Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
February 25, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People
FLOOD CONTROL STRUCTURE REPAIR:
LEVEE EVALUATION IN
$300,000 study to evaluate levees in Santa Venetia - Marin Independent Journal
Flood-control plan ready to flow forward -
Levee Evaluations Under Way Along Sacramento River; Crews Begin Drilling To Collect Samples - KTXL Fox 40 News (
Editorial: Protect Natomas quickly, yes – but wisely, too; Declaring emergency won't speed levee work and could hurt flood control efforts - Sacramento
Reminiscing on the river; Park rangers tour dam site as part of “Nature Noir’ locations visit - Auburn Journal
WATER POLICY:
Editorial: Feinstein tries her hand at salvaging state water bond;
Editorial: Sad in Sacramento: No compromise - Chico Enterprise Record
FLOOD CONTROL STRUCTURE REPAIR:
Riverside Press
By Doug Haberman, staff writer
But the channel, built in the mid-1950s, is showing its age.
This is particularly true where it is uncovered, a section from
A
The city has contented itself with periodic repairs, but officials are beginning to talk about a possible major overhaul, which could cost $10 million to $20 million.
As the water in the channel rises during and after storms, it seeps through cracks in the walls and soaks the earth behind the concrete. The walls get pushed farther and farther out until eventually they break off, Deputy Public Works Director Tom Boyd said.
"It's been getting worse and worse," he said.
In January, the city paid a contractor more than $250,000 to replace concrete panels that had fallen off after the rains, Boyd said.
In 2005, the city spent almost $120,000 for similar repairs, he said.
"This is very basic construction," Boyd said during a tour of the channel.
To build the walls, workers stretch a wire mesh screen over the dirt embankment, use a machine to blow concrete onto the mesh and then smooth it out.
But the multimillion-dollar project Boyd said the city is considering in a few years would be built with reinforced concrete, using rebar. That would lessen the chances of cracks where the water could seep through, he said.
For residents who live along the channel, a separate issue has been the oleanders that used to screen it from view but which succumbed to disease a few years ago. The city removed them and has not replaced them.
"I think there should be plants out there," he said. "It just looks better."
However, his neighbor Maria Sanchez, 34, said the oleanders used to grow out into the street and blocked drivers' views of cross streets. New plants could cause similar problems, she said.
"It's better like this," she said.
Boyd said the oleanders, whose roots stretched down to the channel bottom, actually helped support the channel walls and kept the street in one piece, too.
Without new landscaping, the street eventually could start crumbling into the wash, he said, so the city is planning to plant new bushes soon. #
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_R_rchannel23.40f27f2.html
LEVEE EVALUATION IN
$300,000 study to evaluate levees in Santa Venetia
Marin Independent Journal – 2/24/08
By Brad Breithaupt, staff writer
Supervisor Susan Adams said a $300,000 study will evaluate the condition of the levees, identify "critical areas" that need immediate repair and make recommendations for long-term solutions, including cost estimates. County taxpayers will pick up the tab.
The work will also include the county levees that protect the Marin Ranch airport, across Gallinas Creek from the Santa Venetia neighborhood.
The fund provides the five supervisors with $550,000 a year to parcel out as they wish to favorite projects and programs, usually without public discussion or a formal vote.
In this case, "it will be on the agenda. I'm going to ask," said Adams, who represents Santa Venetia on the county board.
The endorsement from the Army Corps was needed to get the project started.
"Susan's offer to help was like mana from heaven," said Mary Feller, who for 18 years has been working on flooding problems in the low-lying neighborhood.
"We are thinking ahead," he said. "It is much better to have the Army Corps approve and review everything with us."
In previous years, the corps has been reluctant to add the levee study to its workload because the project was too small,
Even though the corps isn't paying for the study, it is important to have the corps involved so that the study meets its engineering criteria and answers its concerns, she said.
The levees have not been improved since 1982, when they were raised following flooding that damaged many neighborhood homes.
Mansourian said the levees look like they are in good shape, but the study will provide a better analysis as well as options in design, level of protection and cost.
"We will involve the community," he said, estimating that the study could be complete by the end of this year.
Feller said the study is "the first step" in developing a comprehensive flood-control plan for the neighborhood.
