Oceano resident Charlie Lackie’s property got the full brunt of the Arroyo Grande Creek levee break.
Living on the south side of the levee where it got damaged, Lackie rushed out to clear his barn and get the donkey out when heavy rains threatened to overflow the creek on Jan. 9.
“But it [the barn] was already in 10 inches of water. By then, a big section of the levee overtopped,” he said. “It failed on our property, and we have this huge river running down our backyard.”
By 9 p.m., the floods submerged Lackie’s powerlines in 4 feet of water, ripped out the electrical lines, and left him and his family in the dark. In the aftermath of the storm, he still feels its sting. Lackie’s property is full of silt and water.
Without power, Lackie visits his friend’s house on the nearby Mesa to charge his phone. He hopes to set up a generator to a 5,000-gallon water tank to flush toilets in his house. So far, he’s been using water from the creek to flush. Lackie also has several two-and-a-half gallon bottles of drinking water.
Lackie is a member of the Flood Control Zone 1/1A Advisory Committee—colloquially called the Levee Board. Through that, he’s acquainted with employees of the county Public Works Department, he said.
“They came out the next morning and were surprised by how big the breach was,” he told New Times. “The county worked really hard to get state permits to manage the levee better but they’re under handcuffs. The state agencies don’t allow them to clean the debris in the creek out.”
But Paula McCambridge, the Public Works public information officer, said that the county removes vegetation and trash from the levee slopes and main channel of the creek every year. She added that the majority of the upper watershed creeks are privately owned, and its overseers can choose to manage the debris that collects there.
“Vegetation that is left in the [main] channel has been determined necessary to support the environmental functions of the creek by resource agencies which have jurisdiction over the creek as well as its associated plant and wildlife resources,” she said.
Lackie is one of many Oceano residents impacted by the floods. From Jan. 9 to 17, the community received 4.77 inches of rain. In a YouTube video posted by the county on Jan. 13, Public Works Director John Diodati said that the Arroyo Grande Creek got 3.8 inches of rain on Jan. 9, with an intensity of a half inch every hour. The creek rose by 11.5 feet. By 5:30 p.m., water spilled over the southern portion of the levee.
“That is by design,” Diodati said. “We had a project a few years ago that made it so that the overtopping would occur on the south side, which is predominantly farm and agricultural land.”
The Jan. 13 video came a day after officials attempted to address community concerns in a meeting at the Oceano Community Services District (OCSD) board room. The nearly three-hour long session was streamed live on Facebook. However, county spokesperson Jeanette Trompeter told New Times that the county didn’t save the footage because of technical difficulties and complaints that people couldn’t see the maps of Oceano displayed during the meeting. Instead, the county posted that YouTube video summarizing officials’ comments but devoid of the concerns expressed by locals impacted by the breach.
OCSD board member Linda Austin also lives near the south side of the levee. She said she’s impressed with the county’s storm response. A lifelong Oceano resident, Austin was concerned that Juanita Street would get flooded and “become a lake.”
“I know Public Works was busy with North County and our creek. I called them and said they need to close the road here to protect the people at Juanita,” she said. “Within 30 minutes, their trucks were there and closed the road.”
Now, workers are repairing the levee with rocks and sandbags. Oceano residents dealt with a week of evacuation orders and warnings that spanned areas north and south of the creek levee. In the event of evacuation, people were advised to seek shelter at the Oceano Community Center. On Jan. 17, the evacuation order and warning were lifted. With sunnier days ahead, Rachel Dion, the county Office of Emergency Services spokesperson, said that receding water levels helped.
“This morning, we talked to Public Works and they were comfortable lifting that order,” Dion said. “A lot of work was done for temporary fixes, but we will continue to do more permanent fixes.”
During the YouTube video, Scott Jalbert, the SLO County emergency services manager, said that until a permanent solution is in place, the possibility of evacuation hangs over Oceano this winter.
“Unfortunately, there’s a likelihood that we could be in a situation where it’s on again and off again,” he said. “We might have to evacuate you, you may be evacuated for a few hours, and then we’re going to release the evacuation and then another storm comes that’s significant and we may have to re-evacuate you again.” ∆
This article appears in Jan 19-29, 2023.