WASHINGTON, D.C. – The long-awaited Mission Creek flood control and habitat restoration project inched one step closer to completion yesterday with an announcement by Rep. Lois Capps that $600,000 in federal stimulus money has been secured for the project.

City and county officials say the money is enough to finish design work on the creek, which winds through dense neighborhoods on its route from the steep Santa Ynez Mountains to the ocean, and has been the subject of much controversy and catastrophe over the last 40 years. Even so, the project won’t likely be completed for many more years.

Nevertheless, officials say having a completed design will ensure that when funding does become available, boots can hit the ground quickly.

“This makes it possible for our other requests,” Capps said, acknowledging much funding is still needed to complete the project, but when it arrives, construction could begin quickly.

The project, which stretches from the ocean to Canon Perdido Street, will be completed in phases. The first will stretch from Highway 101 near the Amtrak Station on Montecito Street, to the ocean.

The most recent, and arguably the largest chunk to be completed, came earlier this year when a massive concrete culvert was placed beneath the railroad tracks, in line with the southern most end of Chapala Street.

Cameron Benson, creek restoration manager for the city of Santa Barbara, said the culvert was placed beneath the railroad tracks during a scheduled 60-hour Union Pacific maintenance period, and cost $1.3 million.

Though the culvert isn’t currently serving a purpose, it will eventually be the keystone to a short, but complicated diversion of the creek around the sandstone, concrete channel that begins on the south side of the freeway, runs parallel to the train tracks, then cuts toward the ocean.

Because a large part of the project is improving flood capacity at upper reaches of the creek — a process that in many areas will require widening of the creek bed from 28 feet to 40 feet — the narrow channel near the train tracks would create a flood-prone bottleneck.

And because the sandstone channeling has been designated a historical landmark, it cannot be touched.

As a result, Benson said the creek, during high water, will be diverted beneath another section of the freeway (where culverts were placed in the 1980s), and then pass under Montecito Street, the Amtrak parking lot and the railroad tracks, where it will then rejoin the creek’s main artery.

This is only one of the many costly and difficult projects that will make up the project, which according to Pat Kelly, assistant public works director and a city engineer, could end up costing as much as $100 million.

To date, Kelly said it’s difficult to know how much has been spent on the project, though recent costly endeavors include the acquisition of a number of properties along the creek by the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

Kelly said the next project, which could start this fall and is funded, will be to replace a bridge at Haley and De la Vina streets.

Benson said this is one of six bridges that need to be replaced.

While wider bridges and fatter creek beds will reduce the likelihood of floods along the creek, much of the project’s emphasis will center on habitat restoration.

In some parts of the creek, concrete channeling, once championed by the Army Corps of Engineers as a solution to flooding, will be tore out. These stretches will be replaced with natural creek bed, which will slow down the flow of water and among other things, allow the elusive steelhead trout to flounder up stream to spawn. Water moves over the concrete so swiftly, fish often have difficulty making it to spawning grounds. Native vegetation will also be restored, Benson said.

As further design work gets underway, the goal will be much the same as it’s been for decades: wait for more funding, and pounce when the time is right.

“We’re just going to be hunting around for who has the checkbook,” Kelly said.

Benson said funding could come from a number of sources, including state Proposition 1E, which was approved in 2006. When the state’s budget situation improves, he said 1E could provide billions to flood control projects across the state.

While progress on Mission Creek has been slow but steady, there appears to be no lack of enthusiasm for the project by local political officials, a gaggle of whom showed up to celebrate the federal funding.

Mayor Marty Blum, who said she first became aware of problems with the creek as a young mother in her 20s, said she can’t wait for the day when the first big rain arrives, and flooding along Mission Creek will be a distant memory.

“There’s a lot of momentum and we’re getting to the point where it’s actually happening,” said city council member Helene Schneider, adding that she looks forward to a time when the creek is a community asset, not a hazard.

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