A follow-up on the state's levee work and some are so bad they can't even handle a 20 year level of river flow, which is not too reassuring
An excerpt.
July 28, 2006
Report: Levees getting worseBy Mike Taugher
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
January storms damaged levees in the Sacramento Valley and northern Delta so badly that they are highly vulnerable to failure in 81 places as early as the next rainy season, according to a report by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Thirty-five of the eroded levees protect houses, businesses or infrastructure and urgently need to be fixed, the corps said in a report released Wednesday.
The report is the latest sign that levees in the Central Valley and the Delta are badly deteriorated and getting worse.
"It's a vivid reminder of what we've been saying for a long time," said state Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow. "If we don't invest (in repairs), at some point we won't be able to catch up."
The cost to fix the 24 most critical levees is estimated at $50.5 million. Fixing all 81 severely damaged levees would cost $160 million.
Snow said state taxpayers likely would pay a significant portion of the cost, even though he said the federal government normally pays to repair storm damage to the class of levees that was inspected. But the federal government, he said, was unlikely to come up with funding quickly.
"We're not going to not protect California citizens," Snow said.
Some of the damaged levees are protecting northern Delta communities such as Isleton, Walnut Grove and Clarksburg, state officials said.
The January storms were not particularly severe and were of a magnitude to be expected once every 15 or 20 years, said Jason Fanselau, a spokesman for the corps' Sacramento office.
"This levee system is in a pretty weakened state right now, and it's not able to handle 20-year level of flows," he said.
