Flood Peril Seen at Sacramento’s Planned Playing Site for Raiders

If the Los Angeles Raiders decide to move to this city, they will play in a stadium to be built on a flood plain that has been described as a “bathtub” by Army Corps of Engineers officials.

When a series of severe winter storms lashed the Sacramento area in the winter of 1986, “we came within an eyelash of catastrophe,” Walter Yep, planning chief in the corps’ Sacramento office, said in an interview last week.

Some of the worst problems were in the Natomas region, north of downtown, where the proposed 72,000-seat football stadium would be built. The area is surrounded by 42 miles of levees that hold back the Sacramento River and other powerful streams.

“If there’s a break on any side, it will fill up like a bathtub”--to a level of 18 to 20 feet in a few hours, Yep said. “I don’t see how we could stop it.”

City Councilman David Shore, who represents the Natomas area, supports bringing the Raiders here but agrees that potential flooding “is a very serious problem.”

“If we don’t solve it, I hope Bo Jackson can swim,” Shore said, referring to the Raiders’ star running back.

The flood possibility is only one of the obstacles to be overcome if the Raiders are to continue their California peregrinations, which so far have taken them from Oakland to Los Angeles, with a planned side trip to Irwindale that appears to be canceled.

Many local citizens and a few politicians are asking questions about the proposed expenditure of $122 million in public funds to lure the Raiders to the state capital. The package includes a $50-million “franchise inducement fee” for managing general partner Al Davis and other Raiders owners, plus $72 million in interest on bonds to finance that fee.

Less is being said locally about the flooding potential. The Natomas levees were built around the turn of the century “primarily for agricultural reclamation; they were never intended for urban protection,” said Merritt Rice, chief of the American River branch of the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The levees are really suspect in terms of their structural integrity,” he said.

In 1986, a 15-mile sand-and-silt levee along the Sacramento River, on the west flank of Natomas, required emergency repairs in 16 places and would have failed without them.

The levee was saved only after a “tremendous flood fight,” said Don Meixner, former head of the flood control unit in the state Department of Water Resources.

Emergency Meetings

Water rose almost to the top of levees on the other three sides of the 55,000-acre Natomas area. Plans were made to evacuate the Sacramento Metropolitan Airport, a few miles north of the stadium site. Emergency meetings were held at 5 a.m. each day to decide whether to evacuate the about 20,000 people then living in Natomas.

Gregg Lukenbill, managing general partner of the Sacramento Sports Assn., which owns the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Assn. and wants to bring the Raiders to town, said “there’s no flood problem” in Natomas and accused Yep and the Corps of Engineers of “grossly exaggerating” the danger.

“There’s never been a flood in Natomas,” Lukenbill said. “The system carried one-third more water in 1986 than it was designed for and it still didn’t flood.”

When there was a serious levee break and flooding near Linda, about 40 miles north of Sacramento, during the 1986 storms, an announcement was made to the crowd at a Kings basketball game “but our game went off,” Lukenbill told a Sacramento Press Club luncheon Monday.

Lukenbill and other developers in the area “have a point,” Meixner said.

“A pragmatist would say the levees haven’t failed in past major flood events, and the odds are they aren’t going to fail in future flood events,” Meixner said.

But he added, “everyone will breathe easier when the corps finishes their repair work.”

Near Disaster

After the near disaster in 1986, a corps survey found that 32 of the 110 miles of levees in the Sacramento area were structurally deficient.

A $38-million program to bolster the levees, including the suspect structure on the west side of Natomas, has been designed, but work is not scheduled to begin until next July and is expected to take two years, Yep and Rice said.

If all goes well, the Natomas levee system will be considerably strengthened by the fall of 1992, which is probably the earliest date when a Raiders game could be played in the new stadium.

Will it then be safe to pack 72,000 fans into the stadium for a Sunday afternoon National Football League game?

Jim Clifton, district engineer for Reclamation District 1000, which maintains the Natomas levees, said, “I personally would go to the game, but I guess I’d listen to the weather reports while I was there.”

If there should be a serious levee break during a Raiders game or a Kings basketball game in the nearby Arco Arena, property damage would be great--even if no lives were lost--most flood control experts who were interviewed agreed.

The Natomas area had been an agricultural region but was rezoned several years ago. Lukenbill and his partners in the Sacramento Sports Assn. own substantial acreage around the sports complex where they plan large commercial and residential developments.

Businesses in the area, including the Sacramento Sports Assn., carry flood insurance, as do most homeowners. Nevertheless, Clifton said, “everybody would sue everybody and go for the guy with the deepest pockets.”

