim seems to have held up for some 10 years, during which creeks were regarded merely as defiles that had to be bridged for new streets.
But in 1866 the residents of Oakland were beginning to realize they needed some other attention. The city's first sewer was constructed that year, from Fourth Street to the waterfront, on Broadway.
BOARD APPOINTED
Three years later a Board of Engineers was appointed to study the Oakland drainage problem and investigate systems in cities all over the world. Their recommendations led to construction of a sewer on Webster Street, from 12th Street to the waterfront, in 1871.
One year later Mayor Spaulding was refuting his predecessor by describing the ravages of Temescal Creek which ran wild to submerge everything from 21st Street to the Bay. He said that construction of San Pablo Road and Telegraph Road, both of which have since been dignified as avenues, had diverted the natural flow of Oakland's northern creeks
Plans were drawn for a big project, on which work was conducted in 1873. Extending 9924 feet in length, constructed partially of wood, partially of brick, it ran along 22nd Street, from Lake Merritt to the Bay, and cost the city $166,000. The actual cost figures are drowned in red ink. Two contractors defaulted on the job before it finally was completed in 1876.
DRAINAGE PROBLEM
Through succeeding years Oakland struggled with drainage problems, always too little and too late with each segment as the need mounted continuously with the growth of the city. Bond issues were passed from time to time until, in 1925, the city adopted a pay as you go policy. Work proceeded haphazardly after that.
Then in 1936 came the WPA and Oakland moved swiftly to take advantage of of Federal assistance. Grand Avenue floods got first attention with a $355,000 project. A 35th Avenue job cost $36,000, a Mandana Boulevard project $57,000. Pipe more than 30 years old was replaced along High Street, from 45th Avenue to East 14th Street, a cost of $17,000.
Some 20 projects, costing a total of more than $1,250,000, of which the city paid only supervision and engineering charges, were included in the WPA program.
Mayor Carpentier, long since removed from concern over all such mundane things, would undoubtedly have been aghast at such an expenditure, but it was only a beginning. The biggest part of the job was and still is yet to be done.
HALTED BY WAR
War halted the WPA program, but not the need for drainage. Late in 1944 the City Council authorized City Engineer Walter N. Frickstad to outline a post-war program. He presented them with a $5,000,000 plan.
It included 48 projects, all but nine of them to carry storm waters. Each has its base in an outlet which once was the mouth of an Oakland creek. They follow the courses of the creeks, with adjustments and laterals and connections to meet complications man introduced into nature's drainage system.
In May, 1945, the citizens of Oakland voted a $5,361,000 bond issue to pay for the program. In spite of material shortages and a scarcity of engineers, it is already well advanced.
A portion of the Stonehurst system, which will eventually cover reconstruction of large sections of San Leandro Creek, has been completed to allow for huge industrial development near San Leandro Street and 100th Avenue.
OTHER PROJECTS PLANNED
An Elmhurst section, running from Blaine to E Streets, is under construction. Some maintenance work has been done along the old Glen Echo Creek in the upper Broadway district. Contract has been let for a Grand Avenue job.
Advanced planning indicates that work on the sites of such creeks as 14th Avenue, Park Boulevard, Temescal, and Arroyo Viejo will follow in the near future.
[See Creek & Watershed Map of
Oakland & Berkeley. - MF]
Factors which nature never intended, which the Spanish Dons couldn't conceive, which Mayor Carpentier would have considered fantastic, are involved. The new system must separate storm waters from sewage, divert them from the $25,500,000 interceptor to be built for handling the area's sewage. Its outlets must pass beneath the East Shore Freeway's band of concrete which will skirt the water's edge. It must be correlated to highway and sewage and residential and industrial development of tremendous scope.
Oakland's old creeks may be forgotten - but Oakland's drainage system has become one of the city's most crucial problems.
Oakland's Forgotten Creeks #5 01 Feb 1947, Sat
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com
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