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Old 02-18-2006, 06:36 PM   #1 (permalink)
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‘Next New Orleans’ may be in California

Seems to me the lack of preperation can be extremely costly in dollar$ and in human suffering. In my opinion more thoughtfull planning for natural disasters must be done.


‘Next New Orleans’ may be in California
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta cited as ‘scariest spot’ for flooding
By Alan Boyle
Science editor
MSNBC
Updated: 5:48 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2006

ST. LOUIS - Years before Hurricane Katrina hit, engineers knew that New Orleans was the most vulnerable spot in the country for flood damage — and some even predicted almost exactly how the tragedy would unfold.

Now the experts say California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta presents the next cause for concern. "The Sacramento area is perhaps, after New Orleans, the scariest spot in the country," said Nicholas Pinter, a geologist at Southern Illinois University who studies river flood risks.

The subject of future risks — and what to do about flood-prone regions ranging from Louisiana to California — was a subject of debate Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Even St. Louis, the site of this year's meeting, was considered a region at risk.

A panel of experts held out little hope that the risks would be eased, however, unless governments on all levels took a harder look at the standards for levee construction and changed policies that actually encouraged development in vulnerable areas.

It's difficult for the lessons from past floods to sink in, even when it's a flood as catastrophic as the one caused by Katrina, said the University of Maryland's Gerald Galloway, a former brigadier general in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"The half-life of the memory of a flood is very short," he told reporters. "You can already hear it in Washington D.C. ... 'New Orleans, where?'"

California delta at risk
Unlike New Orleans, the delta at the confluence of California's Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers is about 80 miles inland — and thousands of miles from the nation's hurricane zone. But like New Orleans, the delta's historic floodplains are protected by an extensive and expensive system of levees and dams. Much of Sacramento itself sits lower than the levees protecting the city.

Last fall, The Sacramento Bee reported that more than 300,000 people would be in the direct path of a flood.

The chances of a catastrophic flood occurring in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta sometime in the next 50 years are about two out of three, said Jeffrey Mount, director of the Center for Integrated Watershed Science and Management at the University of California at Davis.

"It is the most at-risk large metropolitan area in the country, with less than half the protection" that New Orleans had, Mount said. "It is at extreme risk due to levee failure and subsidence."

St. Louis blues
Hundreds of miles upstream from New Orleans, the increasingly corseted Mississippi River also holds the potential for catastrophic flooding, the experts said. Pinter noted that along some stretches of the river around St. Louis, flood levels are up to 12 feet (2 meters) higher than they were in 1900.

Pinter referred to the Great Midwest Flood of 1993, which caused an estimated $15 billion in damage. Since then, there has been $2.2 billion worth of new construction on land that was underwater in 1993, he said. New levees have been built, but in Katrina's wake, the experts said those levees may be inadequate.

In some of the historically flood-prone areas around St. Louis, "the possibility of seeing a mini-New Orleans situation here is definitely an issue," said Adolphus Busch IV, a member of St. Louis' Anheuser-Busch beer-brewing family.

Busch is working to cut back on the pace of floodplain development as chairman of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance. The alliance has filed lawsuits in an effort to block tax incentives for development of lands that may be flooded if levees break.

Overconfident and underinsured
Saturday's panelists were unanimous in their view that current policies on flood mitigation and insurance gave too much encouragement to development — and ironically, could lead to more flood-related damage in the long run.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't build better defenses against flooding, said Norbert Schwartz of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Mitigation does work," he said. "For every dollar invested, you get a $5 return."

However, once a new levee is built, the requirements for federal flood insurance are eased, and developers feel more confident about going ahead with large-scale construction. "The levee-protected area gave people the impression that it is a safe area," Schwartz said.

In reality, that's usually not the case. The federal requirements call for levees to be capable of withstanding the kind of flooding that happens, on average, once a century. But Pinter said statistics indicate that the height of a "100-year flood" is being underestimated by 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 meters).

