Rancho San Antonio Flood Basin Comments Needed Tuesday

Written by L.A. Chung 

Rancho San Antonio lovers: Tuesday at the Quinlan Center in Cupertino will be one of your last chances to shape a flood control basin planned there. 

The engineers at the Santa Clara Valley Water District have developed about 60 percent of the flood detention plan at Rancho San Antonio Park, part of a flood control bond that voters passed in 2000 and again in 2012.

It is one of two detention areas designed to save 1,664 properties downstream of Permanente Creek as it flows toward the bay. The other is McKelvey Park in Mountain View. Two other locations, at Blach Intermediate School in Los Altos and at Cuesta Park in Mountain View, were dropped. 

At Rancho San Antonio, the excavated park area would capture peak flood water that would overflow creek banks during extreme rainstorms, especially downstream, causing flooding in Mountain View and Los Altos. 

The flood waters captured in the detention basins would be later released back into the creek and the park would look the same after waters have receded, engineers from the water district say.

Other design workshops were recently conducted for the McKelvey Park detention area in Mountain View. 

This is the last time the public will be asked to weigh in on the design before it is presented to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

Water district staff took the input on Rancho  San Antonio received from public sessions held Mar. 16, 2009 and Oct. 26, 2010, "made necessary changes, and produced more detailed designs of the detention area at Rancho San Antonio Park," according to a district statement.

For more information, For more information, contact Afshin Rouhani at (408) 630-2616 or visit the Santa Clara County Water District website.

After this process is completed, the design team of engineers and landscape architects will present the designs to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors for consideration of approval. 

The meeting will take place Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at the Quinlan Center social room, 10185 N. Stelling Road, Cupertino.