THE FLOOD WATERS THAT BOTTLENECK behind a downtown foot bridge in San Anselmo are destined to move downstream but the question of whether that will happen in a slow and controlled way, or all at once in a 100-year storm, is something the city and county are studying.    

On Wednesday, the town of San Anselmo announced that it has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to review the potential impacts of removing Building Bridge 2, an old, dilapidated downtown foot bridge over the San Anselmo Creek.  

FEMA’s consultation is part of a long regulatory process that will result in the creation of a new downtown public park, Creek Park. FEMA will produce a Conditional Letter of Map Revision that will check a box in the permit process.  

It will determine any needed changes in flood hazard boundaries and in the insurance requirements under FEMA’s National Flood Insurance program. The county expects to remove the bridge in 2026, depending on the FEMA review. 

The bridge pinches the flow of San Anselmo creek, putting upstream properties at risk of flooding in a big storm, the type that experts say happens once every 100 years, according to the city website.  

The city’s goal is to restore the natural flow of the creek and enhance public space that supports restaurants and cultural events. 

The flood district’s projection modeling indicates that the bridge removal will eliminate 20 upstream properties from the FEMA floodplain. If the bridge is removed, the models show that 58 other downstream properties may see a rise in flood elevation during a 100-year storm event.  

According to the county announcement, nine of those properties may need some flood mitigation measures before the bridge comes down.  

The district is conducting surveys and technical evaluations to find out if it needs to design new structures, strengthen creek banks or enact other flood mitigation measures. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people wanting to get out of the house during lock down filled the open-air space to socialize and dine outdoors. The city leased the deck of the bridge from the county, installed a groundcover and added trees and picnic tables to facilitate public use. 

The city’s Reimagine Creek Park Project envisions a revitalized downtown commons area built as part of the San Anselmo Flood Risk Reduction Project, SAFRR, a program of the Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District that addresses flooding risks in nearby areas.  

The bridge removal is part three of the SAFRR project, according to the flood district site. Part one was the 2022 construction of a flood water storage basin on the site of the Sunnyside Nursery in Fairfax. Part two was the removal of the buildings near the downtown San Anselmo creek bridge in 2020, opening space for the future park.  

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.