Moreover, Pinter pointed out that although the federal government provides support for building the levees, it's up to local governments to maintain them — and many of the nation's levees are poorly maintained. Undermined levees were an Achilles' heel for New Orleans, and appear to be a weak link in California as well, he said.

Visions of the future
Looking ahead, the experts said risk assessments should consider future weather projections rather than simply assessing the historical flood record. In the short term, we're entering a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with a greater frequency of hurricanes, Pinter said.

In the longer term, changes in global climate may lead to changes in flood risks as well, said Anthony Arquez of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "As the climate warms, we expect more extreme precipitation events. What was once considered a 100-year flood might be a 50-year flood," he said.

One of Galloway's prescriptions would be to raise the standards for levee protection. "100 years is too low," he said. Dutch cities are built to outlast 1,250-year floods, or in some cases even 10,000-year floods, Galloway noted.

Also, Galloway said even those living behind levees in flood-prone areas should be required to carry some level of flood insurance. "There is still residual risk," he said.

Mount had a political prescription as well: "Elect a leader with some courage. The bottom line is, it's far cheaper to have floodplain management than to have flood control. ... Keep it as farms, don't turn it into houses."

Mount said the main problem — for politicians and those who live and work in the nation's floodplains as well as the wider public — is that "we live in a state of denial."

"It is pretty depressing," he acknowledged, "but it's extremely important. Just take a look at Katrina and the human suffering there."
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11427817/page/2/
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Old 02-18-2006, 07:28 PM   #2 (permalink)
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A key difference between the SJ delta and New Orleans is that we Californians don't see multiple hurricanes per year. I lived in the SJ county for years and I only saw maybe 3 or 4 lightning storms, and never flooding. SJ County average annual rainfall is between 18 and 10 inches per year. Annual rainfall for New Orleans is about 57 inches per year. While the delta does present a slight chance of a problem, it is no where near as dangerous as the New Orleans leavies.
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Old 02-18-2006, 07:51 PM   #3 (permalink)
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I agree that we should be as prepared as possible for natural disasters, but I don't know the feasability of preparing for every possible scenario.

We'd have to prepare for flooding, earthquakes, and fires in California.
Drought and tornadoes in the Midwest.
Hurricanes and flooding in the Gulf Coast.
Ice and Cold in the Northeast.
Volcanoes and earthquakes in the Northwest and Alaska.

I don't think it would be possible to be so prepared for every disaster that there would be no catastrophe.

There will always be the risk of catastrophe as long as we inhabit areas prone to disaster and create those dangers ourselves through our use of our environment.
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Old 02-18-2006, 10:42 PM   #4 (permalink)
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A lot of the flooding danger the San Joaquin Delta is self-inflicted -- and they keep on making it worse. Right now, developers are building major housing developments on former ag land immediately adjacent to old, substandard levees. The logic is, they haven't given yet, so.... Some of this land is actually below water level even in summer. And people actually buy the houses.

My sister lives in a house on a spit of land that sticks out into the Carquinez Straits, by Benicia. That's basically the conduit through which the Delta drains into SF Bay. Anyway, her "lot" was spang up on the bay, hardly above sea level, and basically a swamp. They had to drive concrete pilings to support the house. The houes has got a great view westward down the strait, but it's not going to last for the ages... one of these days, a flood of rainwater or snowmelt coming west down from the delta is going to happen at the same time as a spring tide (extremely high tide) and incoming storm heading east, and the water's going to come straight through her living room window....

Last edited by Rodney; 02-18-2006 at 10:45 PM..
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Old 02-19-2006, 12:07 AM   #5 (permalink)
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How often does southern California get hit by hurricanes?

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Old 02-19-2006, 07:29 AM   #6 (permalink)
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Hey willravel, since you live there, can you or anyone tell me what the effect of El Nino is on the SJ delta? I watched a discovery channel program on El Nino and the destruction was incredible. I don't remember if the delta was affected.

