Sacramento: the next New Orleans?

[pnwmom]

According to this article in the NY Times, the Sacramento area has half the flood protection that New Orleans had.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/science/18conv.html

"You have around 400,000 people at risk from flooding, and the number will grow in the next few years because of intense development.

The city's main problem is that it is situated between the American and the Sacramento Rivers and at the base of the 12,000 foot Sierra Nevada range. Both rivers are prone to flooding. Additionally, powerful storms come in from the Pacific, slam against the mountains and dump heavy precipitation that ends up very quickly in the rivers.

Yet, around Sacramento — the capital of the seventh largest economy in the world — there's intense building on the flood plains.

Twenty miles downstream is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a maze of leveed islands and channels that flow into San Francisco Bay. Because of past agricultural practices, the delta is sinking. Parts are 20 feet below sea level, lower than anything in New Orleans. Still, there are proposals to put up 130,000 new homes in the delta."

[anitar1]

1. Greed knows no boundaries. n/t

[SoCalDem]

2. The difference here is that we don;t usually get INTENSE storms

and our rainy season is quite short..Most years we are on our knees praying for water..

A loy of building IS being done in and around Sac, but most of the land immediately by the levees is still farm land ...for now..

[sandnsea]

3. Historic floods

Do you remember learning anything about historic floods in CA? None come to mind for me, thinking back on my CA history as a kid. Every river is supposed to have 500 year floods, like that massive one on the Mississippi a few years ago, and others. But I can't remember a massive flood as any sort of geographic marker in California, can you?

[SoCalDem]

4. I came here as an adult, so my Calif history is sketchy

but around here floods are not that big of a scare for most areas.. the mudslides caused by rain are the big issue..

[sandnsea]

5. Yeah, not that I remember either

I lived in California from 5 - 16, and then a few times when I was an adult. I remember a few local floods as a kid, some really bad flooding in the Sierras a few years ago, but I don't remember a big flood on the Sacramento, not historically either. Drought was always a bigger threat than floods. What I read on the Delta area the other day is that they're worried about an earthquake liquifying the area more than an actual flood. I don't know. We always think we know better than nature.

[Ecumenist]

7. Yep

The Flood of 1986 was classified as a 1000 year flood. Problem with that is that there had been a 1000 year flood in the late fifties and sometime in the 60's. This area is NOTORIOUS for BIGTIME floods and tens to happen between New Years and March. This area was known by the indians who lived here as "the Inland Sea". There are accounts recorded by explorers and settlers during the 19th century describing water that accumulated in the valley from Shasta down through the central San Joaquin valley. It was not an rare event.

[sandnsea]

10. 1986, the really bad one??

That was the really awful one, right? Seemed like most of No Cal was flooded. I was in KFalls OR at the time. That's the worst flood I've ever heard of in California, and I lived there from 1962. I sure don't remember learning anything about a massive flood between Shasta and the San Joaquin Valley either, except maybe back during the ice age. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I don't remember learning about it.

Still, building on the delta is wrong for a lot of reasons. Did you know that if the levees meet the 100 year flood certification, then the area is no longer a flood plain and people won't be required to get flood insurance. Despite the fact that any idiot ought to be able to look at a levee and know they need it. It is a catastrophe waiting to happen, but I still think an earthquake will be the catalyst, not a flood.

[Ecumenist]

11. Yep, I was here for the 1986 flood...

And got news for you... Most of these levees are AGRICULTURAL levees and in spite of what you're told, these levees, which are over 100 years old, most of them having been built by chinese labourers BY HAND in the 19th century. The "inland Sea" wasn't a permanent thing but was the state of the valley from late winter till early spring. Malaria was endemic here and there have been cases of Malaria as recently as early 90's, to my knowledge. Frankly Sandnsea, I can believe that a flood will precipitate levees failures. It happens all the time. It's only reported on if it affects a large area. Most of the levees were put in place to protect farmland, NOT homes. My husband and I own land in Tehama County, which has a hematite that is about 500 feet above sea level because of the flooding problem endemic to this interior valley.
As it applies a massive levee failure, I expect that we will see a BIG problem with that come the snow melt. The levees have been stressed to the Nth degree by the weeks of high waters and flood control, not to mention the honeycombing that has gone on due to voles, beavers and other animals.. I spoke to a lady week before last @ the local FEMA office who said EXACTLY what I believed that the snow melt because of the record snow falls, not to mention the fact that the 30 day weather model showed storm after storm after storm.

[sandnsea]

14. Yes I know that

I grew up in Fresno, I know about the levee and canal systems. The only flooding I remember as being catastrophic was that 1986 flood. Certainly a localized flood is catastrophic to the people it happens to, like it did in Merced last year I think. I lived there too, and I actually can't figure out what levee broke. Nobody ever even gave the canals and levees a second thought when I lived there.