"That's fantastic news. We are desperate for a study," she said. #
http://www.marinij.com/sanrafael/ci_8349789
Flood-control plan ready to flow forward
By Jennifer Gentile, staff writer
Depending on a City Council vote Tuesday night,
In May of 2006, the city purchased 60 acres northeast of the intersection of
"We're very excited about it," said Public Works Director Dale Pfeiffer. The project includes the Encinosa basin north and Encinosa basin south, which are located on either side of Encinosa Creek, as well as the adjoining Iroquois basin.
Combined, Pfeiffer said the basins would have about 190 acre-feet of storage capacity. Encinosa Creek drains into Alamo Creek, which has overtopped its banks in the past during times of heavy rainfall.
Once the basins are built, storm water flows in Encinosa Creek can be retained until a storm subsides, reducing the flow into Alamo Creek.
The declaration was prepared late last year and has circulated through the state clearinghouse for a 30-day period.
According to a report from city staff, during an initial analysis, "the presence of wetland areas and other environmental issues were identified at the project site."
"City staff and its consultants have been working with the various state and federal agencies to modify the project in order to minimize environmental impacts," the report said, "and to obtain the required permits to allow the projects to be constructed."
Pfeiffer said the city is aiming to start construction as early as this summer and complete the basins by the end of the year. Permits are pending from the Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Water Resources, Division of Safety of Dams. The city already has obtained other federal and state-level permits.
The Encinosa basins are part of a larger project recommended in the Ulatis Drainage System Study, which was released in October. The Solano County Water Agency worked with contractor
The main component of the study's recommendation is a network of upstream detention basins, including Encinosa Creek, Ulatis Creek, Alamo Creek and Laguna Creek.
The City Council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday night at City Hall in the Council Chamber. #
http://www.thereporter.com//ci_8345475?IADID=Search-www.thereporter.com-www.thereporter.com
Levee Evaluations Under Way Along
KTXL Fox 40 News (
Crews hired by the Department of Water Resources are drilling for soil samples 140 feet down. That's over 100 feet beneath the bottom of the levee itself. What they hope to find are deposits of water resistant soils. "Kind of like a clay layer, which is an impermeable clay layer which won't allow any water to be moved thorough or underneath the levee," explains geologist Joe Mangine.
The pocket area in South Sacramento is virtually surrounded by the
Levees were shored up with emergency state funds to provide 100 year flood protection. But levee experts now say surface repairs aren't enough.
It doesn't matter how solid the levee structure itself is. If the ground underneath gives way, it could fail endangering thousands of homes in the
Sand and other unstable soils were found in
"In the urban areas we've had levee failures due to under seepage or through seepage. These are hidden deficiencies that can lead to catastrophic types of failures," says Chief of Urban Levee Evaluation, Steve Mahnke.
Recently levees in Natomas were downgraded by the Army Corps of Engineers which will put a halt to further development, and require expensive flood insurance by Natomas homeowners.
Test results here could do the same for the rest of
DWR will also drill in the Yuba City-Marysville area,
http://fox40.trb.com/news/ktxl-022208levee,0,5725269.story
Editorial: Protect Natomas quickly, yes – but wisely, too; Declaring emergency won't speed levee work and could hurt flood control efforts
Sacramento
To bring Natomas' levees back up to snuff, the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency is set to embark on a colossal amount of levee work in a very short time.
In roughly two years, SAFCA plans to strengthen 25 miles of levee and move 5 million cubic yards of dirt, while keeping open a
Some agencies would spend five to 10 years securing permits and funding for such a $400 million project, but SAFCA is pursuing a timeline unprecedented in
You'd think that Natomas developers, whose properties will be protected by this work, would be grateful. Alas, they are not.
Focused solely on their own financial bottom lines, Natomas developers and some city officials – including City Manager Ray Kerridge – have been disparaging SAFCA and the state and federal agencies that are partnering on the Natomas work.
Kerridge and development lawyer Greg Thatch have effectively accused SAFCA of dragging its feet, claiming its two-year schedule could be halved by a year. Both want Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and federal officials to declare a state of emergency for Natomas, which supposedly would cut through red tape.
