Tetris with an excavator

Crews nearing completion on Schultz Creek flood work

ADRIAN SKABELUND Sun Staff Reporter

Tetris: that’s the way Tiffany Construction general superintendent Michael Garrison described their work on new county flood infrastructure within Schultz Creek

Using excavators the crew sorts through a pile of huge boulders, fitting them together like puzzle pieces

The boulders are either buried in the ground in long lines, blocking the flow of water and forcing it to slow down or spread out, or line the channel of the creek to reduce erosion

But how each boulder fits is important, so each piece of the puzzle can support one another, Garrison said

“We are playing the world’s biggest game of Tetris, that’s exactly what we are doing,” Garrison said, gesturing toward the team of three who were working the creek in the heat of Friday afternoon

“There’s Jeff on the [excava- tor], he’ll have a bundle of rocks over here He gets his first one in, what we call the throat rock, and then he starts sorting He’ll lay out four or five rocks, kind of getting his plan ” Garrison said “The guys that are doing this are truly artists I’ve got half a dozen that specialize in these structures”

Garrison said they are hoping to have the project completed by the end of this week, before the potential onset of monsoons create challenges for the project

The work comes as a response to the onset of post-fire flooding in the wake of last year’s Pipeline Fire that impacted large portions of west Flagstaff neighborhoods

But for the amount of work that has occurred within the area of lower Schultz Creek, the landscape looks notably similar to its state before the construction began

That’s largely the result of a new technique for this project rather than the creation of a traditional alluvial fan, said County

Flood District Administrator Lucinda Andreani

Trails changes coincide

The Schultz flood mitigation work is all occurring within the Coconino National Forest’s Flagstaff Ranger District, and Flagstaff District Recreation Officer Pat McGervey said the work has been an opportunity to make several previously planned changes to the recreation network in the area

Case in point several of the dams created for the plug and spread cut straight through what had been the Schultz Creek Trailhead and parking area

Given the low-lying nature of that trailhead forest officials have long known the trailhead is at risk for flooding and will need to be moved, McGervey said

Indeed, the trailhead and many sections of the Schultz trail were badly impacted by the post-fire flooding last year

And such a move was included within the Mount Elden Dry Lake

Please see CREEK, Page 11

Hills Recreation Project which outlined a long list of improvements and new trail construction in the area McGervey said the county s work in lower Schultz Creek fit well with that plan which among other things, sought to relocate large sections of trails out of the creek and higher on the slope So the timing on working with the county on this is really great for us that we could use the staging area that Tiffany Construction needed to construct the project and turn that into a public parking area for trailhead in the future And we can kind of abandon these low-lying areas ” McGervey said And then there were about eight reroutes to the Schultz Creek Trail and to bring it higher out of the bottom and so we started on that after the floods last fall and then continued that this spring And so we did finish that about a month ago ”