A good perspective with relevance to Sacramento County.
An excerpt.
Another View: Yuba plans for effective flood control
By Mary Jane Griego - Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 1, 2006
I lived through the floods that devastated south Yuba County in 1986 and 1997. Preventing a third disaster is more than a job -- it's personal.
After years of hard work to rebuild, Yuba County leadership discovered a workable strategy to vastly improve our level of flood protection. Landowners are providing funding toward more than $250 million in improvements to our levee system in exchange for allowing controlled growth. But we haven't seen that story in The Bee, which has criticized the state Board of Reclamation for lifting building permit limitations.
Critics of this decision forget that 40 percent of our existing population already lives in south Yuba County, a situation similar to that in North Natomas. This is not irresponsible development. Instead, we are using controlled growth to fund improved flood protection for some 25,000 existing residents. Until developers funded the levee improvements, our residents had a meager 33-year level of flood protection. That number has significantly increased and will soon reach a 200-year level of flood protection.
A complete ban on building would have forced us to wait for federal funding. That process can take 20 years -- 20 flood seasons -- before the first shovel hits the dirt. We simply do not have that kind of time. That's why the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority sought to combine state funding with contributions from landowners in the Plumas Lake area.
