In this editorial from the Bee Thursday, March 2nd , we hear again that the flooding danger is a security issue, which we completely agree with, and that the chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will be visiting the area soon to see for himself.
That national attention could be very good for our local flood protection solutions, and we anticipate the search will begin to address an optimal solution, in the 500+ year range of protection, (which we believe is a major new dam and also more easily protected) beyond the temporary one of levee strengthening, which can only reach the 200-250 year range of protection, about what New Orleans had when it flooded.
Here is an excerpt.
Editorial: Al-Qaida vs. El Niño
Here, homeland security means levee fixes
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, March 2, 2006
One hourlong aerial tour of Northern California river levees was enough for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The governor, who was joined in the helicopter by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, saw some of the 24 critical weaknesses that have been identified along Northern California levees, most of them along the Sacramento River. At the current pace of maintenance, it will take about four years just to patch up these known weaknesses.
That pace is too slow. The governor is now trying to speed things up. Good. The faster, the better.
The only way the governor can accelerate progress is to declare a state of emergency. That is what he did shortly after last week's levee tour. This procedural move frees up some state emergency funds, probably more than $50 million, to start fixing these earthen levees before a big storm wipes them out.
"This worsening condition," says Schwarzenegger, "creates conditions of extreme peril to the public and property protected by the levees, to the environment and to the very foundation of California's economy."
When a state declares an emergency, it raises the question of whether the federal government will as well. Inside the Bush administration, the matter falls to the struggling Department of Homeland Security. This is the agency that Bush set up after the 9/11 attacks revealed weaknesses in how the various intelligence agencies communicated (or didn't) with one another.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which responds to disasters, is now part of this department as well.
Homeland Security doesn't seem to take natural disasters nearly as seriously as terrorism. The department, for example, recently proposed to drop Sacramento from the list of regions that faced risks significant enough to qualify for a special pot of security funds.
