In this story from Saturday’s Bee, the Governor, providing leadership of an increasing trend, is on the side of providing flood protection rather than accepting flooding as inevitable.
It is only the conditions for flooding that are inevitable, as are those for earthquakes and other natural disasters, but as we have seen in San Francisco and Japan, building codes can require builders to build strong enough to protect against overwhelming disasters from earthquakes.
So it is with flooding.
We cannot change the conditions that cause the amount of rainfall that leads to flooding, but we can build big enough dams, strong enough levees, good enough drainage systems, and keep local creeks and streams able to handle downpours without overflowing into peoples homes and businesses.
Here is an excerpt.
Governor: Bond plan is flood answer
By Andy Furillo -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, March 4, 2006
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday brushed off the ideas of mandatory flood insurance and building moratoriums if legislators fail to put his $6 billion levee bond on the ballot this year.
In a telephone interview with The Bee, the governor described talk of flood insurance or building moratoriums as "hypothetical" and dismissed both concepts as falling short of the bond-funded levee fixes that he sees as the long-term answer to the region's flood problem.
"We will get it approved," he said of his bond proposal.
Schwarzenegger said it is crucial to persuade people living in a disaster-prone state to properly insure their property. But, he added, "I don't think we want to make it mandatory."
Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, proposed a bill in January that would require property owners in "levee protection/inundation zones" to maintain flood insurance.
Jones declined to directly respond to Schwarzenegger's comments and how they might affect the prospects of his Assembly Bill 1898, which would require insurance for properties in areas with less than 200-year flood protection or that lack a "standard project flood estimate."
Levels of protection in the Sacramento region vary, with much of it not even reaching the federal government's minimal 100-year threshold.
But Jones quoted from a report put out last year by the administration's Department of Water Resources that said any homes or businesses located in high-risk zones "should have some form of flood insurance."
"We're the city and region at greatest risk of flooding in the nation, and we know in New Orleans they thought they had one-in-250-years flood protection," Jones said. "They didn't, and they didn't have insurance, and hundreds of thousands of people are ruined as a result."
As for building moratoriums, Schwarzenegger said, "The reason I don't like to go toward not building - there are some people who believe that's the way to go - is that, if you say to yourself, let's not build in flood-prone areas, what do we say about earthquake-prone areas? Then you say, the Bay Area, it has a lot of earthquakes. ... Should no one build in the Bay Area?"
Schwarzenegger again extolled a massive levee restoration program as the best long-term flood cure.