The kingpins of Natomas development have reasons to be anxious. Because of tougher federal guidelines in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the government has classified Natomas a flood hazard zone, where it will stay until its levees are upgraded. The rezoning will soon halt new building in Natomas, with the exception of projects that already have permits.
Clearly, some landowners will lose money during this period (being unable to flip properties) and the city will lose revenue from building permits. But the clumsy effort to seek an emergency declaration could hurt
• SAFCA has already completed a state environmental study. Thanks to quick work by the Reclamation Board, it has nearly all the state permits it needs. So a state declaration of emergency wouldn't help much on these.
• To expedite federal permits for Natomas,
• Permits are only part of the challenge for SAFCA. The agency also needs to secure rights-of-way for levee work.
An emergency declaration would do little to help on this.
• Lastly,
Overall, Kerridge's aggressive style has been good for the city. But on flood control, he's acting like a black-belt in a china shop. To protect the city from the Big One, SAFCA needs to move rapidly, but not sacrifice its long-term mission by pandering to the needs of the real estate industry. #
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/735893.html
Reminiscing on the river; Park rangers tour dam site as part of “Nature Noir’ locations visit
Auburn Journal – 2/23/08
By Jennifer Gee, staff writer
Mike Lynch casts a longing look at an empty paved parking lot.
The asphalt is a bold black contrasted by the white-stripped parking lines that look untouched. There is a small, newly constructed building that houses a women’s and men’s restroom facility that’s not open. And that’s what depresses him.
“Our new beautiful parking lot and new restroom — I’m just impressed,” he said Saturday.
At the same time Lynch, the state park superintendent for the California Department of Parks and Recreation Auburn sector, lets out a long sigh.
The new parking lot is yet to be used. When it can be used as dumping grounds for eager white water rafters and other river athletes, it will only be for two days out of the week.
The lot is located near the bottom of the canyon near the site of the abandoned plans for an
There is a May 1 dedication scheduled to recognize the new Placer County Water Agency pump station at the site.
The pump station is part of a $75 million project that includes restoring the
Lynch was checking out the new facilities while taking about 50 participants on a tour of the
Saturday Lynch and Smith were standing next to each other “smack dab in the middle” of the foundation for the incomplete
Smith touched on some of the history of the dam during the tour. Besides its flood-control capabilities, the proposed 690-foot high, 3 1/4 –mile wide dam was billed as a way to create a lake for
A slew of serious environmental concerns — the dam site is above several fault lines and experts said the weight of a dam can cause earthquakes — stopped the project. There were also budget concerns.
“It would cost $5 billion today to complete the dam,” Lynch said.
In a way, the partial construction of the dam and the installation of a new pump station for the Placer County Water Agency ended at a perfect stage for the
Right now, however, with about a handful of rangers on staff and most of the summer season spent patrolling local hot spots, the station will only be manned two days a week starting in May. So hikers, bikers and horse riders will have access to the estimated 1,000-foot decline to the canyon and river running through it. But vehicles towing boats will have limited access.
Still, it’s a stark contrast to what the department has offered in years past.
“All of our stuff is gravel roads and pit toilets,” Lynch said. “Although, it has a charm of its own.”
The gravel roads go well with the state parks signs pockmarked with bullet holes courtesy of gun-happy visitors, Lynch said.
During the tour, certain sites would trigger memories for Lynch and Smith. They talked about some of the early years on the job when they frequently encountered mountain dwellers sometimes dressed with a bee net on their heads and a handgun on their hips.
There were stories about the now 45 bodies they’ve recovered from people jumping off the Foresthill Bridge, the summertime confluence revelers who had one drink too many and finding abandoned stolen cars, which always seemed to provide the perfect contrast for Lynch of the beautiful scenery and the problems that plagued it.
Some tour participants, such as Suzanne Gardner, said the tour was a great end to reading “Nature Noir.”
“It’s so interesting to come out and actually see it,”
For Smith, writing his nonfiction book was more about capturing the unique life of the park’s rangers in
“Rangers like Mike expected to be protecting our crowned jewels but instead they protected something that was going under water. But they gave it same effort as if it were a crowned jewel,” Smith said.
And for Lynch, that’s true.
As he leads the tour caravan up the paved road and on to the next stop, he casts another wistful glance at the unused entrance station.
