Top image: Guadalupe River flood-control works, San Jose. Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

On a sunny October afternoon, the San Jose City Council and the Valley Water board of directors sat down together at the water district’s Almaden Expressway headquarters to talk about rain. The agenda for the Oct. 13 joint special meeting listed three items: El Niño preparedness for the 2026-27 rainy season, an update on the Anderson Dam seismic retrofit and Coyote Creek flood protection projects, and the Pure Water Silicon Valley potable reuse project.

The urgency is straightforward. A strong El Niño, the Pacific warming pattern that often, though not always, brings heavy winter rain to California, is gathering strength, and forecasters say a wet winter is likely, San José Spotlight reported. ABC7 noted that the state has issued an emergency declaration ahead of the anticipated event, allowing local governments to keep preparing.

The jurisdiction problem

The most pointed discussion at the joint meeting was not about rainfall totals but about responsibility. Officials and residents warned that fuzzy jurisdictional boundaries along San Jose’s 140 miles of waterways make it unclear who should clear a fallen tree or a pile of debris before it becomes a dam, according to San José Spotlight.

“When our residents, our shared constituents look into the waterways and see a fallen tree or a blockage … they shouldn’t have to think about the jurisdictional boundaries between our agencies,” Mayor Matt Mahan said. “They just see a problem, and they want a solution, and they expect us to deliver it.”

Valley Water Board Chair Tony Estremera framed it as neighborly maintenance: “Our agencies both have a responsibility to maintain our own properties, just as a good neighbor has a responsibility to manage gutters and rain sprouts at their homes to avoid overflow onto their neighbors’ yards.” The council backed a Mahan proposal directing city and water district staff to identify which waterway segments pose the highest flood risk.

Valley Water’s Christopher Hakes, who oversees watershed management, acknowledged the district relies on residents to flag problems outside the waterways it directly monitors. “At this point, we are in the ‘see something, say something,’” he said.

What the city says it has done

In an Oct. 15 news release, San Jose said transportation crews are clearing 35,000 storm drains and monitoring more than 60 flood-prone areas. The city says it has updated its emergency operations plan, written a crisis communications plan and built a joint emergency action plan with Valley Water that has been executed through five storm events, including the 2024 atmospheric rivers. A large flood exercise with Valley Water took place in September, and more than 85% of city employees are trained as emergency workers, according to the release.

The city’s newer Emergency Operations Center, an 11,000-square-foot facility opened in 2024, is expected to anchor coordination, ABC7 reported. “We can’t prevent any and all flooding forevermore, but we want to make sure we’re really transparent about everything we’re doing to mitigate and reduce the risk in the areas that we think are highest risk,” Mahan told the station. The city will hold a virtual El Niño preparedness workshop on Oct. 21 at 6 p.m.

The long arc since 2017

The 2017 Coyote Creek flood, which followed heavy rain that caused Anderson Dam to overflow, remains the reference point. Since then Valley Water has pursued a seismic retrofit of the dam, which has been drawn down to 3% of capacity, and is building flood walls along much of Coyote Creek, according to San José Spotlight. One resident commenting on the Spotlight story captured a widespread frustration that, nearly 10 years later, protection still feels incomplete.

The region’s posture is shifting in other ways. Across the county line, San Mateo County supervisors are scheduled on Oct. 20 to consider a resolution proclaiming a local emergency for the El Niño season for preparedness purposes and creating an interdepartmental task force.

The deeper lesson is institutional. Silicon Valley’s flood risk is managed by a patchwork of city public works crews, a regional water district, state highway agencies and private property owners, each responsible for its own reach of creek. That arrangement can work in an ordinary winter. In a climate of sharper swings between drought and deluge, the gaps between agencies can matter as much as the capacity of any one levee. Mapping those gaps before the first atmospheric river arrives is a modest goal. It may also be the most valuable thing local government does this winter.

Sources: City of San Jose Legistar agenda (Oct. 13, 2026); San José Spotlight (Oct. 14, 2026); City of San Jose news release (Oct. 15, 2026); ABC7 News (Oct. 14, 2026); San Mateo County Board of Supervisors agenda (Oct. 20, 2026).