Consultant Cardno Entrix of Concord was asked to do a narrow scope of work and did it, the city attorney told the City Council Tuesday night.

The panel was pondering an increase in its contract with the firm so it could consider creative ways to provide additional relief from flood waters in the vicinity of St. Augustine Drive and East Second Street.

“You got what you asked for,” City Manager Brad Kilger said.

Ultimately, the Council agreed to ask for more, voting to change the original $57,540 contract in hopes of addressing flooding that apparently has been happening in the area off and on since the 1980s.

The revisions call for a $52,380 addition to cover the $10,090 cost of helping Benicia employees prepare a Solano County Water Agency grant application, provide $31,730 in bidding assistance and construction support services and develop a memorandum describing conceptional alternatives to moving the water through a pipe.

The grant Benicia will seek from the county water agency could pay for a third of the construction costs of whatever method is used to address the long-term flooding problem that came to the Council’s attention after a December 2012 storm.

Those rains caused water runoff to exceed the capacity of a 36-inch culvert east of the house built at 225 St. Augustine Drive. Water crested a bank, went south across St. Augustine onto private properties, spilled onto East Second Street and finally flowed into a storm drain system at East N Street.

About half a dozen properties were affected by that flooding incident, Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth said.

Cardno Entrix performed a hydraulic study of the drainage basin and was hired to design flood relief plans based on the result of the study.

Mayor Elizabeth Patterson recommended at the Aug. 19, 2014 Council meeting that other integrated water management approaches be explored, because they might be eligible for grants.

But that and other suggestions came after the scope of work had been negotiated with the contractor, Kilger said.

Wadsworth told Council members that the county water agency has a Large Project Flood Management Funding Program, with grants for which the project might qualify.

But the application needs a technical storm water analysis, and Wadsworth told the Council that city employees couldn’t provide that analysis in a cost-effective manner. Nor could they prepare a preliminary design report on alternatives.

The original contract with Cardno Entrix didn’t include such work, but that contract could be modified, he had advised the Council earlier.

Patterson said Tuesday that Benicia needs to consider that with climate change, storms are becoming more intense.

She said the “traditional design is to dig a ditch and put in a pipe.” The Council didn’t tell the contractor at the time to look at more creative approaches.

“I would support additional study for safety and for the potential for larger storms,” she said.

Patterson also asked that upstream as well as downstream conditions and solutions are examined and that redundant approaches provide layers of protection “so we don’t go through this again.”