Point Reyes Station’s levee road (AKA Sir Francis Drake Boulevard) should flood less often during heavy storms in the future thanks to a county Department of Public Works project now underway.

Road supervisor Pete Maendle (left) of Inverness Park this week told me a box culvert under the levee road had become completely clogged with silt. This has sometimes led to a drainage ditch from Silver Hills causing flooding near the White House Pool parking lot.

Part of the project involves cleaning out sedimentation basins that are supposed to trap the silt, which consists of decomposed granite, before it reaches the culvert.

The channel downstream from the culvert empties into Papermill Creek, and county creek naturalist Liz Lewis said workers so far have found two juvenile steelhead, six to eight sticklebacks, and two prickly sculpin in the project area.

The state Department of Fish and Game has told the county to complete the project by Oct. 15 in time for winter rains and fish runs. County superintendent of road maintenance Craig Parmley said today he hopes the $25,000 project will require only five or six days of work.

Although the work isn’t expected to last very long, Lewis and Parmley both noted it has taken seven years to get the many state and federal permits the project required. The biggest delay was in getting permission from the Army Corps of Engineers, Lewis said.

Fortunately, the permits will allow the county to carry out ditch maintenance in the future without going through the permit process again, Parmley noted.

While the project is underway, a series of cofferdams keeps ditch water out of the worksite. Water in the dams is being pumped into Olema Marsh.

Once this project at White House Pool (in background) is completed, the county hopes to carry out similar work in Inverness, Inverness Park, and Bolinas, superintendent Parmley said.