Union Pacific Starts Urgent Work on Train Tracks and Erosion Before Notifying Carpinteria City Officials
CARPINTERIA, Calif. (KEYT) - In preparation for winter rains, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) is working on drainages along the train tracks in Carpinteria.
That should be welcomed, but the city says it was never told.
Last week, UPR began the project and it caught the eye of many citizens. Some wrote to city councilmembers asking 'what was going on?'"
City Community Development Director Nick Bobroff reported Monday, the project began without any advance notification to the city. It is all taking place on the UPR corridor and orange fencing is marking off the work zones.
Heavy equipment is on site to reinforce the areas of concern below the bluffs and down to the bridge area by Bates Beach.
The city says it has recently made contact with the work crew to get more details and contacts for the project. No mpas have been released or shown to the public at the council meeting.
Bobroff said, "specifically, they are working to repair five existing drainage culverts roughly along that runs between the Rincon Bluffs Preserve and the Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Preserve. The railroad has informed us they are exempt from requiring any local permits from the city of state citing preemption. So we are digging into that a little bit."
The effort is to create a safe rail corridor for freight and passenger trains, including the Amtrak Surfliner and Coast Starlight.
Union Pacific says it is exempt from many of the normal state and local permits that come with these projects.
Concerns have been raised about the disruption of soil or sensitive areas. El Nino related concerns are widespread across the county with the potential for intense storms or damaging high tides.
Recently Montecito had a town hall meeting to give information to residents.
Caltrans attended and said some of the drainages including Oak Creek and San Ysidro Creek have been dug out but they say the flow is undersized for a major series of storms in succession.
Todd Hall with the National Weather Service said, "is the risk above normal? Definitely it is higher than normal but if you equate being catastrophic, it is not that way."
The community has been told, large steady storms if they materialize will be overwhelming as they have been in the past, especially if there is no break in the systems for water to drain down in a safe way.
Matt Griffin is the Santa Barbara County Deputy Public Works Director. He says, "no amount of routine maintenance is going to prevent those creeks from flooding their banks if we get extreme rainfall."
After the 2018 Montecito debris flow, the Randall Road debris basin was engineered to catch a large amount of debris, including trees and rocks, but still let water flow through in a managed wayy.
That is why getting alerts on rainfall impacts and evacuation notices are essential for public safety.
Santa Barbara County will have a winter storm Virtual El Niño Community Meeting, taking place on Thursday, October 1 from 5:30-7 p.m. The presentation will be livestreamed on YouTube in both English and Spanish.
County of Santa Barbara El Niño Community Meeting
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