Posted on 08/24/2012 5:29:23 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Levees protecting most of the city of Sacramento and 15 other areas of the Central Valley were declared on Thursday to have failed federal maintenance criteria. As a result, those levees are no longer eligible for federal money to rebuild if damaged in a storm.
The U.S.ArmyCorps ofEngineers made the declaration after concluding that a new state plan to improve Central Valley levees does not provide enough detail to ensure that maintenance problems, such as erosion and intruding structures, will be fixed.
The affected areas include 40 miles of levees wrapping most of the city of Sacramento on the American and Sacramento rivers....
...In the wake of HurricaneKatrina in NewOrleans, the Corps began imposing its maintenance criteria uniformly across the nation. Previously, it had allowed a measure of local flexibility for unique conditions.
...[FEMA] uses Corpsof Engineers data to decide whether a community should be stripped of its 100-year flood certification. If that were to happen, thousands of Sacramento homeowners could be required to buy flood insurance at a cost of $1,200 or more every year.
....State officials surprised at feds' criticism of plan
.... The Corps is relying on inspections done between 2009 and 2011.
..the change results from the expiration of a treaty of sorts with the state.
In 2009, the CorpsofEngineers agreed to delay enforcing the national maintenance standards in California until the state Department of Water Resources completed the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan...approved in June by the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, provides a path to comply with Corps rules..... a "high-level planning document" to address broad deficiencies, such as floodplain management. It defers specifics such as encroachment and erosion problems to nine different regional planning efforts, which are just now getting started.
It is this deferral of specifics, apparently, that the Corps objects to....
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
————State officials surprised at feds’ criticism———
The governor of Louisiana was similarly surprised when New Orleans was flooded because she did not over rule her democrat legislature and use the money for levee maintenance.
and who provides that coverage ???
sounds like agenda 21 is attempting to trip over its own johnson and will run people out of river valleys...
As money dies up, rules mean rules — cities/states with infrastructure matters that FEMA might be connected to, better be looking into their local situations.
FEMA will sell it, your homeowner's insurer administers it. That's how it works now here in the TX-Galveston area.
I never heard that flood insurance is required by law, maybe they used that word losely
loosely
im sure theres a lot of bs going on with the levies, built and now condemned by the corp of engineers...
The U.S.Army Corps of Engineers was in charge in New Orleans also. They should be discontinued permanently. When they move in someplace, everyone suffers. Tax payers included.
This is about forcing homeowners into the Federal system, and a land grab to squeeze profit into real estate that has already been bought, whether for "mitigations" or for construction of "Sustainable Development" as the case may be. Gosh, how do they coordinate all that?
IOW, there is a reason The Nature Conservancy and Catellus Development share an office building at 210 Mission Street in San Francisco.
California labor unions WANT a complete rebuild. Southern California politicians WANT a redesign that supplies more water to SoCal. California hasn’t done diddly on levee maintenance.
Corpse of Engineers? Is that a crew of dead engineers? Do they still get to vote?
The cadre of California Greenies have stopped lots of regular maintenance on all of these levees. NOt just in California. Also on Irrigation ditches in Oregon & Nevada.
Ground gophers make tunnels & swiss cheese the levees. When the levees are stressed with more volume & pressure, those tunnels lead to failure. Water collapes the levee.
The do-gooders & Greenies don’t want the gophers shot or poisoned.
When they no longer have a house to live in, I will not feel sorry for them.
One year, the flooding trapped a Border collie who was on the roof of a house, north of Sacramento. The water was still rising. The local NBC helicopter had been following the rising water all day long.
At dusk, the pilot could not leave the dog on that roof & he hovered while his cameraman gathered up the dog. IIRC, the dog was named Rodeo.
The public was very happy for the actions of that pilot.
The NBC station in Sacramento FIRED the pilot. Said he had acted out of bounds of his job duties!!!
He had been a Viet Nam rescue pilot & had been in far worse spots with his helicopter. He showed us all that he had the talent.
Many of us who lived in that area at the time never forgave the station for firing him.
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