While no one should be surprised at this failure of public leadership, it is still disconcerting that any area of a city lying in the confluence of two flood prone rivers, underneath the Sierra watershed, would have any metro areas with less than 100 year protection, but there it is.
An excerpt.
Plan to fix levee stretch falls short as rains near
Pocket area won't receive 100-year status if officials reject temporary wall.
By Deb Kollars - Bee Staff WriterPublished 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 7, 2006
The unexpected discovery of a low stretch in a levee south of the Pocket-Greenhaven neighborhood has flood control engineers scrambling to figure out how to build it up before the rainy season hits -- possibly with a temporary floodwall of concrete barriers and sand.
The dip in the levee and the prospect of a fix involving sand and big chunks of concrete left the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warning Friday that the Pocket and Meadowview areas may not achieve official 100-year flood protection status by the end of the year, as residents have been promised.
However, Stein Buer, head of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, which has been working all summer with the corps to upgrade levees protecting the south-area neighborhoods, insisted Friday his staff would somehow find a way to meet the 100-year goal this year. (A 100-year flood has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year.)
"This is not a show stopper," Buer said.
In a finding with big ramifications, engineers learned late last spring that an 800-foot stretch of levee on the Sacramento River did not have the required 3 feet of "freeboard" above the high water level of a 100-year flood event. The levee is 2 feet short in some places.
