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Legislators urge Delta levee girding
Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Richard Pombo, the architects of key federal legislation affecting the Delta, pointed to a study last year by a UC Davis geologist showing a 2-in-3 chance that an earthquake or flood could cause a Delta catastrophe by 2050. "In other words, if we don't address this problem, we may suffer the same fate as Louisiana -- it's just a matter of time," the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent to Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Feinstein, a Democrat, and Pombo, a Tracy Republican who runs the House committee that oversees water policy, said catastrophic flooding could endanger lives, ruin farms and foul water supplies -- at least temporarily -- for 23 million Californians who rely on the region for drinking water. "As we have seen in New Orleans , it would be a dramatic mistake to further delay the repairs that are necessary to protect communities from the ravages of floodwaters," Feinstein said in a statement. Since Hurricane Katrina, numerous newspapers have reported that federal budget cuts severely hindered programs meant to strengthen the levees that protected New Orleans . In California , despite recognition that the Delta's levees are fragile and deteriorating, the levee protection program also has been underfunded. For example, the levee improvement strategies in a water program known as CalFed received $108 million in the past five years, or about one-third the expected funding. "We get some pretty good storms and we get some pretty good earthquakes," said Tom Zuckerman, who co-chairs a CalFed subcommittee on levees. "People are going to wonder why we weren't ready. We just lost the discipline we once had in funding maintenance and improvement programs for our levees." State and federal officials are starting to develop a study to look at how to manage the risk of Delta levee failure, a study that is expected to cost $5 million to $6 million and take two years, said Brandon Muncie, chief of water resources in the Corps of Engineers Sacramento District. The study could recommend upgrades to Delta levees, improvements to emergency response capabilities or a combination of the two, Muncie said. Meanwhile, a leading expert on Delta levees says they are bound to fail. "When President Bush came on and said we didn't think the ( New Orleans ) levees would break, the derisive reaction in the scientific community was, 'We warned you,'" said Jeffrey Mount, the UC Davis scientist who recently calculated the odds of a catastrophe in the Delta by 2050 at 2-in-3. "(The New Orleans flooding) was all predicted. The same is predicted here," Mount said. "The lesson from New Orleans is, how will we respond when we have the battle with the inevitable?" In other words, given that it appears unlikely the government will spend enough money to adequately strengthen the levees, the response of emergency managers will be increasingly important. Mount said there are several similarities between New Orleans and the California Delta, and one key difference. The similarities include: • Both regions have lost substantial amounts of wetlands that previously served as shock absorbers to prevent flooding. In Louisiana , marshes that would have absorbed some of the strength of the hurricane have disappeared because of river management. In California , river floodplains that can absorb and minimize large flooding have been separated from rivers by channeling and levees. • Both regions are more susceptible to floods because of sinking land. New Orleans and islands in the California Delta are below the level of surrounding water. • Both regions built the levees, knowing that any levee can fail, as a defense against large rivers that can send huge amounts of water very fast downstream. "The only difference between us and New Orleans is we haven't put a major city in the middle (of the Delta)," Mount said. "We're headed in that direction; we just haven't arrived there yet," Mount said. Several communities are under construction or on the drawing board in parts of Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties that border the Delta. And while the Gulf Coast disaster temporarily crippled energy supplies, a similar flood in the California Delta could damage statewide water supplies in potentially severe ways. Two-thirds of California residents get at least some of their drinking water from massive state and federal water projects that draw water out of the south Delta. If numerous levees fail, the rush of water into below-sea level Delta islands could gulp water into the Delta, potentially from the San Francisco Bay . That can bring salty water into the drinking water supplies. Last summer, for example, when the Jones Tract flooded, pumps were shut down for days as salty water was drawn in. A year after the Jones Tract flood, officials continue to refer to it as a warning that a more devastating Delta flood is possible, or even likely.
Mike Taugher covers the environment. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or mtaugher@cctimes.com . © 2005 ContraCostaTimes.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. |
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