Fear of Costly Levee Failures in Delta Cited

For Bill Leisic, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a sort of Huck Finn country where he can drop a line into his favorite fishing hole and hook his limit of bass.

To officials in charge of moving water to Central Valley farmers and millions of people in Southern California, it is the state’s most important spigot. Without its fresh water, much of the state would go thirsty.

But to a growing number of state and federal officials, the delta is a quagmire of slumping levees that protect sinking islands, which have flooded at a rate of more than three a year since 1980.

“There is a lot of money going into that (levee) system, and nothing is getting done,” said Tommie Hamner, chief of disaster assistance programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the Western region. “A gopher hole can make them go out. You don’t need a flood.”

$120 Million in Aid

State, federal and local officials, with no planning and little apparent oversight, have spent about $120 million--officials say they do not know the exact amount--in disaster aid since 1980 to repair fragile, storm-damaged levees. The state share, roughly $24 million, accounts for almost 75% of all money spent during the past decade from the California Natural Disaster Assistance Fund.

But most of the $120 million was spent on plugging holes. While some levees are solid, many remain in disrepair. Officials say that to stop islands from failing in domino fashion, millions, perhaps billions, more are needed--along with a well thought-out spending plan. Some islands may not be worth saving.

The failure of delta levees has serious implications for delta agriculture and water users in Central and Southern California.

When the levees fail, fresh water that normally helps sustain a steady outflow to the San Francisco Bay suddenly overflows the affected islands. The delta outflow is diminished and that allows saline water from the bay to back up into the delta. The salt contamin1635018099agriculture and is drawn toward pumps that feed the state aqueduct that takes delta water to parts of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

Audits by Controller

The depth of official concern over the levee repair effort is reflected in new audits by Controller Gray Davis’ office. In 1982-1983, the auditors allege, local reclamation districts misspent $25.8 million of the $27.3 million in state and federal disaster aid earmarked for emergency levee repairs. The criticisms ranged from instances in which both the state and federal government allegedly were billed for the same work to failure to obtain competitive bids.

The preliminary audits call on the districts to repay the misspent money. The districts say that would force them into bankruptcy. As a result, some officials familiar with the audits say, if another levee breaks--and some have failed at low tide during the summer--there may be no money to pay contractors to respond.

“Matter of fact, for all intents and purposes the delta is on C.O.D. right now, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Bill T. Dutra of Dutra Construction, a Rio Vista dredging company that has done nearly all of the levee repair work since 1980.

Farmers who till the earth behind the levees are not the only ones threatened by the possibility that islands would remain flooded. One of the nation’s great fresh water estuaries is at risk. So is water that flows into Southern California, while ports in Sacramento and Stockton exist because of deep water channels through the delta.

‘Could Be Devastated’

“If the wrong levee broke at the wrong time, the California water system could be devastated,” said Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who lives behind one of the levees.

“It’s a pretty serious problem,” Department of Water Resources Director David Kennedy said. “The time has clearly come to rehabilitate many of the levees in the delta. We feel quite strongly that we need to get on with it.”

Floods have always been a problem in the delta, but it has gotten worse. Between 1930 and 1980, 34 islands flooded. Since 1980, there have been 24 levee breaks.

As it is now, the state spends $2 million a year on maintenance. That does not “even keep the status quo,” Hamner said. Kennedy is backing legislation to increase the funding to $10 million a year for each of the next 10 years. With that $100 million, plus up to $200 million more over the next 20 years, he said, the levees could be reconstructed so that they could withstand high water.

Other experts believe the cost will be much higher. A 1982 state report gave a “bare bones” estimate of $1.5 billion to restore 200 miles of levees around just 19 critical islands. A total restoration, the report said, would cost $3.4 billion, requiring 55 million cubic yards of rock and fill.

“That’s the problem. It’s too expensive, so we prioritize,” said Ada Squires, an Army engineer who is working on a delta study. The corp’s previous study, a two-inch-thick tome done in 1982 and designed to be the major planning document for the delta, was scrapped because it is dated.

“The only funding comes around when there’s a major disaster. . . . If the state and federal government would take an interest in us in the dry periods, we could prevent the floods,” said George C. Wilson, who owns a farm on Tyler Island and is president of an association of districts.

Wilson’s island, thought to have some of the strongest levees in the delta, flooded during the 1986 flood, the worst storm on record in the delta. He estimates that by the time it is paid off, the bill will be upward of $9 million. Only a small fraction can be paid off by farmers. For although delta soil produces “any crop you can name,” farmers cannot afford more in taxes to repay the debt, he said.

‘In Hock Now’

“We’re in hock now,” Wilson said, maintaining the state must step in.

With or without state help, the local districts are facing a 1991 deadline for bringing the levees up to a minimum standard. If the districts fail to comply, the Federal Emergency Management Agency vows it will not provide disaster money to repair damage from future floods.

Getting money for levee repair has not been easy. The levee repair issue has long been entangled in the fierce politics of water. Southern California lawmakers have been reluctant to underwrite costly levee repairs in the delta unless their northern colleagues support equally costly plans to make more water available to the south.

Thus, Sen. Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino) was able to kill a bill to spend $100 million over 10 years on levees when he failed to win support for legislation to help bring more water south.

“What do we get in return? . . . They don’t want to share any of their surplus (water). Consensus to them means doing it their way,” Ayala said, noting that the levee repair money was to come from taxes on oil pumped from state tidelands in Southern California.

The delta is a tree-lined maze of 700 miles of rivers and sloughs cutting through 60 major islands and hundreds of smaller ones. Water from roughly a third of California, half of the state’s river flow, pours into the delta.

Inhabited by the widest array of wildlife and fish in California, the delta has become one of the most popular recreation spots in the state with marinas, resorts and parks. Some islands have bustling towns. Most islands support farming and provide recreation for many people.

