Saying Something...again

Confirmation is always nice. Before we left the Sacramento area, I used to rant to a few people that it was wrong to develop the Natomas area; that it was unsafe because of the possibility of flooding. I was certain that the only reason the area was being pushed for removal from the ‘flood plain’ list was for the financial benefit of the developers. Of course, I was just an interested observer of the local political scene; I lived high and dry in Roseville, 20 miles away.

Yesterday’s Sacramento Bee had a front page story; ‘Levee Report Shocks City’. Apparently the Army Corps of Engineers changed their minds about the status of the Natomas area. Playing it safe again, they say that the area is prone to flooding; disastrous flooding. Which it always has been. But, in the meantime, thousands of new residents live there, unaware that they live on the bottom of the river with fragile levees being the only thing keeping the river from reclaiming the land.

Funny things, the levees. Built, beginning in the mid-1800’s, by farmers using a mule and a ‘fresno’, dirt was scraped together to form the channels for the river. And that dirt is still there. That’s the foundation for the current levees. No one has ever said, ‘Let’s tear them down, start over and do it right’. Sure, they have injected grout and driven in pilings, but they can only imagine what the foundation looks like now, 150 years later. Try imagining a highway; paved just once and then imagine it after 150 years of traffic has rolled down it.

Since there are still a few million dollars left to be made in the Natomas area, I would guess that the city and the developers will argue that the Corps is wrong and press for the removal or an amendment to the negative report. And they will probably get one. Just a guess.

And just inside the front page of the Bee was a good column by Dan Walters. This, “…Ever since, Schwarzenegger has been a conventional, deal-making, hot-air-spouting politician. Almost daily, he makes some sort of public appearance somewhere in the state and says something about something, but the value of his words continues to diminish...” says it all.