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Valley's boom leaves levee system groaning Flooding is inevitable, experts say. Day One of a Three part series.

Published in the Stockton Record on 05/29/05

Valley's boom leaves levee system groaning
Flooding is inevitable, experts say
By Hank Shaw and Dana Nichols - Record Staff Writer
Published Sunday, May 29, 2005

STOCKTON - Ron Baldwin watches over San Joaquin County from his sixth-floor office in Stockton, peering at flood plain maps and levee networks, lobbing nasty “what-ifs" at himself and reflecting on 23 years spent fighting floods.

Baldwin runs San Joaquin County‘s Office of Emergency Services and spends much of his time reviewing various flood scenarios and contingency plans to make sure that his office is ready when the next flood hits.

He was there a year ago this week on Jones Tract — a Delta island 10 miles west of the city — and helped orchestrate the work crews that closed a levee breach wide enough to draw the attention of the president, the governor and plenty of politicians in Sacramento.

In the months since the waters of Middle River inundated Jones Tract and its 12,153 acres of farmland, taxpayers have spent $45 million repairing the breach, which ruined $40 million worth of crops and equipment and threatened to foul the pumps that supply drinking water to 22 million Californians.

Flood experts say Jones Tract and recent legal settlements sticking the state with the bill for decades-old levee breaks in Yuba County have combined to finally force the Central Valley‘s biggest threat into public view.

Thousands of homes and billions of dollars in property lie behind century-old earthen levees that have failed dozens of times over the past 20 years.

An antiquated flood-fighting system is groaning under the pressure of a population boom, and many flood experts say the next big deluge could make the Jones Tract break look like a spilled teacup.

The risk is real, experts say.

They contend nothing can be done to stop San Joaquin County from flooding, so it requires local officials to carefully consider where to build homes, schools and hospitals. The rivers must be allowed to flow somewhere, they say, or the waters will unleash havoc on homeowners unaware that nearby levees may not protect them.

And yet state and local budgets for maintaining those levees have evaporated since 1997, the last time the county experienced widespread flooding.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed an increase in funding, and a more substantial fix — creating a Valleywide “flood fee" to pay for future repairs — is being debated in the Legislature.

As encouraging as these developments may be, they‘re merely half-measures shoring up what most scientists agree is a system designed to fail.

Long-term solutions are expensive and require land, something more precious than the gold that lured people here 155 years ago. Without support from business, agriculture, homeowners and environmentalists, it cannot be done.

Baldwin says other communities have stitched together these disparate groups toward a common goal. The same must be done here in San Joaquin.

“We basically have the same flood control system we had in 1997," he said.

And yet Baldwin must somehow use that system to protect thousands of new homes.

Money trickle

Schwarzenegger could provide a crucial inflow of new money. His proposed budget increases would lift annual flood-control funding beyond the $100 million mark for the first time since 2001, a welcome sign that thus far has met with no opposition in the Legislature.

The money would help the state Department of Water Resources repair some of the levees it maintains or pay local reclamation districts in the Delta to do the same.

But the department estimates it would need at least $600 million to repair just the levees along the Sacramento River system. That does not include levees in San Joaquin County or the Delta. Include them, and the total tops $1 billion.

A report released by the department in January asks the administration and the Legislature to increase its maintenance budget, subsidize flood insurance for homeowners, change liability laws to limit the state‘s legal exposure and create a Central Valley assessment district that would assess a flood fee for repairs.

Levee maintenance depends on politics, as well. Senate leader Don Perata wants the state to borrow up to $7.7 billion for transportation and other infrastructure needs. Perata represents the East Bay and wants at least $1 billion for the still-unfinished Bay Bridge.

He needs votes from Central Valley lawmakers, some of whom would normally oppose borrowing that much money for projects that help other regions. So Perata has included up to $1 billion for levee repairs in the package.

Perata‘s proposal was released just three weeks ago. Six months into the legislative session, there‘s been little movement on the other proposals. Lawmakers sponsoring the various measures say they‘re hopeful they can push something through the process before they return home in September.

Another Senate proposal unveiled two weeks ago would double the required protection for levees around homes.

All of this could result in the most sweeping flood-control measures enacted in a generation.

Or it could be 1997 all over again.

Been there

Baldwin has frustrating memories of the aftermath of that flood. So does state Sen. Michael Machado, a Linden Democrat who chaired a set of hearings eight years ago examining the causes and consequences of the last flood. Very little has resulted from either it or a similar report conducted by the Water Resources Department.

