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If you’ve ever walked or driven through Old Town Eureka on a rainy day like today, you’ve surely noticed that enormous puddle on E Street, between Third and Fourth streets. The damned thing spans an entire city block and stretches way out into the middle of the street, with several inches of standing water lapping at the curb.

It’s been happening for years — even before the city repaved E Street back in 2023, raising the height of the street just a smidge — but why is it happening?

“[The street] needs a whole redesign,” Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery said, crediting the Outpost with having the courage to ask the hard questions. “Basically, this has been an issue for decades, and there are grading issues [on E Street] that we tried to improve, but we need to get in there and grind out some of that pavement.”

The problem is that the city’s asphalt grinder isn’t big enough to do the job, so staff will need to find a contractor to do the work. It’s something the city’s public works department has been looking at for a while now, Slattery said, but since it only affects the parking spaces on the east side of the street, it isn’t exactly a top priority for staff.

“I’m not trying to minimize the impact,” he emphasized, noting that the deepest part of the puddle is situated right in front of Councilmember Kati Moulton’s secondhand craft shop. “[The road] is low and there’s too much height in the alley.”

To get the job done right, the city will have to tear up the entire street and set different grades, which is less than ideal, given that the street was repaved just a few years ago. Cost is a factor as well, though Slattery didn’t indicate how much it’d be.

While on the note of Old Town street flooding, I asked Slattery about the big puddle that forms at E Street and Opera Alley. “That’s just a clogging issue,” he said, noting that debris can get caught in drain during regular maintenance. “That just needs to get sniped. You can call public works at 441-4203 if you see drains that are plugged up.”

Slattery also noted that staff have seen some street flooding along W. Third Street, down near SISU Extraction, especially during high tides. “We’re trying to secure some federal funding to get that fixes, but it’s going to be a major project.”

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