He’s hardly surprised when he sees an old dryer someone dumped on the side of the road near the station. It’s another reminder that no matter how hard he and fellow rangers try to reinvent the image of the area, there will always be something that will try to keep it as, in Lynch’s words, the government wasteland it originally started out as.
“It’s our first actual real park and the irony of it is there’s no money to operate it,” Lynch said. “We’re still trying to get money to staff the entrance.” #
WATER POLICY:
Editorial: Feinstein tries her hand at salvaging state water bond;
One of the state's most powerful and popular political leaders is trying to breathe new life into the stalled negotiations over
Feinstein and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger met in private with leaders in the state Legislature on Thursday, in hopes of reviving stalled negotiations on a state water bond. It's a long shot, but Feinstein has often had success with this modus operandi -- she gets the warring factions together in a room and basically waits them out.
Feinstein, almost alone among state Democratic leaders, supports building new dams to capture water in wet years for use in dry ones. That's one leg of a water strategy that The Bee has supported for some time: new dams, more underground storage capacity and a dramatic increase in conservation efforts.
Most Democrats, supported by allies in the environmental movement, are strongly opposed to any new dams.
Republicans insist that dams must be part of the equation. That's the recipe for the gridlock
And it is serious. Between a growing population -- with a growing demand for water -- and the impacts many scientists expect from global warming,
In the meantime, business and farm groups, led by the state Chamber of Commerce, are trying to qualify a bond measure for the November ballot that would raise $11.7 billion for various water projects, including $3.5 billion for new dams. It's similar to a plan Schwarzenegger put forward last year. That effort failed when Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata refused to go along with it over the issue of dams.
It's hard to see such a measure passing in the current atmosphere. Perata has joined with environmental groups to begin running ads that attack the governor's plan, and by extension the business groups' bond measure. The theme of the ads is an old one. Running only in
That's an echo of the campaign that killed the so-called
It's that partisan and geographical divide that Feinstein must conquer, and it won't be easy. But it is essential that a workable compromise be reached, or
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/story/416578.html
Editorial: Sad in
Here's the sad state of political compromise in
That was evident last week when two veteran political figures who are not legislators offered up their own moderate solutions to two big problems — the budget deficit and water — hoping to bring the Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature together. Sadly, there's not much chance of that.
The Legislature is more polarized than ever, despite years of rhetoric from politicians saying they must reach across the aisle and work together. In reality, nobody dares buck the party leaders for fear they'll be drummed out of the Legislature.
Former north state Assemblyman Dick Dickerson is a perfect example. A few years back, the Republican from
Dickerson's now on the
It's so bad in
Why on earth would Republicans stand firm on the so-called "sloophole"? Because Republicans have vowed to fight any tax, which we guess means even supporting ways to avoid paying taxes.
In such an atmosphere, most political observers have given up on the Legislature actually being able to craft compromises. So they are offering their own solutions.
On Wednesday, well-respected legislative analyst Elizabeth Hill took the unprecedented step of making recommendations on how to close the $16 billion gap. Hill is a nonpartisan analyst who advises the Legislature on many matters. When it comes to the budget, she'll usually look over the governor's plan and say if and where it is flawed.
This year, she offered up to legislators her own competing plan, which included both spending cuts and tax increases.
She said that's the only way to close such a large deficit, and most middle-of-the-road Californians likely agree. With the most liberal Democrats and most conservative Republicans occupying most seats in the Legislature, moderation and compromise have been banished from the Capitol.
On Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, perhaps the state's most powerful and popular Democrat, tried the same approach as Hill. In a meeting with Republican and Democratic legislators, Feinstein teamed with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to urge a compromise on the state's divisive water wars.
Water solutions are needed for the growing state, but Democrats won't approve any plan that includes new dams, and Republicans won't approve any spending plan that ignores new reservoirs.
Feinstein didn't offer a specific plan, only a request for both parties to compromise. But Feinstein is known as a politician who advocates more water storage.
Feinstein and Schwarzenegger warned that if the legislators can't craft a solution, other groups will. The California Chamber of Commerce may try to put a water bond on the ballot if legislators don't act.
A legislative compromise would carry more weight with voters.
Since legislators can't seem to fix the money and water problems, the best hope for Californians is that they'll throw up their hands and let the
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