Both studies produced recommendations similar to the one the department released earlier this year and spurred a short-term spike in flood-control funding. But it did not last.

“When you live in a dry climate, the half-life of a flood is the next sunny day," Machado said.

Baldwin found the local situation no different. After 1997, the city of Stockton held workshops to teach residents what to do in a flood.

“And they had five or six people show up," Baldwin said. “If the public‘s complacent about this, how can you get the politicians to notice?"

Results may be thin, but reports are thick. California taxpayers fund a half-dozen agencies that deal with water and flooding, and after every major flood — and there have been at least five in the Central Valley since 1980 — they produce reports warning policy-makers about the next big disaster.

Each report exhorts the state to spend more to fix levees, modernize the local flood-fighting system and consider giving the state power over local land-use decisions that put houses in flood-prone areas. Machado‘s task force recommended that the state require homeowners to buy flood insurance if they live behind 100-year-flood levees like those in Stockton.

To be sure, some improvements have been made since the 1980s, when after a series of Delta levee failures, the state Department of Water Resources started subsidizing their upkeep. The funding spike after 1997 was one such boon.

“We‘ve spent a lot of money, and it has helped quite a lot," said retired state hydrologist Maury Roos. “But it‘s a continual battle. The rate of investment hasn‘t kept up with the needs."

Baldwin has also conducted several flood drills, which inspired him and his counterparts in Alameda, Contra Costa and Sacramento counties to start developing a plan to coordinate their efforts when another Delta island floods.

This would be a huge improvement over 1997, when the different agencies found themselves bidding against each other for supplies as simple as sandbags.

“The process is getting a little better, but we still have barriers," Baldwin said.

Yet many of the recommended long-term changes never happened.

Local politicians still have the power to put homes in flood-prone areas. Homeowners still have the option of going without flood insurance and then suing the state. Only about 2 percent of San Joaquin County homeowners have decided on their own to protect their homes from losses due to flooding.

The big payback

There is a $511 million difference between the Jones Tract aftermath and a previous disaster. That‘s the amount of the settlement payments the state owes Yuba County property owners who sued the state after levees failed there in 1986 and 1997.

This huge payout has drawn the attention of politicians and public officials who might not otherwise care about flooding in the Central Valley.

Known as the Paterno suit after its primary plaintiff, it resulted in a settlement of $464 million — so large it required state budget writers to resort to creative financing to pay it off.

But what really scares them is that Paterno was just one case. Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird said he‘s sponsoring sweeping flood-control legislation partly because the case set a legal precedent that already has repeated itself. Earlier this month, another Yuba County flood settlement resulted in $47 million owed by the state.

What would happen if the levees failed behind places such as Natomas in Sacramento or Mossdale Landing here in San Joaquin County? Each development is larger than those flooded in Yuba County — Mossdale Landing could ultimately include more than 2,000 homes.

Michael Robinson of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said a flood inundating several large developments could easily become the most expensive flood disaster in U.S. history, topping the $12 billion tab for the 1993 Mississippi River floods.

Thanks to the Paterno decision, the taxpayers of California could be on the hook for such a disaster. Lawmakers want to make sure it never happens again by shifting legal liability onto local governments or property owners.

This could bankrupt those without flood insurance.

The Stockton Unified School District is taking no chances. After the 1997 floods, top administrators decided to insure schools in south Stockton and other low-lying areas in case the waters come again.

Robinson said FEMA is remapping the nation‘s flood plains and said that homeowners in many of the county‘s subdivisions now considered protected could find themselves in need of insurance, which costs an average of $400 a year for those in San Joaquin County who are already buying it.

And the new maps will be just an educated guess about the adequacy of flood protection, Robinson said. Risk calculations will be better, but the basic federal flood safety standard hasn‘t been raised since 1968 and probably won‘t be.

Even the Yuba County disaster may not create the political will to require tougher standards for levees that protect homes, churches and schools.

Robinson said change could require the loss of human lives.

“It may take a major levee failure before something is done, just because there is so much at stake in writing more restrictive requirements," he said.

Baldwin is more blunt:

“We‘re going to have to go in and spend the money and protect ourselves. Or people are going to die."

Contact Capitol Bureau Chief Hank Shaw at (916) 441-4078 or sacto@recordnet.com Contact reporter Dana Nichols at (209) 546-8295 or dnichols@recordnet.com

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