As to the housing developments, I'm talking about what happens when the levees get beefed up to withstand a 100 year flood. That land is no longer designated a flood plain and people won't be required to get flood insurance, I don't even know if they can if they want to. Yet, a 500 year flood can happen any time. It just seems like an evil trick to me, I don't even know if they'll tell people the truth about where their homes are being placed. At least now people know there's a danger, or at least they should.

Anyway, I suppose we shall see what happens.

[Ecumenist]

19. Wow, I lived in Atwater for 5 years until 1982

the levee broke? I still have relatives in Atwater... These levees haven't been touched, yet they've built VERY expensive homes right up to the levees and suckers have bought them, who're usually from area from outside the area, ie the Bay Area, the East, etc. And no, they don't Tell the truth either the truth about where the homes are built or the the frequent of the flooding. They can still get flood insurance and in fact, there is a requirement being bandied about requiring flood insurance for people in designated flood prone areas.

[sandnsea]

22. I was there in 76

Castle AFB, my first son was born there. I worked at the Atwater PD for a few months in 77. I moved to Merced that year, and then left in 1980 when all the Keds offices were combined into one back east. Small world.

Like I said, I grew up with ditches, canals and levees every friggin' place and never paid that much attention to it. It was second nature to know where to build and not to.

But yeah, there was a flood, and just a couple weeks ago, not last year.

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12042424p-12798719c.html

[Ecumenist]

23. I lived about 2 blocks from Atwater high school

Off of Fruitland. VERY small world. Very small world indeed.

[sandnsea]

25. I lived in tri-plexes

Seems like they were right in that area, it's been sooo long ago and I have a terrible memory. Atwater was a nice little town, I liked it. Merced, not so much. lol.

[Ecumenist]

26. I was never so happy as when I was watching

Atwater and Merced county disappear in the rearview mirror. It was okay when I was younger but as I got older adnd saw the social constraints that were present to try to assimilate and fit in, I knew I had to go. Well, my whole family left. I was 18 but I was glad to see it fade into the past.

[Garbo 2004]

28. Sacto/Valley region has a history of flooding. Maybe not everything under

water everywhere, but that's due to the water control measures of course. I recall my parents telling me that the then nearly completed Folsom Dam saved the city in the floods of 55/56. Other areas were not as fortunate. Then there was 1964, a major flood year.

I also remember in '86 when there was serious concern that some levees in the Sacto metro area wouldn't hold. The rivers were high, the levees were leaking, water burbling through in some areas. I seem to recall it was a Wednesday night when it was touch and go if the levees, especially on the American River, would hold.

Then there was 1997 when a major storm and melting snowpack runoff stressed levees resulting in levee breaks and major flooding in a number of areas in the central valley including Olivehurst where as I recall some people died. Also floods in 1998.

The rivers are pretty high right now due to a extremely wet and extended rainy season. The last recent series of storms created a lot of concern in the lower San Joaquin river area. And due to the late wintry weather, we haven't yet gotten into the spring runoff.

[sandnsea]

29. "everything under water"

Well that's what I meant, like the 1993 Mississippi flood. Historic catastrophic floods, like the historic catastrophic Madrid earthquake, that sort of thing. Certainly there were floods, every river floods. But I don't remember a history of catastrophic floods in CA, even before the levees, that's all.

[Garbo 2004]

31. Without water control there would be an inland sea/marshland annually

in the Valley due to winter storms and spring melt.

Sacramento, for example, used to flood frequently, which is why houses were raised (they'd raise the first story to become a second story and abandon the first story during floods), city streets were raised (in the old downtown area this created an underground "city" of the previous first street level that still exists in some areas and can be accessed), levees built, dams built etc.

"Soon after the Gold Rush which exploded in the late 1840s, thousands of people who came to Central California followed a brief fling at the mines by moving down from the mountains to settle in the fertile Sacramento Valley. Here they shortly encountered a gravely threatening natural phenomenon. They discovered that during the annual winter cycle of torrential storms that for millennia have swept in from the Pacific, or in the season of the spring snow melt in the northern Sierra Nevada, the Sacramento River and its tributaries rose like a vast taking in of breath to flow out over their banks onto the wide Valley floor, there to produce terrifying floods. On that remarkably level expanse the spreading waters then stilled and ponded to form an immense, quiet inland sea a hundred miles long, with its dense flocks of birds rising abruptly to wheel in the sky and its still masses of tule rushes stretching from the delta to the Sutter Buttes and beyond. Not until the late spring and summer months would it drain away downstream."

- Excerpt from Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea (1989)

[sandnsea]

32. historic, over tens of thousands of years

Historic is not just the last 100 years, criminy.

