This article from today’s Bee highlights the important financial considerations involved in being able to build a dam on the American River that provides 400+ year flood protection.
To put that protection into context; Sacramento currently has 100 year flood protection, will have 200 year flood protection with the planned levee and Folsom Dam improvements, and, New Orleans had 250 year flood protection right before Katrina hit.
Obviously the optimal strategy is one that carries a 400+ year level of flood protection, and even with the caveats in this story about the size of the agency helping to move that strategy forward, we hope public leadership, and public discussion, continues to focus on optimal solutions while working hard to provide funding for them.
Here is an excerpt.
Dam has a tiny backer
For $5 billion Auburn project, agency's annual budget is $17,855
By Matt Weiser and Carrie Peyton Dahlberg -- Bee Staff Writers Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, April 16, 2006
The American River Authority doesn't have the cash to buy an average new car. Yet this obscure government agency will decide next month whether to sponsor the construction of an Auburn dam, potentially a $5 billion project.
Federal rules require a local sponsor or sponsors to pay 35 percent of a new dam's flood-control costs. For a project the size of an Auburn dam, this share might run to $700 million or more.
That could be a tall order for the American River Authority, a joint-powers agency consisting of San Joaquin, Placer and El Dorado counties, and the water agencies of the latter two counties.
The authority was formed in 1982 expressly to become the dam's local sponsor. But when the project's financial and political challenges proved too great, the authority turned to lobbying for the dam alongside Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, and the private Auburn Dam Council.
Bruce Kranz, the authority's chairman and a Placer County supervisor, said the dam now has a fighting chance. Last year's New Orleans flooding disaster, he said, gives the dam new currency as a flood-control structure to protect Sacramento.
Estimates of how much flood protection the dam would provide vary with the type of project discussed. But an Auburn dam could at minimum quadruple protection for most of Sacramento, providing security from a massive storm with a 1 in 400 chance of occurring in a given year.
"We think the timing is right," Kranz said. "We don't even know what the cost of the project is.
What we're saying is, we are ready to start the process to find out what these numbers are."
In recent years, Sacramento County leaders have expressed concern that efforts to revive the project would divert money and attention from planned improvements to area levees and Folsom Dam without the new dam ever becoming a reality.
Auburn dam was authorized in 1965 as a 2.3 million acre-foot reservoir on the American River adjacent to the city of Auburn.
Earthquake risk and environmental concerns halted the project in 1979.
The authority plans to decide at its May 15 meeting whether to become Auburn dam's local sponsor, and to investigate construction financing that could include issuing revenue bonds.
As a state-recognized joint powers agency, the authority has the legal power to issue bonds.
