Home / Archive / Publisher's letter: April 2006
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Publisher : April 2006
Facing flood control
Interstate 10 in Louisiana once wound through lush bayou country. Now, because of the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, everything in sight is brown and dead. Transfer that mental picture to the Delta region’s rich, productive rice fields and flower-filled orchards.
Hyperbole? Not at all. A recent University of California study says there is a 66 percent chance of an earthquake and subsequent major flood occurring in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta within the next 50 years. A failure of levees here means salt water spilling into the center of the state’s water supply and seeping into millions of acres of some of the most productive agricultural land in the country.
Human beings are notorious for avoiding fact-based forecasting when it is dangerous and discouraging. I see a great deal of that head-in-the-sand thinking these days among our state legislators, certainly, but also within the business community and the general population as well.
Many of us have the vague notion that Sacramento proper, and especially its flood-prone downtown, North Sacramento and Pocket neighborhoods, would bear the brunt of flood damage. In fact, the impact of a major flood anywhere in the Greater Sacramento or Delta regions would have a huge ripple effect on our regional environment and economy.
Given the high cost of doing business in California and the fact that so few businesses have flood insurance (less than 10 percent in Sacramento and Yolo counties, for example), how many flooded companies would never open their doors again? How many companies that never saw a drop of water would fold because their customer or supplier base was severely affected by a flood? How many new businesses would decide not to open branch offices or manufacturing facilities in an area where such devastation could happen again?
We tend to believe flood control and disaster recovery are the business of the federal government, even though the tragedy in New Orleans should have showed us the folly of that thinking.
In fact, in our case, it’s the federal government — thanks to strong bipartisan efforts from our congressional delegation — that has recognized the danger to public safety in the region and come forward with more and more funding: $65 million in the 2007 budget, up from $39 million this year. Yes, we’d like more, but why should the federal government acquiesce when we can’t put up more of our own dollars to help solve the problem?
The governor proposed that the state take on the entire $6 billion bill for rapid repair of levees and improved protection for urban areas. Now that package has failed to win a place on the June ballot because of partisan politics as usual.
This is our problem, at the state, local and individual level. It requires business people willing to lobby state legislators (the Metro Chamber, under the leadership of President and CEO Matt Mahood and Board Chair Frank Washington, is to be commended here). It means all of us securing our homes and businesses with appropriate flood insurance. It means each of us becoming active in our communities to ensure they have appropriate emergency-management plans.
Experts say it would cost about $2 billion to protect the Sacramento metropolitan area, and that the work could be done by 2017. Another $10 billion spent over the next 25 years would secure all the flood-prone areas of the Central Valley. The longer we wait, the greater the risk and the higher the construction costs. One major flood — just one — is estimated to inflict more than $100 billion worth of damage on the Sacramento area alone. Figures this clear don’t lie. Let’s give up the mythology about flood control and get on with the real work of making our communities safe.
