NYT/AP: Calif. Scrambles to Strengthen Levees (10 more days of rain)

[DeepModem Mom]

Calif. Scrambles to Strengthen Levees
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 10, 2006


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California water officials took advantage of a weekend lull in the stormy weather to patch weak spots in the state's levee system as more rain looms ahead.

After the rainiest March on record, many reservoirs in California's Central Valley are groaning at full capacity, and 10 more days of rain are forecast. Sunday's break in the weather allowed time to shore up levees and other water-control sites at risk of failing.

''We saw in New Orleans the storm was coming in, it was known days ahead, and we're not sure they took all the steps that they could have,'' said Rodney Mayer, acting chief of the California division of flood management.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for California's levee system in February, a step that freed up about $103 million for repairs to 24 flood-prone sites.

That work is typically done in the summer, when water behind the levees is at its low point, but state water officials decided not to wait....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-California-Flooding.html

[stepnw1f]

1. This Has Nothing to do with... um.... Global Warming

:sarcasm:

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Like the spate of tornadoes, Hurricane Katrina, etc. --

:sarcasm:

[DBoon]

3. This Has Nothing to do with... um.... Prop 13

and 30 years of Republican anti-tax rhetoric allowing public infrastructure to crumble, could it?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. That, too! nt

[WhiteTara]

9. well yeah that too n/t

[XemaSab]

12. That too.

[kestrel91316]

32. I think maybe the levees are federally funded, so Prop 13 irrelevant?

[WhiteTara]

8. or the weather modification

work that is taking place? Current bills in both the house and the senate are set to allow experimental weather modication and implement a national weather modification policy, neither of which has provisions for any type of oversight. These bills are on the fast track for passage, they are SB517 and HB2995. Might want to chat this up with your home bound critters.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
http://www.house.gov/

[Ian David]

5. Kalifornia Republickins are Jeenyusses

[joefree1]

6. So this is what its like to live in Portland?

It's getting downright tropical here in Los Angeles. We are so sick of the rain. Maybe we can trade water for oil to Texas.

[shanti]

11. nahh, seattle!

i'm in sacramento, but have lived in the sea-tac area before. this is just like living in washington state (and i hate it!)

[Ecumenist]

14. Shanti, I'm here in Sacramento as well,.

I'm in North Natomas and I told my husband that I didnt want to live here because of the flooding potential, demonstrated in 1986. This is crazy. And what do ya know? I'm starting to think that I know what Noah felt like.

[shanti]

22. the wettest march ever recorded here

THAT is something! are you ready for summer??!

were you in natomas when it flooded back in the 80's? i'm on the east side of sac, and my ins. doesn't require flood coverage.

[Ecumenist]

25. Nope.... There wasn't much out here then. The new building

You see now are less than 5 years old. I was in Cordova, off of Coloma and Sunrise.

[Ecumenist]

26. How long have you been here?

The Reason I ask is because no matter where you live in this area, you should have flood insurance. ALL OF SACRAMENTO PROPER used to flood on a regular basis. This is why when you go through midtown and downtwn, the homes often look like they have basements AND old town was raised, which explains the many underground shops.

[shanti]

34. check your IM

;)

[kestrel91316]

33. The rain this year is nowhere near as bad as LAST YEAR, lol.

And I don't know about you, but here in the SFV it is anything but tropical. It's been a CHILLY winter and spring (except for the mini-summer in Jan/Feb).

[mike_c]

7. (groan) it's raining again....

I am so tired of rain.

[lovuian]

10. Boy someone predicted this that the levees in California

were weak like New Orleans... Hang in there guys and gals!!!

[proud patriot]

20. I have friends that live in an at risk spot

out in Oakley .. I sure hope the levies hold .

[EFerrari]

13. BushCo seems to be twisting Ahnold's arm for something

because they denied his request for emergency funds.

I wonder what they want that he doesn't want to give them. Ah, CALIFORNIA mebbe?

:tinfoilhat:

[Ecumenist]

15. Exactly. If things go to the worse and it floods, there's going to

be alot of wet, pissed and ready to fight Californians taking anything, boat, goat, plane train, etc, to have more than "a few words" with this government.

[EFerrari]

16. You know BushCo is trying to steal California.

I think there has been a negotiations breakdown.

What a coup it would be for the Felons to turn CA.

:scared:

[Ecumenist]

18. I don't think that they're going to be able to do it.

ESPECIALLY if we get "Katrina-ed". Californians, as a rule, are free thinking and EXTREMELY unlikely to allow that to happen. They'll even lose alot of the republican support in the agriculutural counties, trust me.

[EFerrari]

19. Will it matter, though, when the new state voter reg database

tosses out eligible voters and when we vote on Diebold ( or any) electronic machines?

I have all the faith in the world in the people of California. And, understanding what I do now about the Thug's election theft blueprint, I have NONE in our elections.

[Ecumenist]

21. If they try that.

they'll have to throw so many people off the rolls that it will be IMPOSSIBLE to hide it.

[EFerrari]

23. I hope you are right.

But these mofos don't seem to have a "ridiculous" threshold.

I hope you are right.

[Ecumenist]

29. Luckily, it won't be up to them...

[Xithras]

17. The back of my property is under water.

My property backs up to the Stanislaus River, and the back edge of it is already under water. There are no levees along here because we're on natural high ground, but it's eerie to actually look out my back window and see all that water. The river is normally several hundred yards from my home and hidden by thick trees along its banks, but those trees are now inundated and we have water rapidly approaching its 1997 levels. I'm hoping that this 10 days of rain turns out to be a bust.

