With the rainy season about to begin, residents along Napa Creek have vivid memories of the last time it rained hard.

“You see it coming out of the storm drain, then over the bank. There’s nothing gentle about it. It’s a flash flood ... it’s one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen,” said Anita Howe, a resident of Behrens Street.

Howe is remembering the night of Dec. 31, 2005, when Napa Creek overflowed with unprecedented fury. Some 500 residential and business properties were fully or partially inundated.

Howe spent the night marooned in her elevated house, surrounded by flood waters. Because she never lost power, the Christmas lights on her porch radiated a false holiday cheer throughout the ordeal.

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Since then, her neighbors have come together as In Harm’s Way to pressure the Napa City Council, Napa County Flood Control District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make creek protection a top priority.

They have been partially successful. The planned construction of culverts and flood terraces has been moved up three years and is now scheduled to start in 2010, the same time as the river’s Oxbow bypass channel.

For the leaders of In Harm’s Way, this limited victory leaves a bitter taste. With the creek overflowing every year or two, why isn’t protecting their neighborhood the flood project’s top priority, they ask.

The flood board continues to push Napa River flood defenses even though the river floods less often, they say.

“Their interest lies elsewhere, not with the Napa Creek community,” Linda Kerr, the leader of In Harm’s Way, said of the flood board, composed of elected leaders from Napa County and its cities.

“The elected representatives ... have not stood up for us,” said Mark Fogarty, a resident of Seminary Street whose first floor basement was flooded two years ago. “We’ve been getting a lot of flim-flam.”

Napa Mayor Jill Techel, who chairs the flood board, argues that the concerns of Napa Creek residents have been not only heard but acted upon.

Because of their advocacy, Napa Creek and the river bypass are now both scheduled to begin construction in 2010, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreeing that the creek will start first, she said.

“The challenge for someone who sits on a board with multiple constituencies is doing as much as you can for as many as you can,” Techel said. “It’s trying to find the win-win.”

But win-win isn’t what Napa Creek residents are after, Techel said. They want their defenses to be built now.

The flood board is trying to speed up work on the creek while not putting the river, which floods downtown, the Oxbow District and Soscol Avenue’s Auto Row, on the back burner, she said.

Local flood officials have used the plight of creek residents to persuade the federal government to allocate more money for river and creek work.

When In Harm’s Way gathered 800 names on a petition asking for immediate attention, local officials took it to Washington, D.C., this fall as part of their lobbying effort.

The flood project is falling behind schedule due to inadequate federal funding, Techel said. This is why the city of Napa and the flood district are seeking alternative sources of funds to speed up Napa Creek construction, she said.

The city is optimistic it will receive a $3 million federal grant to fund culverts along Napa Creek at Main Street sooner than 2010. The city has put aside several million dollars in local funds as matching money if this and other grants come through, Techel said.

It galls residents that the flood project will embark next year on a $40 million effort to relocate a railroad bridge and build a new one over the planned bypass — all part of the river’s Oxbow defenses — before tackling Napa Creek.

This is largely a matter of timing, said Heather Stanton, the local flood manager. Railroad work is ready to go to bid in 2008, while creek defenses aren’t completely designed, she said.

The flood district risked losing federal money for 2008 if it didn’t proceed with what was ready to be built, Stanton said.

Kerr isn’t fully convinced by this explanation. It seems like another example of flood officials massaging the highly bureaucratic system to keep the river the top priority, she said.

Because federal funding is falling behind what is needed, the prospect of Napa Creek starting construction in 2010 is not realistic, Kerr said. It could easily be three or four years later.

To residents who live next to a waterway that has topped its banks 12 times since 1993, that’s bad news, Kerr said. Residents could be hit with another two or three floods that could otherwise have been prevented, she said.

“I don’t think anyone can imagine the roar of the water — how loud it was,” Kerr said of the New Year’s Eve flood that struck in the middle of the night and lasted until dawn.

Neither she nor Howe have yet taken the city up on its annual offer of free sandbags. Kerr said she will wait until she sees Uva restaurant on Clinton Street sandbagging, then do the same.

“It’s so back-breaking,” Kerr said, that she puts off sandbags until a flood emergency is at hand.

Fogarty, who estimates his New Year’s Eve flood losses at $30,000, doesn’t plan to need sandbags for the next flood. He’s spent two years working to make the bottom three feet of his house floodproof.

When the water begins rising, he expects to slip into his basement, screw a final piece of board into place, caulk it, then ride out the storm inside a waterproof bubble.

“A lot of people say we’re crazy,” Fogarty said of his decision to buy a house in a neighborhood vulnerable to regular inundation. “But look, it’s quiet, it’s an easy walk to downtown and it’s beautiful.”

Napa Creek, when viewed this week from Howe’s backyard deck, was indeed lovely. Autumn leaves floated on pools of water that gently flowed toward the river.

There was no hint of trouble.