By Kathleen Acuff
A worker restores a bank in January after neighbors complained of an illegal buildout that collapsed into Hale Creek. |
Homeowners in Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and nearby cities are worried they will lose rights to their land if water district officials win approval for an ordinance that would affect creekside property in five watersheds, including the local 98-square-mile Lower Peninsula Watershed.
Officials of the 1,300-square-mile Santa Clara Valley Water District are concerned about the future of 700 miles of creeks and rivers, along which are 38,000 parcels. The district owns 23 percent of those, and homeowners own 19 percent. In a public hearing last week, district CEO Stan Williams called the ownership of land along the valley’s streams “fragmented” and “ridiculous.”
Water district officials, led by Jim Fiedler, chief operating officer for watersheds, made a case for greater district control of the drainage system that serves 1.7 million residents. Local homeowners countered with concern and anger at the prospect of losing control of their creekside land, some of the most valuable property in the United States.
A heated discussion failed to warm the damp chill in Hillview Community Center Thursday night despite what a district official called the most intense questioning of the four hearings so far on changes to the Water Resources Protection Ordinance, last revised in 1983.
Asking the audience of several dozen local homeowners how the water district could improve its proposal, officials got an earful. One spoke for many when he said firmly, “Don’t do it. Leave it the way it is.”
At the heart of residents’ dissatisfaction is the new definition of “district facility”: “Lands, structures, or improvements and appurtenances owned, controlled, operated or maintained by the district for … lawful district purpose(s). … District properties are considered facilities, including both those lands owned by the district in fee and those over which the district has easement.”
Creekside homeowners said the proposed ordinance would force easements from residents unwilling to grant them, effectively giving the water district control of large swathes of their land without compensating them.
“I can see how the proposal benefits the commons,” Mike Bruno of Los Altos said, “but it takes property from owners. Easements become facilities - and unusable. This is like eminent domain.”
Current law requires homeowners to get a permit if they want to modify their property within 50 feet of the top of a bank - where the slope breaks. The proposed ordinance would substitute a 2-to-1 “slope stability area” for the 50-foot constraint. The area would be measured using a hypothetical 2 horizontal feet to 1 vertical foot in a line from the toe of the bank to a point where it intersects the adjacent ground. The toe is the break in the slope where the bank meets the stream bed.
Jim Porter, director of public works in Los Altos, said Friday that district officials should clarify the issues of easements and facilities.
“The district could have done a better job last night of explaining what these guidelines and standards were,” he said.
Porter said the water district maintains creeks on land it owns in fee title or has an easement on. “They won’t go in a creek without permission unless it’s an emergency,” he said.
Residents asked water district officials to extend the deadline for comments beyond Saturday, saying that few creekside homeowners had noticed the postcard the district sent them to announce the public hearings. They also asked officials to revise the proposal and hold hearings on the new draft (available online at www.valleywater.org). Officials left the meeting with a list of concerns to consider.
The final hearing, for residents of the West Valley Watershed, is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday in Cupertino Community Hall. District officials plan to take the proposal to the district board of directors in May. The proposed ordinance is available online at www.valleywater.org.
