Santa Venetia Floodwall Facts
Independent, plain-language information for the 600 homes in the Santa Venetia flood zone
On the record right now: the County's revised draft environmental review for the floodwall is out for public comment until September 28, 2026, 4:00 p.m. Comments submitted in that window become part of the project record.

The five facts every affected homeowner should know

1. The easement is the project

The current design requires a permanent 18-foot easement into 111 private backyards — forever. In five years of acquisition effort, the County has secured 16. The County has stated it will fund only voluntary easement acquisitions on this project — and because a flood barrier with a gap protects no one, every parcel matters: one holdout stalls the entire alignment. Until the easement problem is solved, no amount of funding produces a wall.

On September 24, 2026 the County posted a Flood Protection Easement Donation Process for this project. An owner who donates is asked to "voluntarily waive compensation and, where applicable, appraisal rights." The County describes donating as voluntary and advises owners to consult their own legal, financial or tax advisor first. That is sound advice, and this site repeats it: know what you are signing, and what it is worth, before you sign it. What the process involves →

2. The easement requirement was assumed, not engineered

The County's stated reason for the wide easements is good public policy and future maintenance of the composite and timber wall system. Those maintenance needs are real for those materials — composite and timber deteriorate, rodents burrow, crews need recurring backyard access. But the County's March 2023 Basis of Design — the document that is supposed to justify every major design decision — contains no engineering analysis of the easement requirement, and the rationale depends entirely on the choice of wall material. The County's own published cost-by-phase figures put right-of-way at roughly $10 million — a major project component with no documented engineering basis.

3. No grant has been secured for the easements

Some grant programs can pay for land and easement acquisition, but flood-project money is overwhelmingly written for construction — and in federal flood-control work the local sponsor is normally required to furnish the lands, easements and rights-of-way itself, as its own contribution rather than as something the grant buys. Right-of-way lands on the community by design. For Santa Venetia the question is settled by the County's own project page, which states: "Funding has not yet been identified to pursue easement acquisition." The County's own fact sheet splits the program into planning ($800,000), environmental ($200,000), right-of-way ($10 million) and construction ($14 million), and its FAQ names unsecured right-of-way and the absence of voter-approved funding as the two things holding the project. In 2022 the project lost $2 million of a $3.2 million FEMA grant because the easements were not in hand, and in June 2026 the Board of Supervisors had to approve a $5 million loan to begin easement work. As the plan stands, the $10 million right-of-way cost reaches residents through a future Prop 218 assessment, estimated at $100–150 per month per household for 30 years — $36,000–$54,000 per home.

Correction, September 24, 2026: this fact previously read "No grant pays for easements." That was too broad — some state and federal programs do list land and easement acquisition among eligible costs. It has been rewritten to the accurate claim: none has been secured for Santa Venetia. Thanks to the reader who flagged it.

4. There is no schedule, no finance plan, and no funded repair program

The County's own FAQ concedes there is no construction schedule and that 2028 is the soonest possible start. A draft finance plan promised by the end of 2025 was never produced. The County's FY2027–31 Capital Improvement Program lists the Santa Venetia floodwall as "TBD" with $0 programmed in all five years. At the September 23, 2026 Flood Zone 7 Advisory Board meeting the County stated that easement acquisition cannot begin until the environmental review is certified, and Robin Bartlett, acting Flood Zone 7 manager, estimated two to three years to secure the easements after that. Acquisition alone therefore runs past 2028, the date the County calls the earliest possible construction start.

Meanwhile the wall we actually have is maintained "as the Zone 7 budget allows" — roughly $100,000 of work in 2025, and five repair sites funded for 2026 at about $573,000 against 49 parcels the County itself called critical in March 2026. In July 2026 the Advisory Board reported further repairs only as "anticipated," with disaster reimbursement "still far off." That is not an interim protection plan; it is a maintenance line item.

5. Acquisition is the critical path — and it has never been independently reviewed

Money can be raised. A schedule can be written. Neither produces a wall until 111 private owners have signed. Five years of effort has produced 16, the County funds only voluntary acquisition, and a barrier with a gap protects no one — so every remaining parcel is on the critical path. Each one still needs its own boundary survey, plat and legal description before an easement can be conveyed at all. Yet the March 2023 Basis of Design, the document meant to justify every major design decision, does not contain the word "easement," and no engineering analysis anywhere explains why the permanent strip must be 18 feet rather than narrower. The requirement that has stalled this project for five years has never had an independent third-party review.

