County Quarterly

By Jason Hoppin, Communications Manager County of Santa Cruz

There’s an exhibit at the Museum of Art and History by, for and about foster youth. Their stories are stunning and heartbreaking and hopeful. I would encourage everyone to come visit – you’ll be enlightened about the challenges these kids face. It runs through December 2017.

Roads Update

Soquel-San Jose is now passable at mile marker 5.91, making it two priority repairs that have now been opened (along with Glenwood Drive). Using our own crews, we installed some drainage and slowly started filling up the roadbed to make sure it held. This is a temporary fix as the site is on an ancient slide and could eventually need a bridge, but for now the road is open. We’ve also installed an inclinometer out there to monitor any movement in the ground.

Please drive with caution and plan for extra travel time, as the road is still down to one lane just south of the slide area. At that location (mile maker 5.36), we have installed a traffic light and are working to repair another washout. That area remains an active construction site, with work to be completed in about a month.

Over at Valencia Road, PG&E finished lifting power lines that run through the area allowing us to move cranes around on the site without knocking into the power lines. Better crane access means we can finish all the drilling needed to complete the shoring system, which is basically a way to wall off either side of the canyon so that the temporary bridge can go in without having it cave in the hillsides and onto the workers down below.

The foundation work on the bridge has begun. The bridge will start going in once the drilling and shoring is complete, so we are definitely seeing light at the end of the tunnel on the bridge. We’ll start building it once the foundations and the drilling/shoring are complete, with delivery on the pieces scheduled to begin July 24. Bridge assembly – barring any unforeseen delays – will begin July 31, and take about a week.

At Bear Creek, we’ve been continuing to do prep and design work and ordering materials. We did hit a permit snag with state and federal agencies, but we are working towards a quick resolution of those issues. We’ve met with a team from the Army Corps of Engineers on the site, and have enlisted the help of the highest levels of County and State government to help clear this up.

In addition, Reps. Anna Eshoo, Jimmy Panetta and Jackie Speier all wrote a joint letter on behalf of Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties (San Mateo is having similar issues related to storm damage repair). This has to do with what type of permit we are required to obtain for repairs, which could impact completion dates. However, we are optimistic this will soon be resolved in positive way.

We have completed some smaller work. The culvert at the end of Rockview Drive has been fixed and the road is fully open again. The washout at Skyland Road at mile marker 2.14 has been repaired and the road is back to normal. Work on the washout at mile marker 2.49 is underway, and expected to be completed within two weeks. Laurel Glen is completed and back to normal.

The Board of Supervisors just approved the funding necessary for our share of the recovery costs, and we have hired some outside help with disaster management issues. We’ve done a lot of the needed assessment work with state and federal agencies, so things will start picking up and getting more detailed as we move forward.