For now, however, local officials are working feverishly to put the final touches on Sacramento’s publicly subsidized bid for the Raiders.

Plan Moving Along

This week, the Sacramento City Council and the county Board of Supervisors are expected to give “conceptual approval” to a plan to pay a $50-million “franchise inducement” fee to land the team. Bonds would be floated to finance the fee--which one local sports columnist called a bribe--and the total cost to the city and county would be an estimated $122.3 million spread over a 20 years.

Sacramento City Manager Walter J. Slipe has proposed that the bonds be financed by a 5% tax on tickets to all live city events--including concerts and plays--and by, among other things, raising the hotel tax from 10% to 11%. The county would be asked to pay about 10% of the financing cost.

State Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright (D-Concord), chairman of the Senate Committee on Bonded Indebtedness, questioned the wisdom of floating bonds to pay for a professional football franchise.

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t do this, but I am saying they should take a real careful look,” Boatwright said. “If they are counting on the state to provide infrastructure, like hospitals or libraries or child-care facilities, then they’re going to be disappointed.”

City Treasurer Thomas P. Friery estimated that over a 20-year period, the financing plan would generate at least $60 million in additional city revenue on top of what is needed to pay the “‘franchise fee” and interest.

Slipe told the City Council last week that this is a “very conservative” estimate and declared that paying a $50-million fee to the Raiders would be “a very good business deal for the city.”

Friery conceded that there are “certain risks” in the deal, including the stadium not being finished on time, the Raiders or another NFL team deciding not to come or attendance falling below expectations.

Counting on Sellouts

Friery’s figures also assume complete sellouts at all Raiders and Kings games for 20 years. But the treasurer said “bells, whistles and doodads” could be added to the financing package to “mitigate these dangers.”

Slipe told the council that Friery’s figures are based on “very conservative estimates” and declared that paying a $50-million fee to the Raiders would be “a very good business deal for the city.”

But not everyone is convinced.

Mayor Anne Rudin said she wants “guarantees that we will not be asked to make up any shortfalls from the city’s general fund” should the revenue from the new taxes and other sources not be enough to pay interest on the bonds that will finance the $50-million franchise fee.

“I want to make sure the city is not left holding the bag,” Rudin said. “There are many other public benefits we could get for $50 million.”

Both Rudin and Councilwoman Kim Mueller said their mail and telephone calls are running heavily against a public subsidy for the professional football team.

“Most people mistrust Al Davis, and they don’t like the sound of that $50-million figure,” Mueller said.

Before Mueller voiced her reservations at last week’s council meeting, however, she pulled out a “Sacramento Raiders” T-shirt to prove her devotion to football.

“It’s possible to be wildly excited about having the Raiders come to town and yet have very serious questions about the financing,” she said.

Booster Spirit

Questions and quibbles are likely to be steamrollered by the booster spirit that has seized most city leaders as they contemplate the joys of a professional football franchise.

“There are a lot of intangible benefits to this,” said Councilman Shore. “Our city’s name will be on the nation’s sports pages on a daily basis.

“We’ll get new businesses and corporate headquarters. There’s the excitement of a potential championship team. This could be the bringing together of a community.”

People are driving around town with “Sacramento Raiders” bumper stickers on their cars. More than 100 fans, wearing silver and black T-shirts (the Raider colors) and waving silver and black banners turned up for last week’s City Council meeting.

Tonight’s crucial council meeting has been moved from City Hall to the city’s convention center in anticipation of a large crowd.

In that atmosphere, it is likely that the council will approve the $122-million financing package in concept when it meets tonight and that the Board of Supervisors will approve the deal Wednesday.

The City Council might have to up the ante, now that Oakland has offered the Raiders a $54-million franchise inducement fee, plus up to $53 million in improvements to the Oakland Coliseum, if the team will return to its original home.

There also were reports over the weekend that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, suffering from declining attendance, might be willing to move to Sacramento if they were offered the same $50-million inducement.

But Lukenbill said Monday that “there have been a number of franchises that have contacted us,” but “we’re staying the course with the Raiders’ deal” as long as it remains a possibility.

Sacramento Flood Zone Studies in the Sacramento area by the Corps of Engineers have led to designation of a new 100-year-flood zone, which covers 100,000 acres and a population of more than 300,000. Parts of the city that lie within the 100-year-flood plan now include all of Natomas, north of downtown, plus parts of downtown and most of South Sacramento. The proposed 72,000-seat stadium, where the Raiders would play their games-if they to move to Sacramento-is about5 miles north of downtown, in the Natomas area.