Katrina Effect helped bolster flood defenses

Flood // Source: worldpress

In August 2005 millions of Californians stood in pained silence in front of their television sets. Before them were images of New Orleans submerged in water, with desperate people clinging to rooftops. More than 1,800 people died during Hurricane Katrina and the floods it unleashed. It was the deadliest U.S. hurricane in more than a half century, and it brought home the risks of living behind levees.

Sacramento Bee’s Stuart Leavenworth writes that Katrina was both a natural and a man-made disaster, and in California, it had special resonance. Many communities in the state — from Sacramento to Stockton to canyon neighborhoods in Southern California — face a threat of deep flooding. Katrina served a reminder of perils that can arrive with a single Pacific storm.

Californians responded. On 7 November 2006, voters approved a $4.1 billion bond measure for flood control. Proposition 1E was the largest single investment Californians had ever approved for upgrading the state’s flood defenses, and it was remarkable for several reasons.

Leavenworth notes that unlike most bond proposals that are dangled before voters, Proposition 1E was not a Christmas tree. It was not larded up with specific proposals aimed at winning over interest groups and politicians from every part of the state. Most of the money, in fact, was aimed at upgrading levees in the Central Valley, including Sacramento. Yet even though they were not likely to be major beneficiaries, a wide majority of voters in Southern California, the central coast, and other regions endorsed the measure.

During that election, Californians approved more than $42 billion in public works investments. The flood control bond, however, won more votes than any of the other propositions. It was a magnanimous act, and it probably would not have occurred without the lessons of New Orleans.

“The Katrina disaster really brought home just how horrible flooding can be and is,” says Stein Buer, executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency. “Proposition 1E was an opportunity to translate that awareness into action.”

Katrina generated a ripple effect in many areas of flood control. Suddenly in the national spotlight, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took a new look at levees nationwide. The Corps, in particular, took a harder line on potential “underseepage” — water moving beneath levees, causing them to erode and collapse.

The Natomas basin of Sacramento bore the brunt of this scrutiny. The area’s levees were deemed deficient, resulting in building restrictions and costly insurance mandates. Yet because of Proposition 1E, the Sacramento region has been able to tap into funding for flood control that previously wasn’t available.

By the end of January, Buer expects state funding for Natomas levees will near $100 million. That comes on top of $104 million SAFCA is spending out of its own funds.

All that funding will go to an earthworks project unparalleled in this region’s history. When it is done, in 2011, SAFCA will have upgraded the entire western flank of Natomas — the levees posing the worst risk of catastrophic flooding from the Sacramento River.

Buer credits Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for making flood control a priority. Leavenworth agrees, and says that it also is a credit to the state’s voters. Despite the many divisions of politics and geography, Californians came together in 2006 to help make the Central Valley a safer place and learn from the price paid in New Orleans.