New Homeowners Rolling the Dice on State’s Rivers

On one side, the murky San Joaquin River slides past a tree-shaded bank. On the other, the red clock tower of the newly erected City Hall rises among hundreds of tract homes under construction.

All that separates the river from its new neighbors in the Mossdale Landing subdivision is a weedy earthen levee that sprang leaks in the state’s 1997 floods, blanketing the area with water. Despite repairs, government officials say residents stand a 1 in 4 chance of new flooding in the next 30 years.

The area is one of many throughout the Central Valley where tens of thousands of homes and businesses are being built or planned near an aged and neglected levee network stretching 250 miles from Butte County to Fresno County.

The flood control system is supposed to protect residents, farmland and water supplies for millions of Southern Californians, but officials acknowledge that it is an almost 6,000-mile hodgepodge of publicly and privately owned levees of varying condition.

A state Department of Water Resources report in January warned that most of the valley’s development is occurring on land susceptible to flooding and that land-use decisions are sometimes based on outdated or inaccurate information about the flood threat.

“The next major flood could easily overwhelm the state’s deteriorating ... flood protection system and have catastrophic consequences,” the report said.

Ricardo Pineda, chief of the water department’s floodplain management branch, said that the levees at Mossdale Landing need to be reevaluated and that homeowners should buy flood insurance.

“Those levees to me are very scary,” he said.

Although the courts have found the state liable for damage from levee failures, state and federal agencies often have little or no authority over local decisions to build behind the levees.

The state’s levee safety agency, the Reclamation Board, did not aggressively discourage development until recent years. But several weeks ago, its increasingly outspoken members were replaced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The valley’s levee system is “under-designed and it’s broken, and you’re asking it to support thousands and thousands of new homes in the flood plain,” said Jeffrey Mount, UC Davis geology department chairman and one of the ousted board members. “That’s a prescription for disaster.”

To adequately protect homes and crops, state water officials say, the levee system needs several billion dollars in overdue maintenance and capital improvements.

Some poorly designed levees are little more than piles of dirt and may require reconstruction. Levees with more structural integrity still need strengthening or repairs because of damage from erosion, burrowing rodents and under-seepage, the officials say. Many levees need to be made taller to handle anticipated floods.

Meanwhile, cities and counties, hungry for development that improves the tax base, have sometimes allowed construction before levees are fixed or upgraded. Builders are drawn to the flood-prone areas because they are relatively inexpensive and have waterfront appeal.

Even though home builders provide buyers with flood disclosure statements warning of the possibility of levee failures, not all new residents read them closely, or at all.

Flooding was the last thing on the mind of real estate loan officer Errol Riego earlier this month when he, his wife and their two children moved into a $700,000 home in Mossdale Landing that he figures was half the price of a comparable one in the Bay Area.

Riego did not know about the past flooding. In the excitement of becoming a homeowner for the first time, he said, he did not pay much attention to the builder’s flood disclosure statement.

Would it have mattered?

“No, not at all,” he said.

On the other hand, quarry mechanic Max Duncan, who bought his house five months ago, said he has been concerned about flooding since Hurricane Katrina.

“If it rains lots,” he said, “I’m going to go look at the levee.”

Much of the valley’s new construction is behind levees designed at least half a century ago to protect crops, not subdivisions. Some projects are below sea level. Some areas have been flooded in the past.

Yet the federal government does not always categorize them as flood plains where homeowners are required to carry flood insurance.

The seven-member Reclamation Board’s traditional role was protecting farmland from flooding. The board also required developers to get permits if construction necessitated alterations to levees. But the tiny agency only sporadically exercised its authority to comment on the safety of planned development behind levees.

During the last few years, however, the board has pushed for changes in some projects near levees, questioning the adequacy of levees and urging developers to upgrade them before building homes. In Yuba County, the board persuaded officials to slow down home construction in a previously flooded area while levees were improved.

In 2001, the board’s repeated objections caused Sacramento-area developer Bob Leach to move his proposed Captain’s Table hotel-restaurant complex from the riverfront to the other side of the levee.

“They wanted to become a planning agency,” said Leach, who added that he complained to Gov. Gray Davis’ office.

After the catastrophic flooding in New Orleans, the board announced that it would review all developments proposed in flood-prone areas.

But the board’s aggressive posture antagonized builders and local officials, and at least one complained to Schwarzenegger’s office. In September, the governor removed the entire board and made his own appointments.

