Western levees need action, says editorial
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 28, 2008 at 7:48 amFrom the Capital Ag Press, this editorial:
The massive flooding in the Midwest has shown the incredible extremes of nature, the vulnerability of manmade water structures, and the staggering impact of uncontrollable water on people physically, financially and emotionally.
When Senate hearings this spring talked about the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation water infrastructure, there were grim assessments of the problems that exist with federally built levees, canals and dams in the country. According to Associated Press, BuRec has 7,911 miles of canals in 17 Western states, most of them managed and operated by local irrigation and water districts.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated $1.6 trillion is needed to rebuild the country’s water infrastructure, a lot of which was built more than 50 years ago.
There have been several examples in the West and elsewhere of the weaknesses in canals, levels and other water storage structures.
In eastern Idaho, the Teton Dam failed in 1976; it collapsed as it was being filled for the first time, sending 300,000 acre feet of water forward and causing massive damage. The Seminary Hill Reservoir near Centralia, Wash., failed in 1991, triggering 3.5 million gallons of water to rush out in three minutes.
In California’s Bay-Delta, Liberty Island, Prospect Island and Little Holland Tract have been examined on who needs to be responsible for the levees there. Prospect Island had levee breaks in 2006 and 2007 and the breach repaired. In 1998, Liberty Island had its levees fail but they were not repaired. Little Holland Tract had floods in the 1990s. In 1997, more than 30 levees gave way in the Central Valley of California, flooding 300 square miles and evacuating 120,000 homes.
While money has been appropriated in some states, the editorial questions whether enough is being spent and if it is happening fast enough, and makes this final point:
University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering last year warned in a report that flooding in California’s Central Valley is “the next big disaster waiting to happen” and the flood control system there is incapable of dealing with severe floods. The Sacramento area alone could face more than $25 billion of damage.
After witnessing what has been happening in the Midwest, Western states can wait no longer. Better water plans, funds for them, and construction progress must be done now.
Read the full text of this article from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
Army Corps: Condition of many levees a mystery
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 12, 2008 at 6:18 amFrom the Associated Press and Forbes Magazine:
Across America, earthen flood levees protect big cities and small towns, wealthy suburbs and rich farmland. But the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees levees, lacks an inventory of thousands of them and has no idea of their condition, the corps’ chief levee expert told The Associated Press.
The uncertainty, amid an unusually wet spring that has already caused significant flooding across many states, is creating worry even within the corps. “We have to get our arms around this issue and understand how many levees there are in the country, who’s watching over them, what populations and properties are behind them,” Eric Halpin, the corps’ special assistant for dam and levee safety, said in an interview last month. “What is the risk posed to the public?”
Critics are troubled that the government doesn’t know the answer. Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley levee expert, said many levees are old, with rusting infrastructure and built to protect against relatively common floods - not the big ones like the Great Flood of 1993, when 1,100 levees were broken or had water spill over their tops. “Once they do get an inventory,” Bea said, “I think we’re not going to like what we find.”
Read the full text of this article from Forbes Magazine by clicking here.
Sacramento: America’s most flood-threatened city not named New Orleans
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 11, 2008 at 7:17 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
California’s capital city may be best known for politics, but it has another claim to fame: It’s America’s most flood-threatened city not named New Orleans.
A recent state report predicts that the right combination of unlucky weather conditions could put some parts of the city under more than 20 feet of water, causing a $25-billion disaster that would cripple state government and ripple through the California economy.
Authorities are racing against time to strengthen the earthen levees that ring nearly the entire city to hold back the swollen American and Sacramento rivers. “Every winter we hold our breaths and hope this isn’t the year something happens before we can finish the work,” said Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson. “There is a sense of the clock ticking.”
When heavy rain begins to fall, folks here peer nervously at the sky and riverbanks. And Stein Buer — the person perhaps most responsible for their fates — frets and prepares. “I never sleep during storms,” said Buer, executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, which is working with the state and federal governments in a multibillion-dollar effort to avert catastrophe. “It’s the nature of my responsibility.”
Worst-case scenarios project 500 dead, 102 square miles flooded, 300,000 people uprooted, an international airport and state agencies under water, and years of recovery.
Read the full text of this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Federal official says users responsible for levee fixes
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 18, 2008 at 5:40 amFrom the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The government has only a limited responsibility to repair or replace aging dams, canals and levees that were contracted to local authorities years ago, a top federal official said Thursday. On projects transferred to local control, “in most cases the arrangement calls for those costs to be the responsibility of the water users,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Robert Johnson said at a Senate hearing that focused in part on the collapse of the Truckee Canal in January.
The breach in the 100-year-old levee flooded 590 homes in Fernley. The earthen embankment has been managed by the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District since the 1920s.
Fernley Mayor Todd Cutler testified the Bureau of Reclamation as the owner and the irrigation district as the operator should share repair costs of the levee “with the idea that it provides us life.” “The canal feeds a great deal of people. With that said, it is a federal facility,” he said.
Depending on the level of repair deemed necessary, the costs could range from $28 million to $390 million, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Read the full text of this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
Senator Harry Reid introduces legislation to provide funding for inspections, maintenance and repairs of aging federal levees
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 14, 2008 at 12:46 pmFrom the San Diego Union Tribune:
Sen. Harry Reid has introduced a bill designed to make aging federal-owned canals and levees safer across the West.
The Nevada Democrat’s measure was introduced Thursday, about three months after the failure of an earthen embankment on a century-old irrigation canal flooded the growing town of Fernley, 30 miles east of Reno. The Jan. 5 breach of the Truckee Canal flooded nearly 600 homes, making Fernley a state and federal disaster area.
