In what could be a foretaste of suits to come, an environmental organization has sued to stop the building of homes near a Delta levee because global warming will cause them to flood.
An excerpt.
Levee suit cites global warming
Officials who OK'd Delta homes illegally failed to consider sea level rise, groups say.
By Matt Weiser -- Bee Staff Writer Published 12:01 am PDT Friday, August 18, 2006
Environmental groups plan to file a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court today claiming that flood-control officials violated state law by allowing major levee modifications in San Joaquin County without considering the effect of global warming.
The groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, assert that the sea level rise associated with climate change could eventually overtop those levees, putting thousands of people at risk.
The suit targets a permit approved June 26 by the state Reclamation Board that cleared the way for the River Islands project to build 224 luxury homes on top of a 300-foot-wide "superlevee" on Stewart Tract, an island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Eventually, River Islands plans to build 11,000 homes on the island, which lies within the Lathrop city limits.
Barry Nelson, a senior policy advocate at NRDC, claims the board violated the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to examine how sea level rise will affect those levees.
Other plaintiffs include the Natural Heritage Institute and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
"This (governor's) administration has made climate change a priority, but the Reclamation Board just hasn't read the memo, because they're still refusing to even analyze that issue," Nelson said.
The majority of the world's climate scientists agree that the Earth's temperatures are rising, and that human activities are partly to blame. Burning coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which traps more of the sun's heat.
Computer modeling by climate experts shows that this warming effect could raise California sea levels more than 2 feet by the end of this century. This would affect not just ocean-front communities, but also the Delta and its 1,100-mile network of levees.
A study by the state Department of Water Resources last month estimated that a sea level rise of just 1 foot would likely flood the three westernmost Delta islands: Jersey, Twitchell and Sherman.
Many Delta levees may have to be raised in response to sea level rise. But higher levees were not part of the Reclamation Board's discussion about River Islands.
Board member Butch Hodgkins declined to comment on the case Thursday, citing the threat of pending litigation.
The board's attorney, Scott Morgan, and its president, Ben Carter, could not be reached for comment. Nor could River Islands Project Manager Susan Dell'Osso.
DWR is working on two major studies that examine the future of the Delta in the face of climate change, partly in response to a directive by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has made climate change a priority and who appointed the current Reclamation Board.
But it is still rare to see the threat of rising seas filter down to routine decision-making at any government agency.
