Once more into the breach

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has spent more than $700 million in recent months to shore up Louisiana’s levees in time for the 2006 hurricane season, which begins today. In California’s Central Valley, however, some levees are at risk almost every day; much of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta lies below sea level and, as in New Orleans, the ground is slowly sinking.

Nevertheless, local officials in parts of the Central Valley are doling out permits to develop what were once farms and open spaces. The urge to convert is driven not just by profit-seeking landowners but by cities and counties eager for property tax receipts. And it’s abetted by flood-insurance rules that assume the levees offer more protection than they really do.

Researchers have found numerous problems in the levee system, prompting California lawmakers to provide $500 million this year for levee improvements and to propose a $4-billion bond issue for additional upgrades. Assuming the federal government covers its share of costs, that money will improve the situation facing cities, suburbs and other developed areas.

But those upgrades aren’t likely to reach the segments of the 1,600-mile levee system that stand between the floodwaters and farms, wetlands and other undeveloped land. Flooding farms is bad enough, but as homes, industrial parks and Costcos sprout on those lands, the risks from a catastrophic breach grow. And under a 2004 ruling by a state appeals court, state taxpayers can be held liable for the damage caused when a levee breaks.

That’s why Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) wants to make local officials pause before letting developers turn an orchard into an Orchard Supply Hardware. His bill, AB 3050, would hold cities and counties jointly liable with the state to the extent that, by approving a project on undeveloped land, they increase the property damage caused by a flood.

Naturally, developers and local governments are opposed to the measure. The latter argue it’s not fair to hold them liable when it’s not their job to maintain levees. True enough. But they shouldn’t be allowed to remain willfully blind to the risks. And that is exactly what is happening in parts of the Central Valley, where land that was flooded a decade ago is being readied for development.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina hammered New Orleans, no one in local government should be relying on levees to safeguard property -- particularly not when the state’s taxpayers are on the hook to cover the losses. The Assembly rejected Jones’ bill last month, but it should reverse course and approve the bill when it comes up for reconsideration today.