Napa's 'living river' gets mixed reviews
Model project mitigated damage but won't be completed until 2011

By DEREK J. MOORE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Sunday, January 8, 2006

Below the new Third Street bridge in downtown Napa, excavation equipment for a flood wall was mired in mud days after the swollen Napa River had spilled over a temporary dam.

A little farther south, tourists ate lunch at a French restaurant and sipped lattes at Sweetie Pie's Bakery inside a renovated grain mill. Some were guests of the Napa River Inn, where rooms start at $239 a night.

The contrast of the new bridge and updated grain mill with a construction site deluged by New Year's floods illustrated the hopes - and setbacks - of Napa's flood control ambitions.

By the time high water struck last week, more than $200 million had been spent on a flood control project developed as a national model for taming rain-swollen rivers.

But the work, which was to be completed by 2007, is only 40 percent done and could cost another $100 million to finish. That's roughly equal to the amount of damage caused by last week's storms, which left more than putrid mud in its wake.

"All around the community, people are saying, 'Oh yeah, all that money they wasted, all those millions, it didn't work,'" said Barry Martin, a spokesman for the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

Weary of major floods in 1986, 1995 and 1997, two-thirds of Napa County residents voted in 1998 for a half-cent sales tax increase and literally began rewriting the book on flood control.

The Napa County plan, unlike the dam and concrete approach of the past, called for removing or lowering dikes and levees along the 55-mile river, replacing and raising bridges and restoring hundreds of acres of wetlands.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which had two proposals rejected by Napa voters, embraced the "living river" approach, which has become a model for communities elsewhere around the country.

Supporters say the work that has already been done, including 650 acres of restored wetlands south of Napa, helped siphon New Year's floodwaters out of downtown more quickly than in previous deluges.

Three new bridges have been built and a fourth is nearing completion. Soil along 11 acres of riverbank contaminated by petroleum spills has been hauled away and two miles of flood terraces have been built.

Still to be completed are a bypass channel at a bend in the Napa River called the Oxbow, railroad bridges and more flood walls and levees. The plan also includes a river promenade.

Flood walls still under construction near Third Street will provide even more protection, supporters argue, leading to more development that draws people to a downtown struggling to reinvent itself.

For many residents and business owners the work will not come quickly enough. Estimated completion of the flood project is now 2011, four years behind schedule.

Not surprisingly, Napans have mixed opinions about the work to date.

Moira Johnston Block, who co-founded Friends of the Napa River, a major supporter of the project, said the benefits are already evident outside her riverfront condominium south of the central downtown area.

Standing on her back patio Thursday, she pointed to the top step leading up from the dock where she said floods in 1997 nearly inundated her home. By contrast, last week's floods, which were worse, reached only the bottom step, about five feet lower.

"Here I stand telling you that flood control was a great benefit to us," she said.

Upriver, the mood was less positive.

On Dec. 30, Greg Allen and his fiancee Zinaida Beynon fled their Behrens Street Victorian as rain began to fall heavily in Napa. They returned the following morning to find two feet of water and mud in their living room and kitchen.

The couple estimate they lost $10,000. What they salvaged was loaded into U-Hauls and taken to their new apartment across town.

"It's on the second floor," Allen, a winemaker, quipped.

The water from Napa Creek historically backs up at the Behrens Street Bridge during heavy rains and overflows into the surrounding neighborhood, yet the area will be one of the last to benefit from flood-control work. The bridge is not scheduled to be replaced until 2009.

Heather Stanton, Napa's flood project manager, said replacing the bridge before work is completed downstream would only push the debris somewhere else.

She places blame for project delays on the federal government, a view supported by other Napa County officials and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who has lobbied for additional funds.

The Corps has spent about $60 million, and will need another $100 million to complete construction, Martin said. The Bush Administration, however, proposed only $7 million for the project in fiscal year 2005, well below the $28 million asked for by the House Appropriations Committee.

Thompson said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger assured him during a tour of Napa last week that he would lobby harder for more money for the flood project.

"We need to finish this project and we need to do it as soon as we possibly can," Thompson said.

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