Funding farmers for the loss of income when their farms have to be flooded to save Sacramento and other urban areas is fair and timely.
It will provide a flood protection option until a better one can be developed, which for the Sacramento River might be the raising of Shasta Dam, which was originally due to be 200 feet higher than it now is—and was engineered for that extra height—which would triple it’s storage capacity.
Editorial: Floods and farming
Sacramento River needs urban, rural strategy
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, July 12, 2007
When the Sacramento River floods, it doesn't stay tidily within its banks. The Sacramento Valley is proof of that.
Time was when the river at flood stage sprawled throughout the Valley, creating something that looked more like a sea. Levees now line the river and for the most part contain it. Yet the Sacramento has breached its banks somewhere just about every time the system is stressed.
This happens despite the best of intentions and considerable work to strengthen levees and direct the huge flows into various bypasses along the way. But it's reality.
Urban areas like Sacramento, with the most people and the most structures at stake, will inevitably have greater protection than rural areas that have mostly crops behind them. This is a river that simply cannot be armored to the hilt everywhere. The question is whether landowners and farmers in rural areas that face a greater chance of flooding should get some new form of compensation for their vital role in the overall system.
It certainly seems fair. Yet this would formalize something about flood control that understandably makes some rural landowners uncomfortable.
