Flooded again: Southeastern San Diego residents blame city for devastating damage, want answers

The flooded streets, swamped yards and water-logged homes in the neighborhoods along the Chollas Creek channel in southeastern San Diego are an all too familiar sight for fed-up residents.

As the waters from the torrential storm on Monday recede and homes dry out, frustrated residents complained about the chronic flooding problem in the neighborhood and put the blame squarely on the city. 

On Wednesday, 56-year-old Gerardo Hernandez sat on a chair with his neighbor. Behind them, a few people cleaned Hernandez’s damaged home. A young man carried plastic bins in an SUV he pulled into the driveway. A woman hosed down the concrete before the home’s porch. 

“The city is not listening to us, ” Hernandez said. “It’s time for them to start doing something. We all gotta come together and go after the city because it is not right. This is gonna keep on happening.”

Some residents are considering filing a lawsuit against the city. It won’t be the first time.

A little more than four years ago, a group of homeowners on Beta Street in Southcrest sued the city for flood damage caused by a storm on Dec. 6, 2018. The suit blamed the poor stormwater systems and bad maintenance of the creek channel for causing the flooding. 

It also said that the construction of the 2.6-acre Southcrest Trails Neighborhood Park made the problem worse by creating an embankment on the south side of the street, next to a dirt alley. 

When it rained hard, the suit said, water funneled down the embankment into the unpaved alley, which quickly flowed into the Beta Street homes. 

The city argued neither the design of the park nor the drainage systems were to blame. Instead, court records show in a motion to dismiss the case lawyers for the city argued that flooding was caused by a “1,000 year storm,” or an “unforeseeable extreme storm event” which caused the flooding. 

A 1,000-year storm is a term that means the chances of a storm of such magnitude occurring in a given year are 1 in 1,000. It does not mean such a storm happens only once every 1,000 years. 

That argument did not succeed when it was made in 2022, as the judge on the case declined to throw out the suit. Later that year the city agreed to settle the case with the homeowners for $209,000, records show.

On Tuesday at a news conference at Lincoln High School city officials said the rain was, again, a 1,000-year storm event. 

Mayor Todd Gloria and other department heads defended the city’s preparedness, noting crews had been out inspecting storm drains in preparation for the rain since Thursday but could not prepare for the intensity of the system.

“The amount of water that we received yesterday, there is not a drainage system that would’ve been able to accommodate all of that,” Gloria said. “What happened yesterday was extraordinary.”

But that did not sit well with Patricia Cruz, 47, who has lived in her home for more than three decades and dismissed the notion that the flooding was an entirely natural disaster. She said the city should be accountable for the poor state of the area’s infrastructure. 

“It’s still the city’s job to go in there and make sure that this crazy disaster isn’t going to happen,” she said. “You know, it’s still their job to do that.”

The 2019 lawsuit detailed how residents had been urging the city to address the problem since at least 2008. Homeowner Gregory Montoya repeatedly asked for the dirt alley to be paved, and was told in an email in February 2017 the paving was scheduled to be done the next month. It was not.

The suit also said that the city has long had a capital improvement project called the “Beta Street Green Alley Project” which called for paving the alley, installing new storm drain catch basins with filters.

But the work still hasn’t been done, said Evan Walker, the lawyer who filed the suit. 

“The conditions we alleged that contributed to the flooding were not fixed by the city,” he said after visiting the neighborhood again Wednesday. 

At a news conference Thursday, Deputy Chief Operating Officer Kris McFadden said the project, like many planned over the years, was not done because there was no money at the time. 

Now, the city is using some of a $733 million federal loan package to begin the design work. It’s also looking for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to fund another $24 million.

He said that the entire cost of that one segment is estimated at $50 million.

McFadden’s comments about the flooding seemed to be intended to counter the chorus of complaints from residents filtered through media reports since the rain ended. He talked about the challenge of managing a watershed that is thousands of acres and runs through San Diego, La Mesa and Lemon Grove.

“We have done so much maintenance in this area,” he said, ticking off a list of statistics. Last year the city inspected 2,200 storm drains, cleaned 547 and hauled out 113 tons of debris in Chollas Creek alone.  

Before the rain, he said the city inspected 82 storm drains in the area. 

Located between interstates 5 and 805 north of National City, Southcrest is a predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood. Like the rest of southeastern San Diego, it’s considered by the city to be a “community of concern.” That means it tends to be more polluted, poorer, less walkable and has worse health outcomes than other areas in San Diego. 

Some residents like Montoya are considering suing again. He said the city did not do a good job clearing out the storm drains or unclogging the overgrown creek channel in advance of the storm. Debris from the neighborhood and uprooted vegetation flowed down the channel and backed up at an overpass at National Avenue, creating a dam that triggered flooding.

Montoya was angry and devastated as he walked down the street in mud-caked boots. His collection of antiques were laid out in his garage, awaiting his assessment to see what he could salvage. The 30-year resident was defiant and said he would not be chased out.

“It’s my home,” he said. “I’m not going.”

The problems in Southcrest are part of the city’s massive deficit in stormwater control, which now stands at $1.6 billion — a large portion of its now $4.8 billion funding gap for infrastructure. 

At the news conference earlier this week, Gloria said the city is taking steps to solve the problem, but that it will take years due to addressing environmental impact concerns and getting approvals from other agencies. Todd Snyder, the city’s stormwater department director, said that a list of 50 projects the city wants to tackle has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency — just one step in the lengthy process.