San Diego has been doubling down on its efforts to clear miles of storm channels after the devastating floods in 2024. It’s also in preparation for what meteorologists say could be the strongest El Niño in at least 100 years.
“We’re performing more channel maintenance than ever before,” Todd Snyder, the city’s stormwater department director, told the city’s Environment Committee on Thursday.
His presentation before committee members comes after Mayor Todd Gloria announced Tuesday a citywide plan to aggressively prepare for El Niño weather conditions and call on the public to protect their homes.
“The city is preparing and we need you to prepare as well because when severe weather arrives, the work that we do before that first drop of rain will determine how ready San Diego is to weather it,” Gloria said at the news conference.
But it's unclear how those efforts will fare with heavy rains expected later this fall and winter.
“Only 17% of our channels are designed to handle a 100-year storm,” Snyder said. “Some of our channels are only designed to handle a two- or a five-year storm. So, we can actually start seeing overtopping and flooding, even if we get just an inch of rain in a very short period of time.”
El Niño typically occurs every two to seven years and is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. For months, national forecasters have anticipated the weather event, but their confidence in the likelihood of a powerful event has gradually increased. Last week, they said the odds that the weather phenomenon will reach the highest strength level are higher than 90%.
Between July 2025 and May, the city has inspected nearly 33,000 storm drain inlets and completed about 1,600 cleanups in the Chollas Creek, San Diego Bay and river, Los Peñasquitos watersheds and the Tijuana River, areas that easily flood when it rains. Crews have also replaced 1.5 miles of deteriorated pipe and responded to more than 4,000 service requests from the public and staff. Snyder said. But since July of last year, the city’s backlog of those notifications has steadily increased by about 1,500 over the last fiscal year, according to city data.
“What this means is that issues are coming into us faster than we can address them,” Snyder said. “And I think it’s a reflection of the aging condition of our overall system. We’re an older city and our drainage systems have not really been updated in decades.”
Over the past five years, the city has been working on 50 stormwater projects it considers an emergency to address. Snyder said nearly 20 are under construction and the rest have been completed, costing the city about $230 million.
So far this year, Snyder said the city declared four new stormwater-related emergencies, “and it’s not even raining.”
For 2027, the city has allocated $30 million for any new emergency repairs that may arise. The investment would come as the city’s stormwater system faces a $5 billion funding gap over the next half-decade, officials said.
The San Diego City Council is expected to receive the same presentation on stormwater efforts and public comment Sept. 1.