The timing caused environmentalists and others to suspect that the governor was capitulating to the board’s critics.

“In recent years, the state Reclamation Board had been forceful and responsible in resisting the blandishments of local governments and developers to build on the lowlands of the delta,” said Patrick Johnston of Stockton. He is a former Democratic state senator and serves on the board of the Bay Delta Authority.

Schwarzenegger, along with other California elected officials, has acknowledged weaknesses in the levee system and is seeking $90 million in federal funds for high-priority levee repairs. The governor’s office said that about $15 million of the money is awaiting President Bush’s signature and that additional levee repair funds could come from a multibillion-dollar infrastructure package under development by Schwarzenegger.

Julie Soderlund, the governor’s deputy press secretary, insisted that the new appointments to the Reclamation Board had been in the works for months and were not prompted by any complaints.

“The governor,” she said, “expects the board to make decisions on what is in the best interest of public safety and public policy.”

Experts say California’s levees are particularly vulnerable to warm rains on top of a heavy snowpack, a combination that could cause the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers to overflow and elevate delta waters.

Some levees have been upgraded, more work is planned for others and the state has embarked on a program to assess levees in urbanized areas.

Officials fear that some levees, generally those built between 1860 and 1960, do not meet current standards.

“When they did nothing but protect open land, it was not much of a concern,” said Mike Shore, regional flood chief for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “But now it is a major concern.”

This year courts ordered the state to pay $450 million for levee failure two decades ago that flooded two Feather River communities.

But future liability could be much higher. The state estimates that levee breaks could cause billions of dollars in damage to Sacramento’s sprawling Natomas bedroom community alone.

However, the opportunity to develop near many levees may vanish in coming years, government officials said. FEMA is redrawing maps of the 100-year flood plain, the area vulnerable to a severe storm that has a 1% chance of occurring during a given year.

If local and state agencies cannot show that existing levees are able to withstand such an event, land behind them will be designated flood plains. That will require homeowners to buy insurance, and new building could become very undesirable if the designation and the insurance requirement scared off buyers.

Few agencies will be able to demonstrate that the levees are strong enough, Les Harder, the state water department’s flood management chief, told a recent legislative hearing.

Situated near the intersection of three freeways and within commuting distance of Sacramento and the Bay Area, Mossdale Landing is one of three major developments projected to add 18,000 homes and quintuple Lathrop’s population of 12,500.

After Mossdale was proposed, Reclamation Board Executive Director Peter Rabbon wrote Lathrop officials in 2003, questioning the levees’ “suitability to protect an urbanized area,” even with repairs after the 1997 floods.

The levees have a 100-year-flood protection rating, which experts say is the bare minimum and translates into roughly even odds of heavy flooding in the next 50 years. Nevertheless, Lathrop Mayor Gloryanna Rhodes said Mossdale’s levees are similar to those throughout the valley, adding: “I feel pretty confident.”

One Mossdale developer, KB Home, provides buyers with a two-page flood disclosure statement that says in part, “There may be levee failures.” The statement notes that the government recommends flood insurance, even though it is not required.

Maria Travis and her husband say they discussed the possibility of levee failure before they bought a home and moved their four children to Mossdale on Labor Day weekend.

“I was iffy about it, but my husband is an engineer,” she said. “We are trusting that [the levees] have been fixed.” Still, she said they plan to get flood insurance.

KB Home Senior Vice President John Barnhart said the company is building in other Central Valley cities where there is already development behind levees that meet government standards.

“There are [many] existing residents who are adjacent [to] or near rivers and dependent on levees for protection,” he noted. “You just add to the resident count.”

Across the river from Mossdale, local officials have approved River Islands, with 11,000 homes, on Stewart Tract. The island has flooded before, but the developer, Cambay Group, plans to widen existing levees to 100 yards.

The project required a permit from the Reclamation Board. But some members expressed concern that a super-levee could direct floodwaters to weaker levees elsewhere and would encourage similar projects.

Faced with permit delays, River Islands project manager Susan Dell’Osso said, she complained to the Schwarzenegger administration.

Now, she said, she hopes the new board will be less inclined to inject itself into local land use policy.

One new member, Butch Hodgkins, former head of the Sacramento area flood agency, said, “The issue for us is whether the project is safe [for residents] and whether it is creating a situation that is less safe for somebody else.”