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Delta disaster could be catastrophic for San Joaquin Billions needed to protect levees, flood panel says

Published in the Stockton Record on 01/19/06

Delta disaster could be catastrophic for S.J.
Billions needed to protect levees, flood panel says

Greg Kane - Record Staff Writer
Published Thursday, Jan 19, 2006

STOCKTON - Water levels are rising, the dirt levees protecting the Delta are sinking, and the agencies charged with making up the difference are hampered by red tape and empty pockets.

That's one of the grim scenarios presented by local, state and federal water watchers during a nearly four-hour presentation on Delta flood control to the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors this week.

The presentation was a response to flood fears in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the recent New Year's storm that caused more than $13 million in damages across the county. The dangerously high water levels caused by the storm have since returned to normal, although officials are bracing for unusually high tides at the end of January.

A top official with the state Department of Water Resources told the board how an earthquake in the region would cause a catastrophic loss of property, jobs and safe drinking water. The county's Public Works Department director explained that one in four homeowners in 100-year flood plains will likely take on floodwaters over a span of three decades.

For most, the theme was the same: Billions of dollars of improvements are needed to shore up the Delta's 1,600-mile system of eroding levees.

But local attorney Dante Nomellini, who represents a number of the county reclamation districts that maintain the levees, said the focus also should include improving education and emergency response plans for floods that may be inevitable.

"You can't predict the future based on the past," Nomellini told the board. "Lifting 30,000 people off rooftops with helicopters is not going to work."

Public Works Director Thomas Flinn said the county is vulnerable to flooding from three events: a major levee break, heavy rains like the New Year's storm and a failure at one of the 13 dams upstream of the Valley.

Most of the conversation, however, focused on levees. Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow explained the results of a report released in November in which a hypothetical earthquake struck the Delta's western edge.

According to the report, a 6.5-magnitude quake would break 30 levees, flood 16 islands, dump 300 billion gallons of salt water into the drinking water supply and flood 3,000 homes and 85,000 acres of crops. Such a catastrophic event would take years to clean up and cost the state's economy up to $40 billion, Snow said. "This is the type of thing that can happen," he said.

Nomellini downplayed the earthquake theory, saying such a temblor would cause immense damage no matter where it struck in the state. Rather than a complete overhaul of the Delta's levee system - which is what some propose - Nomellini said there should be more of a focus on education and making necessary improvements, such as monitoring and patching rodent holes known to weaken levees from the inside.

"I view that as more of a threat than this seismic event they're talking about," Nomellini said.

Officials with the Department of Water Resources also warned that sea levels have risen 8 inches in the past century and are expected to go up at least another 11/2 feet in the next 100 years.

That rise, coupled with the fact that some levees are sinking into the toothpastelike soil on which they were built, could be a recipe for disaster if left unchecked, Snow said.

Another concern with flood management projects is the maze of state and federal agencies that districts must navigate to make improvements to the levees, Nomellini said.

Districts have to work around landowners, environmentalists and regulators dictating where they can and can't work along the system, he said.

Contact reporter Greg Kane at (209) 546-8276 or gkane@recordnet.com

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