The bill would provide $11 million over the next five years for required inspections of federal water infrastructure such as the Truckee Canal. It also directs the Department of Interior to perform maintenance and repairs to ensure the safety of nearby homes and businesses.
“I will work diligently to pass this bill to protect Nevadans living near canals and levees,” Reid said.
Read the rest of this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune by clicking here.
Delta levees and water is everybody’s problem, says editorial
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 15, 2008 at 7:24 amFrom the Tracy Press, this editorial which discusses the levees protecting many Delta and Central Valley cities:
… the levees standing between those communities and disaster also protect the Delta water supply we depend upon.
Their problem is, by extension, ours.
So Tracy residents shouldn’t be surprised that this city is also near the heart of the region’s biggest and most far-reaching water debate. About 10 miles near, to be exact. That’s where the Banks and Tracy pumping plants suck water from the Delta and send it to Parts Previously Unwatered — most notably, the Los Angeles Basin, the traditional villain in the battle for the state’s most precious commodity. Those pumps and the recipients of their water loom large in California’s future — and in the fight to save the Delta from declining health and death.
I’d love to pile on and paint Southern Californians as the baddies. It would, at least, be easy. Millions of southlanders get their water from Northern California. They have a history of plundering other’s wet stuff. And they haven’t exactly been wise with their own resources — why else would the Los Angeles River be more famous for a “Terminator 2” motorcycle chase than for carrying water?
In reality, if you’re looking to call out folks for being Delta water thieves, there are plenty of options. Valley farmers take their share from the pumps, as do millions of people in five Bay Area counties. Tracy even takes its cut.
The point is, the Delta is a shared resource, one that suffers from a demand larger than its supply. But that hasn’t stopped officials and activists from dreaming up ways to more efficiently exploit it.
One of the most popular, at least with water interests south and west, is a peripheral canal. It’s a centerpiece of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to ensure that a stream of water flows safe, supposedly, from the effects of a devastating earthquake or flood that could render normal Delta water undrinkable.
In an echo of 1982, when voters slapped down the original Peripheral Canal, the idea has been roundly criticized here as a grab of “our” resources by “outside” interests. San Joaquin County supervisors voted unanimously in opposition to the canal in late 2007, and editorial boards up and down the valley have taken the proposal to task.
“I plead with elected officials to look elsewhere for answers to meet the state’s sure-to-grow water demand”, the writer says. Get the full text of this commentary by clicking here.
Aging levees and dams pose threat
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 9, 2008 at 7:58 amFrom the Capital Ag Press:
People in the American West, a largely arid region with a history of drought, often complain about the lack of water. But the West has also seen its share of floods. Some of the most damaging have been caused by the failure of irrigation canals, levees and dams.
One such flood was caused by the Teton Dam failure in Eastern Idaho in 1976. The brand-new structure collapsed as it was being filled for the first time. Nearly 300,000 acrefeet of water gushed out over six hours, triggering more than 200 mudslides down river. The disaster claimed 11 lives and caused millions of dollars in property damage.
Teton Dam’s spectacular failure is one reason that U.S. Bureau of Reclamation engineers now assess all bureau dams under strict criteria established by the Safety of Dams program.
Despite the best efforts of federal agencies, state governments and irrigation districts, structural failures still occur. Overtopping is the culprit in 34 percent of all dam failures nationally, according to experts. Foundation defects account for another 30 percent of failures and piping and seepage problems are blamed for about 20 percent.
To read the rest of this story from the Capital Ag Press, click here.
Researchers warn that levee conditions in California are ‘the next big disaster waiting to happen’
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 22, 2008 at 10:51 pmFrom Science Daily:
While flooding in California’s Central Valley is “the next big disaster waiting to happen,” water-related infrastructure issues confront almost every community across the country, according to engineers at the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering in separate reports to California officials and in the journal Science.
An independent review panel chaired by Clark School Research Professor of Civil Engineering Gerald E. Galloway said the area between the Sacramento and San Joaquin river floodplains faces significant risk of floods that could lead to extensive loss of life and billions of dollars in damages. The panel’s report, “A California Challenge: Flooding in the Central Valley,” was commissioned by California’s Department of Water Resources.
The panel pointed out that many of the area’s levees, constructed over the past 150 years to protect communities and property in the Central Valley, were poorly built or placed on inadequate foundations. Climate change may increase the likelihood of floods and their resulting destruction. The panel recommends that state and local officials take swift action to reduce the risk to people and the environment.
The comprehensive flood-risk abatement strategy the panel recommends focuses on land-use planning and integration with other basin water management activities.
To read the full text of this article from the Science Daily, click here.
Picture of levee break courtesy of the Department of Water Resources.
MWD: Band Aids for the levees
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 26, 2007 at 12:50 pmHere’s an article that appeared in today’s Stockton Record:
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
The best way to save the Delta’s fresh water from a levee-crumbling earthquake may be to wait until the quake strikes before taking major action, Los Angeles-area water providers have decided.
The Metropolitan Water District recently approved a plan that would repair broken levees after a temblor rather than shoring them up beforehand.
District board members voted to stockpile repair materials at strategic spots around the Delta; then, if a quake occurs, that rock could be used to patch up levees perhaps along the Middle River, creating a sort of pathway channeling fresh water from the central Delta to the export pumps near Tracy.
It’s a cheaper plan, said Roger Patterson, Metropolitan’s assistant general manager.
For the full text of the article, click here.
Aquafornia comment: Why is it MWD’s job to fix the levees? Isn’t that what Cal-FED is supposed to do? Are we going to have various agencies with an interest in the Delta applying piecemeal plans instead of a coordinated solution?