WPA Projects

As the urban population of Oakland grew throughout the 1910s and 1920s, increased development along the banks of Sausal Creek left little room for natural shifts in flow. This limited the creek’s floodplain space, leading to an increase in flooding, as well as volume and velocity of stormwater runoff. In turn, this worsened streambank erosion. Federal efforts to mitigate erosion and landslides in the Sausal Creek area began with the Works Projects Administration (WPA) in 1935. The WPA stabilized the creek banks with concrete to slow the erosion process and straighten the course of water flow but ironically, the addition of concrete led to more stormwater runoff, and the channelization of water and incisions into the creek contributed even further to erosion. On the upside, WPA workers built a sanitary sewer that runs along the creek from Dimond Park to Leimert Bridge, and culverted sections of the creek to build roads over the land, which separated sewer water and stormwater and helped to limit the amount of sewage in the creek.