Now What?: California Levees

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Designed to Flood, No Fooling

By Jennifer Teel Wolter

Those who know watch the Gulf Coast struggles to recover from hurricanes Katrina and Rita and say Sacramento could face a similar fate.
    The parallels between the two areas are sobering. Portions of both regions sit below sea level, are beset by deteriorating levee systems and now are ill-suited to hold back raging floodwaters. But even with Katrina and Rita’s grim wake-up call, state government has been slow to act.
    While some of the delay can be attributed to the lackluster performance of our state Legislature and the confusing flood-control bureaucracy, the lag in progress also illustrates the growing pains Sacramento and the Central Valley face as the area transitions from a historically agricultural region to an urban metropolis.                 Northern and Central California are home to more than 6,000 miles of levees — a patchwork made up of “project levees,” which are built according to federal flood-control standards, and locally maintained levees, the majority of which were built in the 1930s to protect farmland.
    Yet as California’s booming population spills out of urban areas such as the Bay Area, land that once housed only crops is now sprouting suburban neighborhoods.
    While development has slowly shifted land use in the valley from agricultural to urban, the levee system has not followed suit. George Basye, a Downey Brand attorney who has specialized in water issues for more than 50 years, sees an aging system unable to keep pace with changing needs.
    “The valley has outgrown its flood-control system,” says Basye. “The Reclamation Board was originally set up to protect farmland from flooding. But that farmland is now full of homes — many without flood insurance. It makes no sense at all.”
Continued...

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