This story from the Bee last Sunday is another in their series about flooding in the capital region and one fact leaps out, the necessity to increase the slurry trenching on the American River levees to 80 feet deep while only requiring it to be 35 to 40 feet deep on the Sacramento River near Natomas.
Gosh, what was the leadership who made that decision thinking? Their response should sound familiar, they never connected the dots, well, let’s surely connect them now, it is still not too late.
Here is an excerpt.
Tempting fate: Natomas flood risk wasn't pushed
Building soared behind levees whose reliability was uncertain.
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg -- Bee Staff WriterPublished 2:15 am PST Sunday, February 26, 2006
For more than six years, as new suburbs exploded in Natomas, flood officials missed chance after chance to ask tougher questions about whether levees had ever been strong enough to allow such growth.
In retrospect Butch Hodgkins, who headed Sacramento's flood agency for more than a decade, saw enough signs of trouble by the late 1990s that he now believes he should have probed deeper back then.
City officials recall pressing federal engineers at least three years ago - and getting ambiguous answers - about whether levees could restrain the Sacramento River in a 100-year flood, the kind brought by storms with a 1 percent chance of striking any year.
Yet, as Natomas' population more than doubled, no one took the steps required for most areas without federally recognized 100-year flood protection: Stop the building. Make people already there buy flood insurance.
Until last week, no one even told Natomas residents their risk might be much greater than once believed.
And it is still unclear whether city, state or federal flood leaders will act to require insurance or prevent thousands more people from moving to a community that a draft study indicates falls short of 100-year protection.
"It makes me very indignant," said Jean Salvino, who wishes someone had sounded a warning before she and her husband bought their retirement place in Natomas in late 2004.
"If we needed flood insurance, we probably wouldn't have moved here. Why would you buy into a problem?" she asked, especially on a fixed income.
The disconnect in Natomas, an oblong basin enclosed by two rivers and two canals, throws into sharp relief the ways that America's sometimes baffling approach to flood control affects communities and lives.
The nation relies on at least two ways to gauge safety. The scientific one evaluates storm size, river capacity and levee strength and uses computer models to predict whether a community has 100-year protection, or 200-year, or perhaps just 15-or 20-year.
The science is constantly evolving. A bigger storm, a levee failure elsewhere can alter the calculations and suddenly, with no difference in what's built around them, people are told they're less well-protected.
Then there's the regulatory approach to safety. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes one stark line: If the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or FEMA consultants certify a community has 100-year protection, there are no building restrictions, no insurance requirements and the optional insurance offered is cheaper. Dip below that and, unless special exemptions are carved out, flood insurance is mandatory for those with federally backed mortgages. Buildings must be raised above the anticipated height of floodwaters - which in deep basins like Natomas could mean 15 or 20 feet.
