Nearly every soaking wet winter, Llagas Creek around Morgan Hill has flooded. Its rising, muddy waters poured over the banks in 2017 and in 2009, and many times before that over generations, damaging downtown businesses, homes and farm fields.
The federal government authorized a flood control project to fix it in 1954, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. Now finally, construction to bring the area up to modern flood standards is nearing the final stages.
Officials at the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose, are embarking on the third and final phase this month of a $241 million project to improve flood protection along 13 miles of Llagas Creek. The project recently received $80 million in federal funding, enough to finish the work.
“Downtown Morgan Hill was always flooding,” said John Varela, former mayor of Morgan Hill, and now a member of the water district board. “The merchants were just devastated by the flooding. This project has a personal impact on all of us who reside in Morgan Hill.”
When the project is finished in 2027, water district officials said Monday, it will be the largest flood control project the agency has completed in 20 years, since work on the Guadalupe River in downtown San Jose, which led to the creation of Guadalupe River Park in 2005.
The Llagas Creek project began in 2019. Construction crews widened and deepened about 4 miles of the creek and its tributaries on Morgan Hill’s southern edges and Gilroy’s western edges. They finished that work in 2022.
For the second phase, they dug a 2,000-foot long tunnel under Morgan Hill, 12 feet high and 14 feet wide, near West Main and Hale avenues to take excess flood waters and move them away from downtown. That work finished last month.
For the final phase, GraniteRock Construction, based in Watsonville, will build improvements along 8 miles of Upper Llagas Creek and its tributaries, East and West Little Llagas creeks, from Highway 101 to Llagas Road.
Construction will begin next May. When finished in 2027, the project will protect roughly 1,100 homes, 500 businesses and more than 1,300 acres of agricultural land.
Downtown Morgan Hill will have 100-year flood protection. Under that standard, the area is protected from floods so large they only have a 1-in-100 chance of occurring in any given year.
Llagas Creek begins in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Loma Prieta and flows northeast downhill, passing through Chesbro Reservoir, and turning south through Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy before emptying in the Pajaro River near the Santa Clara-San Benito County line, which ultimately flows to Monterey Bay.
The need for the project was first identified by federal officials 70 years ago. But a series of delays, including not finding federal agencies to oversee it, other priority projects around the county, and most important, lack of federal funding, moved it at a glacial pace.
“There were other projects, little pieces done over the years,” said Bhavani Yerrapotu, a deputy operating officer at the water district who oversaw the recent work. “But we needed the federal funding to make the big pieces happen.”
The final phase will cost $129 million, water district officials said Monday. Of that, $80 million came from Congress through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Funding was approved through the USDA’s “Small Watershed Program,” which protects agricultural areas from flooding. Most of the rest came from Measure B, the Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection Program, a $67-per-home parcel tax approved by Santa Clara County voters in 2012 and reauthorized by voters in 2020.
“We just never gave up,” said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, speaking at a ceremony for the project on Friday. “The people who are flood victims deserve that we keep going at it until we get the job done. We finally did piece together the funds.”
Already roughly 50,000 native plants and trees, including willows, oaks, and sycamores, have been planted as part of the first two phases of the project. When the third phase is finished, another 50,000 will be planted. The creek also has been enhanced to improve passed for steelhead trout.
Lofgren, who began searching for federal funding for the project in 1996, a year after taking office, said “this shows a great example of how when we all pull in the same direction and we never give up we can get the job done.”
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