www.montereycountynow.com NOVEMBER 20-26, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 21 Setting alarms, having their rain gear near the door and waking up in the middle of the night to monitor the rain have become part of their routine during the winter. “We’re just held hostage by the rains now, because [the County of Monterey] is not taking care of their property,” says Bolsa Knolls resident Lisa Wise. For years, County officials have been pledging to take care of it. Crews and contractors from public works check the storm drains before rain forecast. A study to better understand the drainage and provide alternatives to clean the creek happening now is raising some cautious hopes that they finally might. But for the residents who are stacking sandbags and bracing for another winter, change remains to be seen. Wise has lived on the county side of Bolsa Knolls, on Paul Avenue near Rogge Road, for more than 30 years. Her house is painted white; the front yard is well kept with green grass and bushes, and several colorful wind spinners and decorations adorn her front porch. Her backyard, on the other hand, looks disheveled, with uneven ground and dusty patio chairs placed seemingly at random. Wise says her backyard once looked better than her front yard, but pouring money every year into keeping a nice backyard was unsustainable. During the flooding, she says her backyard turns into a river every year. The home has been in her husband’s family for several generations and is where their kids grew up. At some point, she says, it crossed their minds to sell, but “why would we want to sell a place that we have so much history? That’s not fair.” Wise says last year, her front and back yard flooded five or six times between January and April; on one of those occasions, water went into the garage. In 2023, when Wise had a home daycare, her garage and backyard flooded. The playground equipment and a sandbox were dragged against the fence. Several times a year she was forced to close her daycare during the rainy season because of the lack of access or fearing kids could be stranded at her place. “They had to find other daycare because they couldn’t bring their kids here,” Wise says. This impacted her financially. “I would give them discounts,” Wise says. “Why would I charge them when they couldn’t bring their kids here?” Just a few years after Wise arrived, Francisco Maciel moved to Bolsa Knolls in 1997. He lives with his wife, three adult kids, daughter-in-law and his uncle on a quarter-acre property. His home is four feet below street level, the lowest on the block. Over time, Maciel has made home improvements to keep the water from the creek away from his home. He changed out his wooden fence for a concrete retaining wall. Maciel says they spent over $70,000 on the retaining wall. “We were supposed to go for our 25th anniversary to Europe. We didn’t go, the money got put into retaining walls,” he says. Maciel says moving out of Bolsa Knolls isn’t an option—they wouldn’t be able to afford as spacious a home. Maciel works as a sixth-grade teacher at Virginia Rocca Barton Elementary in Salinas and every year he misses several days of school during the winter season. In the past two years he missed 21 days; this school year he had his first creek-related absence on Oct. 13 because of the storm forecast. Besides the retaining wall, Maciel has manholes and five pumps on his property; combined, they can drain about 8,500 gallons per hour. “My family, thank God—they know their routine,” Maciel says. That routine sometimes is setting the alarm clock for 2am or 3am, getting a raincoat and rain boots on, waking up the other members of the family, turning the pumps on and getting the water out of their yard. “Everybody says, you bought it here, it’s your fault. But I didn’t know they weren’t going to clean the creek,” Maciel says. Little Bear Creek originates in the hills along San Juan Grade, flows down through the Crazy Horse Ranch golf course and through farm fields, and straight through the Bolsa Knolls neighborhood and then into North Salinas. It flows alongside Ferrasci Little League Park, then eventually into Tembladero Slough, Moss Landing Harbor and Monterey Bay. Along that 12-mile journey, there is one point in particular where the creek changes both in name and in appearance. On the county side, as it flows into town, Little Bear Creek is a serpentine stream varying in depth, with trees and bushes growing in the channel; the Right: Little Bear Creek originates in the Gabilan Mountains and in wet weather, flows through agricultural fields and the Bolsa Knolls neighborhood before changing names to Santa Rita Creek in North Salinas. The blue area shows the 100-year floodplain around the creekbed; the red area shows the floodway adjacent to the creek that needs to be maintained to minimize flood risk. CELIA JIMÉNEZ COURTESY COUNTY OF MONTEREY Lisa Wise has lived in Bolsa Knolls for over 30 years, and says flooding happens on a yearly basis.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==