[Garbo 2004]

33. ?? Think the Valley didn't flood before the white man came? That IS

historic. That's the geographic history of the area for tens of thousands of years. The valley became an annual inland sea and marshland. That's the geography of the region.

As for the "last hundred years," well Sutter's Fort was here in 1839. Sacramento as a city was formally incorporated in 1850. So my info on the city itself flooding can't go back farther than that. The city had catastrophic floods from the beginning. Naturally, since that's what happened in the Valley and had been happening for tens of thousands of years.

Annual floods were the history of the area long before the area was settled and documented by anyone, including the Indians.

[sandnsea]

34. Catastrophic everything under water floods

Geologists can generally mark them, no matter how long ago they were.

OBVIOUSLY, there have always been floods because that's what rivers do. I asked about catastrophic historic floods, over tens of thousands of years. NOT just floods from recent history, whether it was when Sutter arrived or when the missionaries arrived.

I'm not quite sure how many times I have to say I grew up in California, went to school there, know California history. I'm asking about a history of true catastrophic floods, I just don't remember any floods across the entire central valley, the kind that would break current levees and deluge the entire delta, which is what would have to happen to end up with another New Orleans.

[Garbo 2004]

36. Oh you mean when the Great Central Valley was an inland lake?

"California's Central Valley resembles a great elongate bath tub. Its present, remarkably flat surface consists largely of material eroded from the rising Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges to the east and west, respectively, and deposited in low alluvial fans. On more than one occasion the valley impounded a large lake, which left behind a veneer of muddy deposits. About 650,000 years ago, rising waters of the most recent lake carved a gap through the mountain range to the west and drained into the Pacific Ocean through a low pass just south of the city of San Francisco."
http://tapestry.usgs.gov/features/24centralvy.html

Too far back? ;)

Well then there's the soggy wetlands of the valley. Before all the land reclamation projects draining the wetlands and diversions of rivers, building of levees, dams etc. It was a bit of a boggy place in addition to the annual floods.



(Accompanying article here, bits mention the Central Valley: http://water.usgs.gov/nwsum/WSP2425/history.html )

The geographic and geological history of the valley includes significant flooding, whether it meets your criteria of historically catastrophic or not. The changes that have been made in land use and water control add another factor. There is now a potential for failures and even cascading failures in a complex water control system consisting of over a thousand miles. I believe the OP's posted article quotes Jeffrey Mount, a geologist from UCD who is often consulted on such matters. He's not just a hobbyist pulling stuff out of his butt when he talks about the capacity for catastrophic flooding in the Sacto valley as it is now. http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mount.html

[Ecumenist]

6. Sorry to disagree with you Socaldem,

But I live here and I can attest to the fact that the area IMMEDIATELY next to the levees ARE NOT farmland. I live in north Natomas and I can tell you the there are homes literally up against the garden highway, which is the levee that abuts the Sacramento River as it comes into the county from north through the city and through Old Town Sacramento.
When I say that these homes are next to the levees, I mean within 50 feet, At the most, from the levees. If you were to drive the Garden highway from Northgate, you'll see BRAND NEW homes whose roofs are lower that the levee, with the levee right across the street. The same kind of building right up and in some cases, ON THE LEVEES, (note the building going on on the river side of the levee), is going on ALL OVER THE COUNTY. FLood plains have been rezoned to allow building. The Natomas Basin, where I'm living FOR now, has rampant building going on and this area was under at least 4 to 6 feet of water FOR WEEKS in 1986 during the flood that occurred that year. There are subdivisions in areas that were formally farm land parcels throughout Sloughhouse, Wilton, (already notorious for flash flooding), Herald, Galt, Elk Grove, Placer County-(Roseville and the outlying areas such as Lincoln, Wheatland, etc) as well as Woodland, (notorious for flooding as well), Dunnigan, Esparto, Madison, much of the Capay Valley. So, the fact that the farmland is being left in that state because of the levees is no longer true and people are finally speaking up, though it's too little too late. Alot of areas in the northwest area of the county that used to be rice fields are no plowed over by homes and don't get me started with what is happening with the Rio Linda and Elverta area,(flood regularly) and Antelope area which used to be farmland and no longer is.

[SoCalDem]

12. EEK... city planner with sawdust on the brain..

We'll keep our fingers crossed for you guys..:scared:.. My son lives in Concord, but that's the only "northern" area we have seen..

[Ecumenist]

15. Concord in Contra Costa County...

they would be in trouble if there was a bad flood through this area. The water would flow down toward the Concord area, Walnut Creek, Pittburg, Martinez etc. They sit on or VERY near the Carquinez Strait.
Suisun City, Tracy, Benicia, Etc would be on the business end of of water flooding this area.