One such person is Bill Leisic, a San Jose contractor. For years, he spent weekends fishing in the delta. Then he decided to buy part of an island, one with a lake carved out by the force of water that burst through the levee during a 1980 flood.

‘Loaded With Black Bass’

“(The lake) was loaded with black bass. You’d just throw the line in and hook a black bass,” he said. But the reclamation district billed him $100,000 to help cover its costs for repair of the 1980 levee break. He leased out farmland, but the rent did not come close to paying the bill. He sold his share of the island and now goes to the river side of the island to catch his fish.

Like Leisic’s island, much of the delta’s 550,000 acres of farmland is peat, a giant compost pile of decayed tules. Once a huge marsh, it was created after the Gold Rush largely by Chinese laborers who built the levees for farmers.

While extremely fertile, the peat tends to oxidize and blow away in the wind, particularly when the ground is tilled. Consequently, many delta islands are below sea level--some as many as 20 feet. Some are eroding as much as three inches a year. As the land drops farther below sea level, the levees are strained more by the press of river water.

When an island floods with fresh river water, the void is filled by saltwater from Suisun Bay. To repel the saltwater, more fresh water must be released from dams upstream or less water must be sent south to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California residents. In a 1972 flood, officials had to release 294,000 acre-feet of fresh water, enough to quench more than 300,000 people for a year.

In part, today’s predicament is a monument to shelved studies and scrapped proposals that for decades have decried problems and urged solutions. “Without adequate levees, the delta as we know it today will be lost,” a 1973 report to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan said in its opening paragraph. A 1975 report warned that the delta could become an inland sea and declared 60% of the levees inadequate.

The outlook was still gloomy in 1980 when the Department of Water Resources reported that 32 of 52 islands were in poor or very poor condition.

Prediction Comes True

What all the engineers had predicted came to pass when the delta was battered by a major storm on Jan. 18, 1980. An 850-foot-long stretch of levee burst open on a 5,400-acre island called Webb Tract. Within an hour, a second island flooded. By the end of that one storm, 24 islands needed disaster aid. The cost for that storm and others that followed in 1980 was more than $50 million, so high that the Army Corp of Engineers said it would no longer get involved in repairing levees.

But while one federal agency stepped aside, another reluctantly was getting more involved. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, while repeatedly warning that it would cut off disaster aid to the delta, ended up spending more than $65 million by 1986.

Now, however, things may be changing. At the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s demand, the state and the local reclamation districts agreed to rebuild their levees by 1991 to withstand a 100-year flood. If the districts fail to comply, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials say they will spend no more money on the delta.

The challenges facing the districts were apparent last week as Jeff Northrop and Charles Rasmussen, levee inspectors for the Department of Water Resources, drove along the rough and narrow levee that keeps the San Joaquin River from inundating Webb Tract.

“Unacceptable,” Rasmussen said, trying to navigate his van down the road atop an overgrown stretch. The quality of the road is important because during a storm, vehicles must be able to reach problem areas. In wet weather, only a four-wheel drive truck can pass parts of the Webb Tract levee road.

There were cracks down the center of the levee in at least three places. Thick bamboo and blackberry bushes made it impossible to detect other problems. Rasmussen said it was among the worst islands he had seen, notwithstanding the fact that more repair money has been poured into Webb Tract than any other island in the delta.

According to the state Office of Emergency Services, the federal government has spent $30.3 million on Webb since 1962--with half of it being spent since 1980. The state has spent another $6.8 million on it. The bulk of the money was spent to repair a breech caused by a flood in 1980.

Accessible by Ferry

As real estate, Webb Tract is not exactly priceless. It is accessible only by a ferry and has no public roads. There are a few trailers and homes, some corn and a bunch of dogs and sheep. It is more than 15 feet below sea level. With peat that goes down at least 20 feet, it could sink even farther.

But this island could be valuable as a bulwark for protecting delta water quality. If Webb Tract is inundated, engineers say, the additional water surface would result in more waves battering levees on nearby islands, including Bethel Island, which bustles with marinas and new housing. In a domino effect, Bethel Island’s levees could then fail.

Even so, if the levee breaks again, Webb Tract may be history. Seeing that millions were spent after the 1980 flood, only to have continued problems, “everyone would have a big debate” over pouring yet more money into it, Kennedy said.

But that is how things have gone in the delta for the last seven years.

“Nobody knew when the first dollar was being spent that it was the first of $100 million,” Kennedy said. “People look back and say, ‘Wow.’ Rightfully so. But that’s the nature of disasters. . . . Before you realize it, you’ve spent a lot of money.”

THE SACRAMENTO DELTA

Formation: The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta originally was a tidal marsh formed where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet at Suisun Bay. Levees were built to create islands that constitute 80% of the former marsh and support a rich agricultural economy.

The Problem: Now, despite millions spent to shore up the earthen levee system, some islands face flooding, which could lead to salt contamination in water used for delta farming and export to Southern California. Some facts about the region:

Population: 200,000

Counties: Alameda,Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano, Yolo

Area ( acres ) 738,000

Agriculture 520,000

Cities, Towns 35,000

Water Surface 50,000

Undeveloped 133,000

Levees ( miles ) 1,100

Rivers: Sacramento, San Joaquin, Mokelumne, Cosumnes, Calaveras rivers carry 47% of the state’s total runoff.

Agriculture

Avg. Annual Gross Value: $375 million

Main Crops: Corn, Grain, Hay, Sugar Beets, Alfalfa, Pasture, Tomatoes, Asparagus, Fruit, Safflower.

Wildlife (in species)

Birds 200

Mammals 45

Fish 45

Reptiles 15

Amphibians 8

Flowering Plants 150