BTW, just had to make one point. This may be the rainiest March on record, but it's nowhere near the wettest winter on record. The unspoken reality here is that flooding is really only a danger because of the rampant development that's been happening in this part of the state over the past decade. The levees that have traditionally protected our cities are fine and in good shape...what's in danger are the houses that have been built in floodplains behind century old levees that were never intended to protect homes. What's worse, many of these levees were built and maintained by the farmers themselves up until very recently, and many are not up to any kind of modern standard. There was an interview with a farmer near the Delta recently who talked about how his father built the levees on his family farm using everything from garbage to broken concrete as fill. If they could push it into a pile, it became part of the levee. They weren't concerned about the levees safety because if it broke, the worst they lost was a years crop (which was covered by insurance). That farmer sold his land to a developer a couple of years ago, and that property is now being developed into homes...protected by the same old levees that the farmers father built. When the reporter asked his opinion on the safety of the homes, the farmer replied that it wasn't his problem anymore, but that the people who bought there were "idiots" and that he wouldn't move into one of the homes if they paid him a million dollars.

Those are the levees they're worried about.

[Ecumenist]

27. EXACTLY...

I have told people time and time again that there is a reason why the old timers never built anything on alot of what is now termed prime real estate. My grandfather always told me that if you go into an area and you see beautiful land and people have lived there for at least 20 years and you don't see anything built there, there's a reason. People weren't stupid enough to waste time, money and effort in building things that would be flooded. Money, it seems has won over common sense.

I used to live in Atwater and wasn't that far from the Stanislaus at all. Bless your heart. Are you elevated enough to avoid further encroachment?

[Xithras]

30. I'm still 7 feet above the current water level.

I didn't live in this house in 1997, but according to my neighbors the water got within a foot of this house. If it did reach here, my house is on an elevated foundation and the water would need to come up an additional foot before it actually entered the house. It's EXTREMELY unlikely that the water will come up an additional eight feet, so I should be fine. Some of my lower lying neighbors are already evacuating their animals, and one of my neighbors just watched seven cords of walnut that he had drying along his back propertyline float off down the river. Ouch.

The good thing for me is that the Stanislaus seems stable for now, so unless this next week is a drencher I doubt the danger for my home will get any worse. The San Joaquin, about 30 miles from here, is unfortunatly still rising though, so the flood danger there is still growing by the hour. In fact Der Gropenator just declared a State of Emergency in the county because of the San Joaquin.

[hatrack]

31. Wasn't the entire Central Valley underwater after the flood of 1862?

Or some time around then - as I recall, that's when Henry Miller began to stake his claim by boat - a process which he continued months after the floodwaters receded.

[Xithras]

35. More than once.

The California Central Valley is the flattest place on Earth. Lots of places try to claim that title, but geologically the California Central Valley is the real deal, with a constant slope that only gains 400 feet in 400 miles. That extraordinary flatness means that our rivers tend to meander and flow slowly, so when the snow runs out of the Sierras quickly, it pools here. Or at least it did before we built dams on the rivers to hold it back.

The levees didn't simply confine the rivers, they straightened the rivers courses to speed the waters runoff into the San Francisco bay to prevent that pooling. The problem is that sea level is sea level, and if the water runs off faster than the dams can catch it, it overtops the levees and tries to reclaim its old floodplains so it can pool again. The old cities in the valley were generally built on high ground to avoid flooding (or in the case of old Sacramento, on manually raised ground), but the new neighborhoods (built in the past 50 years) were built on cheaper bottomlands and ignored the old wisdom. New houses today are being built where builders even a few decades ago would have shuddered to build.

Here's another example: Not far from my house is an area known as Big Basin. Big Basin was a swamp about a mile across, sitting about 10 feet lower than the surrounding valley. It's not near a river or creek, so it acts as the natural drainage basin for most of the surrounding land. When it rained particularly hard (like it's been doing here lately), the marsh filled up and turned into a mile-long lake about 15 feet deep in the middle.

When this area was settled in the mid-1800's, the area was marked as a wasteland and was left alone. In the late 1800's, a farmer came in and realized that the land had potential...he converted into rice paddies, since rice was the only thing that would grow in the saturated soil. It remained rice paddies until the last few years...when developers bought land and started building on it. That swampy lake is now about half covered in half million dollar homes, they're building a shiny new high school on another part, and residential development is planned for most of the rest. Their "solution" to the flooding? Build a handful of drainage basins with pumps to pump excess water into local canals. It works for now, but the first time that area gets a long stretch of intense rain...or the first time a pump fails...people are going to have flooded houses. As it is, people who have bought these homes are complaining about cracking foundations, shifting streets, and huge problems with swimming pools.

I won't mention what the loss of those wetlands did to local wildlife...that should go without saying.

[kineneb]

24. land behind levees has been sinking

due to farming, so that now land that was at or above water level is well below grade...this is why so many of the Sac. Delta islands are at risk...also sub-standard construction (as explained by others here...Old Sacramento floods regularly, which is why much of the building is away from the river

and yes, I am tired of the rain, too. Average for Lake Co. is 25-27"/year, we are already at 36+" and more to come. Mud slides everywhere. Ugh.

[Ecumenist]

28. Where in Lake County Are you?

We looked at property in Lakeport and the Pillsbury area. I'm VERY familiar with your county.