The reasonable ask: before any Prop 218 vote, the County should commission an independent engineering review of the easement requirement itself — how wide it must be, why, and what it will take to acquire 111 of them. If the current design is truly the only option, the review will confirm it. If not, the review could save the community years and millions of dollars.

What the project requires, and what exists

No commentary in this table. Left column: what the County's plan requires. Right column: where that item stands, in the County's own words and numbers.

What the plan requiresWhere it stands
$25–30 million to build$0 programmed in the FY2027–31 capital plan, all five years
$10 million of right-of-way"Funding has not yet been identified to pursue easement acquisition"
Permanent easements on 111 parcels16 secured in five years, voluntary acquisition only
A start to easement acquisitionCannot begin until the environmental review is certified
Time to acquire the remaining 95Two to three years, per County staff, September 23, 2026
A construction start2028 at the earliest, per the County FAQ; no schedule exists
A funding mechanism for residentsProp 218 assessment, not yet drafted; a finance plan promised for end of 2025 was never produced
A date a wall standsNone has ever been published
The same start date, using the County's own inputs2029 at the earliest — and only if nothing slips

Every entry on the right is from a County document, County web page, or County staff on the record. Sources are listed below.

Why 2028 cannot be the start date

2028 is the County's figure, and it was published before this year's sequence was known. Put the County's own inputs in order and the arithmetic gives a different answer:

  1. Environmental review certified. Comment on the revised draft closed September 28, 2026. Responses, revisions and certification follow — realistically sometime in 2027.
  2. Easement acquisition begins. It cannot begin before that certification. County staff put acquisition at two to three years — which reaches 2029 or 2030, and assumes 95 remaining owners all sign voluntarily.
  3. A funding mechanism. A Prop 218 assessment requires an engineer's report, mailed notices, a protest period and a vote. None of it has been drafted, and the finance plan promised for the end of 2025 was never produced.
  4. Bid and award. Only after funding is secured and the right-of-way is in hand.

Run those in sequence and construction starts in 2029 at the earliest, and could be considerably later. Not because anyone is failing — because that is what the steps add up to when you lay them end to end. The County has never published a schedule that does this arithmetic in public.

A finished wall is five to seven years away. Certification in 2027. Two to three years of easement acquisition after that. An assessment vote and a bid period that have not been started. Then two to three years of construction. Add them up and the wall stands somewhere between 2031 and 2033 — and that assumes every step goes well, every one of 95 remaining owners signs voluntarily, and the money appears. This is a professional engineering estimate, made by William Tucker, PE (California civil engineer #26071, licensed since 1971, 55 years in heavy infrastructure, and a resident behind this levee), using the County's own published steps and durations. It is an opinion — one engineer's judgment, resting on the arithmetic above, which anyone is free to check. It is not the County's estimate; the County has not published one. We would welcome a professional discussion of it. If the County, its consultants or any other engineer works the same steps and reaches a different date, send it to mail@svfloodfacts.org and it will be posted here beside this one, in full. A published schedule is what this neighborhood has been asking for since 2021. We would rather be corrected than be right.

Five to seven years is seven more winters, on a timber wall whose crest already sits below the 100-year tide and which is still settling three to five inches a decade. That is the whole case for repairing what we have. Not instead of the floodwall — because of how far away the floodwall is.

None of that delay is construction. Building this wall is a two-to-three-year job once it starts — the environmental document's ten-year phasing window is a permitting envelope, not a schedule anyone would build to. Every one of the five years already gone, and every year still ahead of us, is spent on easements, funding and paperwork before a single pile goes in the ground. That is where the delay lives, and that is where it has to be fixed.

The steps above are the County's; the addition is ours. If any step moves faster, the date moves with it — and this page will say so.

Read the right-hand column end to end. Acquisition cannot start until certification. Acquisition then takes two to three years. Construction cannot start before 2028 and has no schedule or funding behind it. There is no arrangement of those facts in which a permanent wall protects this neighborhood in 2027, 2028, 2029 or 2030. That is the reason this site asks for the existing wall to be repaired every fall until the permanent one stands — not as an alternative to it, but because the arithmetic leaves nothing else between these houses and the tide.

The public record

Sources for every figure on this site, most recent first. Where the County moves its files around, we link the page that holds them rather than a PDF address that breaks — see where to find these at the bottom.

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021 and earlier

Where to find these

The County keeps these documents on four pages. Direct PDF addresses change without notice; these pages do not.

Copies of the key documents will be mirrored here as the library is built out, so they stay available if a County page moves. Want a specific document in the meantime? Email mail@svfloodfacts.org.