Taxes are like that, but this tax, according to its sponsors, appears to leverage many more times itself in federal money for flood protection, getting us to a 200 year level, (though still less than the 250 year level of New Orleans when it flooded) a good start towards the eventual goal we hope public leadership embraces, that of 500 year protection.
Flood-tax plan sneaks up on some residents
Proposed levy is hitting several neighborhoods for first time
By Deb Kollars - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Thursday, March 1, 2007
In seven years of living in the Gold River neighborhood east of Sunrise Boulevard, Guy Anderson and his wife, Karen Callen Anderson, had never given a thought to flooding.
But now, they and 20,000 other property owners in Gold River, Rancho Cordova and other Sacramento neighborhoods are being asked for the first time to tax themselves for flood protection.
It has come as an odd surprise for many.
"We always were under the impression it wouldn't affect us," said Karen Callen Anderson, the owner of a pool company. She has never bought flood insurance, paid a flood tax or prepared an emergency kit.
The Andersons are among 140,000 property owners in the Sacramento region who soon will receive ballots in the mail asking them to approve a new assessment district for added flood protection. Most have been paying assessments to the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency and have been aware of their flooding risks.
But this time around, 20,000 parcels were added to those ranks. That's because SAFCA wants to take the area beyond the old standard of 100-year flood protection to a higher safety level. The goal is to strengthen levees and improve Folsom Dam so the community could survive a 200-year storm event, said Stein Buer, SAFCA executive director.
Such a flood would be more rare -- it would have a 1-in-200 chance of happening in any given year vs. a 1-in-100 chance for a 100-year flood.
But it would be larger and more destructive, spreading water over the 120,000 properties within the path of a 100-year flood, plus the 20,000 in the larger flood's "footprint," as hydrologists call it. Over 30 years -- the life of a typical mortgage -- there is a 14 percent chance of such a whopper flood.
