No sandbags. Fix the wall.
This is the one thing the neighborhood should be asking for right now, and it has nothing to do with which permanent floodwall eventually gets built.
Where things actually stand
In January 2026 the king tides came over the top of the timber wall along Las Gallinas Creek and soaked through it in places. The County declared a local emergency and logged roughly $2.6 million in damage.
The District's own account of that winter is sandbagging — sandbags to reduce seepage and boils during the event, and more sandbagging since as a short-term repair. Months on, that is still the answer for much of the alignment.
The wall itself averages about 9.75 feet at the crest. The County's own marker on the levee puts the 100-year tide at 9.8 feet. The barrier is below the tide it exists to stop — and it is still settling, on the order of 3 to 5 inches a decade.
Meanwhile nothing starts on the permanent floodwall until the environmental review is certified, and it is not certified. On September 23 the County stated that easement acquisition cannot begin until then — after which acting Zone 7 manager Robin Bartlett estimated two to three years to secure the rest. The County holds 16 of 111 easements, and has not secured funding for a $25–30 million project. Its old date of 2028 assumed the easements and the money were already in hand; they are not. Run the steps in the order staff described and a finished wall is five to seven years away. The County is meanwhile asking owners to donate the easement and waive compensation and appraisal rights (what that involves). The Supplemental Environmental Review allows construction phasing to run up to ten years — but that is a permitting envelope, not a build schedule. A wall of this length is two to three years of construction once it actually starts. Whichever design is built, the existing levee and timber wall is the flood protection for Santa Venetia into the 2030s — and it should be planned, funded, and reported as such.
Only one window a year — and mid-October is the real deadline
From February through August the marsh birds are nesting and heavy work along the creek is off limits. The environmental review identifies September through January as the period outside nesting season; the 2019 clearance carried the same September 1 – January 15 window. That is roughly 95 working days a year.
Work has to be contracted before the window opens to get finished inside it. Repairs not under contract by about mid-October will not be done in time, and the neighborhood goes into the rainy season on sandbags again. A season missed is a winter lost — there is no catching up in March.
The ask, in four parts
| # | What we are asking for |
|---|---|
| 1 | Repair the existing levee and timber wall to El. 10.0 feet above sea level (El. 10.0 NAVD88) along the full alignment, with no low spot below 9.5 feet. |
| 2 | Repair every failed section along the full alignment. No failed posts, planks, or redwood boxes carried into a wet season. |
| 3 | Seal the seepage at the pump-station pipe penetrations and the burrow zones — the leak paths the 2013 geotechnical report already identified. |
| 4 | Put a real closure at the Meadow Drive crossing, and flood-fight materials in place by November 15, with a named person responsible. |
And then: do it again every fall, under a written program with a funded reserve and a measured crest, until a permanent wall is closed end to end.
Why ten feet is the right target
The County itself posts the answer on the levee. Its own interpretive marker gives the 100-year tide elevation as 9.8 feet and states that a tide of that magnitude has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year.
| Reference | Elevation (NAVD88) |
|---|---|
| January 2026 event — king tide plus surge, the night the wall was overtopped | ≈ 8.8 ft |
| USACE 2013 100-year water surface | ≈ 9.1 ft |
| Existing berm, average crest today | ≈ 9.75 ft |
| FEMA effective 100-year stillwater — the figure on the County's own marker | 9.8 ft |
| Interim target for the existing wall | 10.0 ft |
| Permanent floodwall design crest | 11.0 ft |
Ten feet is the County's own 100-year number rounded up — about a quarter of a foot over it, and about 1.2 feet above the water level that came over the wall in January 2026. It sits deliberately below the 11 feet the permanent wall is designed to, because 11 feet is a new-wall standard that old timber cannot be held to.
This is an interim condition for an existing timber wall, not a claim of FEMA accreditation, and it carries no wave-runup or freeboard allowance. The 9.5-foot floor is the point at which a stretch of wall is closer to the January 2026 water level than to the target — those stretches get repaired first.
Why repair a wall the permanent project will replace?
Because every plan for the new wall leans on the old one.
Under the County's design the timber wall comes out — but demolition is rolling and tide-coordinated, the phases may span a decade, and each winter in between is spent behind whatever timber wall is still standing, with the new sheets sealed into it. Until the permanent wall is closed end to end, the timber wall is what is holding the water back.
Either way, every dollar spent keeping the existing wall sound is spent on the barrier the permanent project itself depends on until it is closed. This is not money thrown at something that is about to be torn down.
The two questions to put to the County
By email, or out loud at a Zone 7 meeting. Short questions, on the record, that have a factual answer:
- What levee repairs are under contract for this fall?
- Which properties will be on sandbags this winter?
These are answerable questions. If the answer is a short list, the neighborhood knows where it stands. If there is no answer, that is the answer — and it is one worth having in writing before the rain starts.
How to reach the County, and what else you can do → Join the email list
Where these figures come from
- $2.6 million damage; local emergency — Marin County local emergency proclamation, Santa Venetia levee, January 13, 2026.
- Sandbagging as the emergency and short-term response — Marin County Flood Control District, Zone 7 hearing record, June 2026.
- 111 waterfront parcels requiring easements; 16 secured — Marin County Public Works, Santa Venetia Floodwall Project Update, March 2023.
- Rolling tide-coordinated demolition; phasing up to 10 years; September–January work window — Supplemental Environmental Review / Subsequent MND, August 2026 (pp. 14, 23, 43, 44, 47).
- Earliest construction 2028 — County project FAQ, January 2026.
- $25–30 million program figure — Flood Control District Zone 7 budget hearing, June 8, 2026.
- Design crest 11.0 ft; USACE and FEMA water surfaces — County Basis of Design v2.0, March 2023 (pp. 8–10, 10, 11).
- 100-year tide 9.8 ft — County of Marin / Flood Control District "100-Year Tide Elevation" interpretive marker on the Santa Venetia levee, dated May 2018, citing the FEMA Flood Insurance Study.
- Seepage at pipe penetrations; crest settlement 3–5 in. per decade; failure probability at near-crest water — Kleinfelder, Geotechnical Data Report, Las Gallinas Levee System, July 3, 2013.
- Meadow Drive crossing as "temporary flood barrier … by others" — Marin County, Santa Venetia Levee Upgrade Layout Plan and Profile, Project No. 2200112, November 2, 2022.
The full written proposal behind this page — a one-year plan for the 2026–27 season and a five-year interim protection program — has been submitted to the Flood Control District, Zone 7, and will be posted here.