Drainage and Road Resurfacing in Villa Grande

Those of you who have driven through Villa Grand’s flats during the past 20 years may have noticed a severe deterioration of the roads. Despite many, many complaints of residents, little road maintenance has occurred other than some occasional street cleaning.

In 2022, a couple of residents contacted the Sonoma Department of Infrastructure (DPI) formally requesting the resurfacing of Villa Grande’s street. After a tour of the streets, Johannes Hovertsz, the Director of Sonoma’s Department of Public Infrastructure, noted that the drainage problem and annual flooding of Villa Grande needed to be addressed before the roads could be resurfaced. The FoVG Executive Director wrote a grant and FoVG was awarded $80,000 to do a study to address the drainage issues of Villa Grande The resulting study detailed many remedies, with a price tag of over $1 million dollars to address all the study’s recommendations.

Based on the study, In 2024, DPI wrote a Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) grant to address the most significant flooding within the normal 10 year flood levels. FEMA has not responded to the grant application, and there is uncertainty whether any funds will come from the federal government during the next few years.

FoVG and the residents of FoVG will continue to lobby for the inclusion of Villa Grande in the county’s bi-annuial resurfacing plans, whether or not the drainage problems have been resolved.