Floods could strike here

By Paul Rogers, Mercury News
Thursday, September 8, 2005

Built below sea level. Ringed by aging, inadequate levees. Struggling with a lack of federal funding. A disaster waiting to happen.

Warnings that for so long defined New Orleans -- now submerged in ruins -- describe San Francisco Bay's delta today. If the earthen levees in the marshes, sloughs and farmland of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta collapsed in several places, it could create a different type of catastrophe: the loss of California's largest source of drinking water.

Scientists and state water experts have warned for more than two decades that a large earthquake or flood could burst holes in the fragile, 1,100-mile network of levees crisscrossing the delta from Antioch to Stockton. Politicians including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Stockton, echoed those warnings this week, demanding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers draw up a plan for repairs.

After languishing as one of California's most critical, yet obscure, safety issues, fixing the delta levees has taken on a new urgency.

The worst-case scenario is like a Hollywood movie plot.

Built by ``wheelbarrow brigades'' beginning in the 1860s to protect pear orchards and melon patches, many delta levees are slowly sinking, eroding away and being weakened by burrowing rodents. But perhaps the biggest threat is a significant earthquake.

If several failed at once, trillions of gallons of ocean water could surge from San Francisco Bay into the delta, where it would inundate the huge state and federal pumps at Tracy.

The pumps are massive devices that suck fresh water from the delta and pump it hundreds of miles down canals and aqueducts visible along I-5 and other places.

To prevent saltwater coming out of the taps of 22 million Californians, authorities would shut the pumps down.

``New Orleans was pretty frightening to watch, because of the eerie parallels,'' said Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. ``It would be a very sustained, very serious water shortage for at least months, likely more than a year.''

About 50 percent of Santa Clara County's drinking water comes from the delta. Delta water also irrigates the Central Valley, which produces 45 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables. In most years, 20 to 30 percent of Southern California's water comes from the delta -- as much as 60 percent in some years.

If levee failure did shut down the water project pumps, Santa Clara County would have to pump groundwater intensely. Southern California would rely on the Colorado River and Owens Valley Project. Huge amounts of fresh water would be released from New Melones, Oroville and other reservoirs to flush away the salt water while crews tried to rebuild levees. Crops would die. Rationing would be a certainty.

Stretching from Sacramento to San Francisco Bay, the delta is 738,000 acres, nearly the size of Yosemite National Park. California's two largest rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, meet there before they flow out under the Golden Gate.

Once thick with millions of birds and teeming with salmon, the delta was reshaped by Gold Rush settlers who drained and diked it to farm its rich peat soils. Today, farmers remain, but sinking land has put many of the 60 ``islands'' 25 feet below sea level -- three times as deep as New Orleans, and similarly surrounded by levees.

Huge pumps built in the 1960s for the State Water Project and Central Valley Project also rely on levees as they draw billions of gallons of fresh water south. What's being done to protect those pumps? Not much.

In 2000, a coalition of state and federal agencies known as CalFed recommended spending $450 million to maintain delta levees by 2007. That's half what the state Department of Water Resources estimates the whole job will cost. Costs were to be shared by the state, Congress and local interests.

With two years to go, however, only $105.5 million has been spent. Most funding, nearly $87 million, has come from state taxpayers. Congress has contributed just $900,000. And local governments have spent $18 million.

Compounding the problem, about 65 percent of the delta levees are owned and maintained by small districts of farmers, and many aren't built to federal standards.

For most scientists, repairs can't come soon enough.

There is a 2-in-3 chance of catastrophic levee failure in the delta in the next 50 years, according to geologist Jeffrey Mount, director of the University of California-Davis Center for Watershed Studies.

``We should prepare for the inevitable,'' he said. ``As we discovered in New Orleans, if 99.9 percent of levees are in great shape, and 0.1 percent are not, the storm is going to find it.''

In debates between environmentalists, farmers and cities over the past 40 years, other issues like dams, salmon and drinking water quality have taken precedence. Levees had few strong advocates.

``Levee repair doesn't have the same pizazz like widening a freeway or opening a new commuter train,'' said state Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Concord. ``But we are facing billions and billions in costs. We've got to get our act together.''

This year, Torlakson added $1 billion in funding to pay for levee repairs statewide as part of a $7.7 billion transportation bond measure. But that measure, which was to go before state voters next June, was tabled two weeks ago after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and its author, state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, decided there wasn't enough time in the final weeks of the legislative session to work out details.

``We'll take it up again in January,'' Torlakson said. ``I think it will have bipartisan support.''

Wednesday, Schwarzenegger expressed new urgency.

``If we know there is vulnerability, let us fix it now,'' he said at a news conference.

Last year, a single levee failure at the Jones Tract, west of Stockton, flooded 12,000 acres of delta farmland and buildings. Water delivery pumps were shut off for several days. The total bill: $100 million for repairs and losses. Under one state scenario, 20 such levees could fail in a major quake.

``The Jones Tract really scared people,'' said Walt Wadlow, chief water utility operating officer for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

``We've spent money identifying the nature and scope of the problem. Where the money will come from to fix it is still an open question.''