188 



nir.g effort of [he next three years, at- 

 tendance at the design team's meetings 

 remained high, averaging approxi- 

 mately 20 persons per meeting. 



Competition among the different in- 

 terests on the team resulted in many 

 grueling meetings. An important turn- 

 ing point in the consensus-making 

 process was the appointment of Jim 

 Cutler as chairman of the design team. 

 Cutler, a neutral person from the coun- 

 ty planning department with good 

 group management skills, replaced the 

 county engineer, who had a personal 

 bias for a single-objective design. The 

 other key component to the success of 

 the consensus design process was that 

 the county paid the citizen's own hy- 

 draulic expert, Phil Williams, who had 

 helped design the Modified Plan, to 

 represent the coalition at design team 

 meetings. The ultimate measure of suc- 

 cess of the consensus planning process 

 was that, after an unsuccessful, 29-year 

 planning history, the flood-control 

 project was designed and funded and 

 construction had begun within two 

 years. Two notable problems arose: the 

 first, when relevant and interested par- 

 ties were not included on the design 

 team; and the second, when continuity 

 in decisionmaking and plan formula- 

 tion broke down because of continual 

 changes in corps and county staffing. 

 The first problem occurred because the 

 Richmond Unified School District 

 Board was not adequately involved in 

 the design of the project, which ran 

 through their property near Verde Ele- 

 mentary School. The school board held 

 up the project by withholding the right- 

 of-way until its concerns were met. The 

 school board also used the advocacy 

 planning strategy by hiring a consul- 

 tant to design an alternative plan. By 

 withholding the right-of-way, the school 

 board was able to force a more envi- 

 ronmentally sensitive treatment of the 

 part of the creek running through 

 school property. 



The other difficult problem that 

 plagued the design team was the lack of 

 continuity in both the federal and local 

 staff assigned to the project. Between 

 1984 and 1988 the corps of engineers 

 assigned three different engineers to 



the job of project manager. The resul- 

 tant discontinuity in decisionmaking 

 brought on an environmental and pub- 

 licity disaster featured in a froni-pagc 

 article in the San Francisco Examiner- 

 Chronicle on 14 June 1987." Construc- 

 tion plans that did not reflect the deci- 

 sions of the design team were given to 

 the contractors who accordingly bull- 

 dozed a half mile of riparian vegetation 

 that was supposed to be preserved. 

 Shortly thereafter, a levee constructed 

 in the wTong location prevented the im- 

 plementation of a marsh restoration 

 project and jeopardized state funds for 

 the marsh enhancement plan. The situ- 

 ation was exacerbated when a key 

 member of the county staff gave the 

 construction contractors approval to 

 proceed with plans that did not corre- 

 spond to the team's decisions. To pre- 

 vent further problems, the design team 

 adopted a new system of taking team- 

 approved minutes in addition to pub- 

 lishing and mailing cross-sections and 

 maps of the approved stream channel 

 and project designs to all design team 

 members. 



Design Features 



The design team chose features for 

 the Consensus Plan from the designs of 

 the Modified and Selected plans al- 

 ready proposed. Although the design 

 team's final Consensus Plan is a com- 

 promise between the two plans, the ba- 

 sic components of the Modified Plan 

 were retained because of the impor- 

 tance of managing the large amount of 

 sediment, particularly in the Wildcat 

 watershed, to avoid degrading the en- 

 dangered species' habitat in the marsh- 

 es (see Figure 3(c) on page 19). 



One of the most important features 

 of the coalition's Modified Plan was 

 that the stream corridors, or flood- 

 ways, would remain within the same 

 narrow right-of-way boundaries that 

 the 1982 county's Selected Plan used 

 and would provide the same level of 

 protection against a 100-year flood. 

 The right-of-ways of the corps' original 

 1976 plan had been up to 250 feet wide 

 to accommodate certain environmental 

 features. The Modified Plan, however, 



included riparian vegetation next to the 

 channels and a teiTace for sediment ac- 

 cumulation but did not increase the 

 project's width beyond 180 feet. Yet 

 the designs of the Modified Plan that 

 were incorporated into the Consensus 

 Plan provided the same level of flood 

 protection as the 1976 design because a 

 different design philosophy was used in 

 which the channels were modeled not 

 on the dimensions or performance of a 

 hydraulic flume but on natural channel 

 geometry. Thus, the design of the Con- 

 sensus Plan disproves the common pre- 

 sumption that only trapezoidal or rec- 

 tangular channel geometry can be used 

 in a narrow project right-of-way. 



Ultimately, sections of the right-of- 

 ways in the Consensus Plan were in- 

 creased because slate and local entities 

 purchased or donated lands to enhance 

 the project. For example, the State 

 Lands Commission purchased some 

 downstream land on Wildcat Creek be- 

 tween the riparian area and the marsh 

 to provide a transition zone that would 

 enhance the environment and catch 

 sediment. Upstream on Wildcat Creek, 

 the school district donated additional 

 land for the right-of-way to provide 

 more and better design options. The 

 county had never presented these op- 

 tions to the school board. Because of 

 design problems with the sediment ba- 

 sin, corps and county officials conclud- 

 ed that the basin should be relocated to 

 an upstream site. This change ultimate- 

 ly raised the land acquisition costs for 

 the project. 



The Consensus Plan substituted the 

 standard trapezoidal dirt and riprap 

 channels, rectangular concrete chan- 

 nels, and box culverts of the Selected 

 Plan with natural floodplain features 

 of the Modified Plan wherever possi- 

 ble. The Consensus Plan has 10- to 

 15-foot-wide, meandering, low-flow 

 channels designed to carry the creek's 

 1.5 recurrence interval flows (mean 

 flows) and floodplains where the flows 

 could spread, lose velocity, and deposit 

 sediment. Riparian vegetation is in- 

 cluded on both sides of the low-flow 

 channels and riparian trees will shade 

 the channels and prevent the growth of 

 bulrushes and willows, which obstruct 

 December 1989 



