CHICO, Calif. — The normally dry Lindo and Sycamore Channels turned into rushing rivers last week as consistent rain poured into Chico. Experts say it’s a sign that the city’s flood infrastructure is working as designed in that area.
“It’s famous for all the graffiti that’s usually visible but right now the water is flowing,” Jim Brobeck said.
The water policy analyst for AquAlliance surveyed water levels Friday, Nov. 22, walking along the levee at the Five Mile Recreation Area in Bidwell Park.
“The box gates prevent water that’s more than 1,500 cubic feet per second (cfs) from flowing through Chico and diverts the rest of the flow of Big Chico Creek to the north to this area,” Brobeck said.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Army Corps of Engineers installed floodgates, helping to divert and spread water.
“The box gates come down and the water is higher at the top of the box gates so it’s preventing more than 5,000 cfs from going down Lindo Channel,” he said.
He adds the channel, which is bone dry most of the year, is carrying about three times as much water than what flows through Big Chico Creek.
But the Sycamore channel weir is what takes the most water.
“You can see over how high the levees are how deep the channel is this has the capacity of over 9,000 cfs,” he said.
The system, as a whole, protects the city from high flood flows.
Brobeck says it’s working great, compared to other parts of the city.
“Unlike what’s happening in Rock Creek, Mud Creek, Pine Creek those are uncontrolled, ungated water flows So when the water level gets high there’s often flood problems there that breach the unrobust levee system of that area,” he said.
Brobeck notes that gutters also contribute to pressure on the system.
“As the Lindo Channel flows through Chico and as Big Chico Creek flows through Chico, the storm drains also dump water into it and so if it rains very hard on the hardscape of the Chico urban area and the gutter system puts the water into the creeks, it can actually make the water levels rise in both the Lindo Channel and the Big Chico Creek Channel,” he said.
He says an exceptionally hard downpour, then the One Mile Recreation Area will see more inundation as a result, because this flood control infrastructure does not control the storm drains.
“The storm drains are uncontrolled,” he said. “That adds a considerable amount of water to the water that flows through Chico.”