Flood Control Still Has Leaks

Thousands of homeowners in Fountain Valley this month received the good news that because of the completion of the $1.3-billion flood control improvement project along the Santa Ana River they no longer would have to pay for mandatory flood insurance. That is estimated to save homeowners and businesses about $1 million a month in insurance premiums.

Unfortunately some of their neighbors in other parts of the city--and in Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Westminster and Santa Ana--aren’t so fortunate.

The problem is that despite all the flood control improvements in the last decade or more, those residents remain vulnerable to flooding because improvements on the network of channels and small creeks haven’t kept pace with work on the river bed.

The understandable feeling of relief brought by the river improvements still leaves a need for officials to step up their efforts to line, deepen and widen these hazardous channels and creeks.

Some of them, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who has been a strong supporter of flood control improvements, even have expressed surprise that more of the flood threat wasn’t eliminated with the completion of the Santa Ana River project.

Residents in those lowlands always have been at risk during heavy rainstorms.

In 1983, a storm caused many flood control channels to fail, swamping about 1,000 homes in Huntington Beach and surrounding areas and causing an estimated $48.5 million in damage. Another rainstorm in 1997 forced the evacuation of more than 300 residents from two Huntington Beach mobile home parks.

The stumbling block is money, the same problem that delayed river improvement for years.

The county doesn’t have the more than $100 million it would take to improve those substandard channels, and no federal funds have been allocated for that purpose.

Federal and local officials worked well together to get the river project done.

They must continue their aggressive efforts, and complete the job of protecting all residents from needless dangers that rainstorms pose in the remaining unimproved channels.