3-30-11

This past weekend we had a huge storm pass through Santa Cruz and it created a lot of work for the NRCS and the RCD. Many properties were damaged due to a lot of water runoff and today was all about trying to find ways to resolve that. It was also the first day I met the other intern for this quarter, Michelle, who was doing a 2 unit to get more experience. The first house we saw was in a residential area overlooking the Santa Cruz bay. It was a small property and the issue was the huge slope in their backyard. They had a large deck and starting at the edge of the deck there was a slide in the middle of their backyard slope. It was about 1/3 of the backyard with one of the other sides covered with ice plant and the base of the backyard going into a nature area. So there was no damage to any property below, but there was a concern for the destabilized hillside and the large pile of soil at the base of it. When looking at the stratification of the soil where the slide occured, you could see that the first 18 inches or so which had slid, was sandy surface soil while below that was a clay layer. What Rich decided was that water moving from the front yard and through the deck had gone into the soil, hit the clay layer, and moved forward taking the soil with it, resulting in the slide.

I learned that the short term options for a landslide like this was very small. Basically there was a ponding of water where the soil was gathered at the bottom of the slide. Rich recommended that the landowner try to keep that dry so that the hillside will not become further destabilized. Long term, they had been considering a retaining wall at the base of the deck to keep the soil under the deck from exposing the foundations. The problem with this is that unless it was engineered correctly, water would build up pressure behind it and cause it to collapse. The suggestion was to build the retaining wall with piping to remove the water pressure behind it. Another suggestion was to put a french drain under the entire front yard to move the water from just going along the clay layer. Once the hillside was restabilized, there should be planting of non heavy woody plants with a deep root system but not too much weight on the hillside. Also to find fire and drought resistant plants which is always a concern in the Santa Cruz area. Overall, I found this visit to be one thats extremely frustrating for the landowner and costly in the future.

The next visit was probably even more frustrating for all parties. We went to a property that bordered a creek and owned the property to the middle of the creek. The problem was that this creek was below a 150 foot cliff next to the house and was continuing to eat away at the cliff side, making the property next to the house unstable. There was very little that the NRCS can do, because the project would be a very large scale. She had already lost part of the property to it falling into the creek. The creek was creating a meandering patter which had the thalwag (the point where if the water is low will continue going also where there is the most velocity) was coming against the cliff side and continued erroding it. I definitely got to apply my restoration ecology terms such as thalweg and oxbow lake to this property since my professors experience was in river restoration. The only thing we could offer her was an entry into the Emergency Watershed Program, which has funding from the government to help these large scale projects endangering a valuable waterway. The client was mostly concerned with losing parts of the property and her safety and was willing to help in any way possible.

I think today was the first time I had seen severe problems that we necessarily weren't able to provide a large amount of help. It was frustrating for me to know that there was so little help for someone fearful for their house falling into a creek and had very little control over mother nature, which in this case was the nature meandering pattern of the creek. Angie pointed out that she did buy a property next to the cliff, but through being environmentally friendly through allowing the river to take its general course is now coming back to threaten her home.

Lastly, we headed to the Santa Cruz Farm Bureau where they had a guest lecturer discuss the benefits of lined furrows in strawberry plants. The main concern of this groups is the Pajaro Valley watershed and refilling aquifers to use for irrigation of agriculture in the area. The study showed that there was an decrease in runoff and the need for a sediment pond as well as an increase in water refilling the ground water. It was interesting to hear how the environmental practices are also the most cost effective in the long run. When you are discussing land manangement with farmers, they are going to care less about being a good steward of the land and more about the most cost effective way for them to farm. It is really important that this group realizes they need to be concerned for groundwater before they have a drought.