Last edited by Brewmaniac; 02-19-2006 at 07:32 AM..
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Old 02-19-2006, 07:45 AM   #7 (permalink)
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I should point out that things like this have already happened, on the small scale, in and around the Delta. For example, South Modesto flooded a few years ago when the Tuolumne River crested at the _500-year flood stage._ The greater region got seven inches of rain in three days (can you say "Pineapple Express?"), and the dam upstream of the Tuolumne overfilled and starting releasing excess water downstream in the middle of the storm.

As in New Orleans, the human factor actually increases the risk of flooding. The whole delta used to flood annually back before the middle of the 1800s, but settlers built levees and later dams for flood control. The problem with dams here is that they serve two or more purposes that conflict: flood control, water storage for cities and agriculture, and sometimes recreation. Dam operators don't always draw down reservoir levels far enough to protect against serious storms, because they're worried about maintaining sufficient water supply throughout the coming year. So when serious rain and runoff hits a dam whose operator has kept the reservoir high for strategic reason, he may have no choice but to release extra water downriver _in the midst of flood conditions._

Same thing happened about ten years back in San Jose, when the Guadalupe Riveroverflowed and flooded several neighborhoods because Lexington Reservoir, up by Los Gatos, overfilled during a big storm and had to dump extra water down the river while the storm was still going on. Since then, I've noticed that the Lexington operators draw down that reservoir pretty far during the summer, I assume to avoid future problems. And they've been lucky enough to get enough rain each winter to fulfill their city water commitments.

Last edited by Rodney; 02-19-2006 at 07:47 AM..
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Old 02-19-2006, 09:25 AM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewmaniac
Hey willravel, since you live there, can you or anyone tell me what the effect of El Nino is on the SJ delta? I watched a discovery channel program on El Nino and the destruction was incredible. I don't remember if the delta was affected.
Not that I can recall. The only thing I remember is that we had more water that year. Of course I was in high school when it hit and was thus preoccupied with matters of school and dating and such.
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Old 02-19-2006, 09:49 AM   #9 (permalink)
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/edit *nevermind*
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Old 02-19-2006, 09:56 AM   #10 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
A key difference between the SJ delta and New Orleans is that we Californians don't see multiple hurricanes per year.
I don't think that a hurricane is the only problem here...

What happens when the next whopper earthquake weakens levies enough that they let go?

Scary. I'll stick to tornadoes here in the midwest.
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Old 02-19-2006, 10:13 AM   #11 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ScottKuma
I don't think that a hurricane is the only problem here...

What happens when the next whopper earthquake weakens levies enough that they let go?

Scary. I'll stick to tornadoes here in the midwest.
I haven't felt an earthquake in over 10 years. If the 89 quake didn't hurt the delta, odds are that it'll be fine.
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Old 02-19-2006, 11:51 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
I haven't felt an earthquake in over 10 years. If the 89 quake didn't hurt the delta, odds are that it'll be fine.
It's not about earthquakes. It's about beavers!

Beavers and squirrels, but especially beavers, dig rather large dens in the old levees and weaken them severely, so that eventually they fail under a load that they might have stood up to in past years.

Aside from other issues of safety, levees take damage just sitting there. And there is no statewide or regional plan or agency that is responsible for maintaining them.
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Old 02-19-2006, 01:36 PM   #13 (permalink)
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i always wondered if the massive desert between los angeles and vegas could have been converted into cities... someday...

eventually?
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Old 02-20-2006, 07:48 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wyckd
i always wondered if the massive desert between los angeles and vegas could have been converted into cities... someday...

eventually?
Not unless more water becomes available. LA already drains water from the Owens Valley, up above the Mojave, for the city water supply. The Owens Valley used to be farmland; they _made_ it into a desert by sending most of the ground water to LA.

Outside of local sources, you've got the Colorado River, but water allocations on that are already divvied up six ways from Sunday.

On the geological timescale, plenty of water will be available out there; from what I understand, the tectonic plate is under stress there, being pulled in east and west at the same time. Eventually there'll be a big tear and the Sea of Cortez will head up to Barstow and beyond. Again, we're talking geological time, so don't buy beachfront property in Mojave yet :-)

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