[SoCalDem]

18. I know they are not far from the water.. they live near where there

was an old military site..I don;t know the elevation.. My son would be SOOO pissed..they have done MAJOR renovations on their place..

Let's hope it dries out :fingers crossed:

[Ecumenist]

20. Port Chicago...

It's an infamous site from WWII. Google it and read about eh travesty that happened there. It's just a matter of geography AND geology when looking at flood possibilities.

[Ecumenist]

8. Do you live here in Northern California?

The reason I ask is because we get intense storms ALOT here in the north in late winter. Southern california is completely different. The Sacramento region didn't even have residential water meters until the building of the newest subdivisions. Even during the deepest droughts I've gone through, the problem hasn't been so much an issue up here as it has been supplying the farmers in South of here and water to Southern California. The Intense Storm cycle IS NOT rare, not at all.

[SoCalDem]

13. I live near Riverside.. dry dry dry

except the last month has been quite dampish :)

[Ecumenist]

16. I'm originally from Southern California

but I have lived up here since 1977, I was 13 when we moved here. I know how dry your area is. My Aunt and Uncle live in Moreno Valley and it's a desert. COMPLETELY different climate and bioregion up here. Floods ALOT!! Some area in and around this county floods EVERY YEAR.

[SoCalDem]

17. That's where I live too.."Moron Valley" is what my boys called it

:)

[Ecumenist]

21. LOL!!!

I'm not crazy about the area, I hate the desert and loathe hot weather. We get it here BUT we have something called the Delta Breeze, sort of like a natural air conditioner. Pacific ocean winds some up through the delta and cool off this area in the summer on a regular basis so that often the hottest days are follwed by cool nights.

[shanti]

35. hi ecumenist!

:hi: i know exactly what you're talking about because i'm a socal to norcal transplant too. there are quite a few of us up here:)

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

9. High on the inevitability scale...

The Sacramento is One BIG river. It's scary to see during high water, because the H2O comes within a foot or so of the levee-tops

[Ecumenist]

24. Tell me about it,, La_Fourmi_Rouge

MY husband and I have been driving the levee on the Sacramento, (Garden Highway here in Sacramento), and it's scarey. I'm telling you, the real trouble will come with the snowmelt, trust me. Are you here in Sacramento?

[hlthe2b]

27. How would they ever get a lender for building @ 20' below sea level?

While NOLA likely preceded any attempts to regulate, I know I never could have gotten a loan to build in a "flood plain" as early as the late 80s in any state I've lived in..... :shrug:

[sandnsea]

30. A 100 year levee, and

voila, no flood plain. That's how. That's the law.

[omega minimo]

37. Complex issue. The TeeVee & noozpaperz like to scare people unecessarily

The flood control system in the whole of No.Cal got a good workout in March/April. The managers did a good job. They learned from fuckups in the past which they don't like to talk about :evilgrin:

If the recent megastorms had been WARM storms coming up from Hawaii, rather than COLD down from Alyeska, the snows would have melted in the Sierra and added to the creek/river levels.

They have got to stop putting more new homes and people in the floodplains.

BUT DON'T LET THE BASTARDS SCARE YOU FOR THE SAKE OF RATINGS. Listen to the boring guys from the DWR if you want to know how much to worry...........................

[kineneb]

38. NorCal always prone to flooding

I am a native of Redding (CA), and grew up there, as did my mother. The mighty Sacramento River is always prone to flooding, even with all the flood-control dams, etc. If there is enough rain at one time, Shasta and Keswick Dams must release extra water, to account for the quantity coming in behind the dams. People down the river in Anderson and Red Bluff have had the river come into their houses. That amount of water multiplies as the river gets to Sacramento, where it meets several other rivers coming from the Sierras.

Historically, Sacramento has had numerous floods; go to Old Sacramento and there is lots of info on the floods. In more modern times, the Yolo Bypass was build to divert a portion of flood waters out into farmlands west of Sac. The problem with the levees is changes in land use. What in the past was farmland is now covered with housing. So if the levees in and around Sac. break, then there will vast areas of housing covered in water several feet deep- think Holland during its last great floods in the 50s.

As far as catastrophic events, such as occurred in N.O., they are unlikely. Rainfall is seasonal, and levee breaks would come from damage or fatigue of the levee materials. Or simply from water overflowing the levees. Again, the issue is land use behind the levees. As long as that area was farmland, flooding was an irritation, as opposed to a disaster. With housing there, any flooding becomes dangerous to life and property.

Sorry for the spiel, but so many do not understand California's hydrology. Hope this helps. For a more complete overview, I suggest reading Cadillac Desert, the ultimate history of water and water use in the West.

(edited for spelling and punctuation)