Sacramento Bee article on construction in flood plain.
One may need the "bubble" to save one's butt from the rising water.
Tempting fate: Flood prone
Valley homes pop up in risky areas
By Matt Weiser -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, November 6, 2005
Story appeared on Page A1 of The Bee
Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here.
At least 115,000 new homes are in the pipeline for flood-prone areas of California's Central Valley, a Bee review of public records shows, and already thousands of them are rising behind levees known to be suspect, on tracts of land that have flooded repeatedly in the past.
That degree of growth is equivalent to erecting a city the size of Stockton on a swath of land with the nation's greatest flood risk.
The names of some of the developments even boast of their waterlogged histories - Plumas Lake, for instance, and River Islands.
Yet because of fractured government oversight, much of this construction will happen with little regard for flood risk.
Some say, as a result, the state risks a disaster unlike anything it has seen before. It could be California's own version of the devastating New Orleans flood that followed Hurricane Katrina.
"It's glaringly obvious developers are being accommodated and public safety is being forgotten," said Tom Foley, president of the Marysville-based Concerned Citizens for Responsible Growth.
Foley's group is fighting the Plumas Lake development plan approved by Yuba County in 1993. It calls for 12,000 new homes in the Olivehurst area, which flooded in 1986 and 1997, after levee breaks on the Yuba and Feather rivers, respectively. Homes are being built there now, with 1,500 of them expected to be occupied by the end of 2006.
Large though it is, Plumas Lake offers just a peek at the development coming to the Valley's flood zones.
True tally could be 170,000
Using research by the Delta Protection Commission, a state agency, and the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, The Bee found that at least 115,000 new homes are planned or already under construction in flood-prone areas of six counties between Marysville and Tracy.
The Bee looked at areas in the potential flood zone behind levees, not only areas within a floodplain mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is because, by its own admission, FEMA floodplain maps are outdated.
The Bee also made an independent tally of housing development in flood zones and found that the 115,000 estimate is conservative.
It does not include a general plan update under way in the city of Stockton, for instance, that could allow thousands of additional homes behind levees along the San Joaquin River.
Eric Parfrey, an urban planner and former president of the Sierra Club's Mother Lode chapter, conducted his own review of housing development in the south Delta alone last year and came up with a much larger number: 170,000. Parfrey also found that getting a firm grip on growth is difficult, because no single government agency keeps track.
Nor is any entity monitoring the cumulative impact of growth on water quality and wildlife habitat - or public safety.
"That's literally a recipe for disaster, and people are going to die in the next catastrophic flood event unless we get our act together," Parfrey said.
Much of the state's growth pressure is being absorbed these days by the Valley, with its available land and lower housing costs.
The Delta itself is off-limits to new housing subdivisions under a state law overseen by the Delta Protection Commission. The appointed body has regional planning powers in the Delta's 500,000-acre "primary zone," a collection of islands and sloughs where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge.
But this restriction does not extend to the Delta's "secondary zone" - a surrounding ring of 238,000 acres that is rapidly being developed by adjoining cities, including Oakley, Tracy, Lathrop, Stockton and West Sacramento.
In West Sacramento, a community virtually surrounded by the Sacramento River, more than 20,000 homes are proposed behind levees that encircle the city. In addition, at least one new school and 13 million square feet of commercial space are planned.
In Sacramento's Natomas area, also surrounded by levees, more than 10,000 new homes are expected over the next 10 years.
In both locations, many more homes could be built because of an effort to fight sprawl. Under its "Blueprint" growth plan, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments is urging higher densities and mixed-use development to create urban hubs where people can live near their work.
Endorsed in 2004 by elected officials from the 28 local governments in the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the Blueprint principles could bring 15,000 more homes each in West Sacramento and Natomas, 2,600 in the Delta portion of Sacramento County, and 8,000 more in south Sutter County.
"We did not do an analysis at that time of how much of the growth was in a floodplain or not," said Kenneth Hough, director of community planning for the Council of Governments. "That said, the board is very interested in bringing the flood risks to bear as we develop updates in the future to the Blueprint map."
Putting their faith in levees
Fees and taxes associated with new housing have become a vital revenue source for local governments - money sometimes used to offset the risk. That is the case for the Plumas Lake development plan in Yuba County.
In 2004, the county began $200 million in levee improvements on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, financed by a $29,300 fee on every new home.
Yuba County Administrator Charles McClain said this was the only way to raise money to protect the 25,000 people who already live in the area, many of them victims of flooding in 1986 and 1997.
McClain acknowledged that Plumas Lake is a "Faustian bargain" for his county: paying for levee upgrades by putting more people behind those levees.
"Basically it's the newcomers paying to reconstruct the levees that are protecting the people who have lived here since before World War II," McClain said. "It will be the best, the highest level of flood protection provided by any set of levees anywhere in the state."
Lathrop, a city of 12,500 south of Stockton, is putting its faith in existing levees along the San Joaquin River. City leaders are planning to add 9,000 homes in an area west of Interstate 5 even though parts of the adjacent levee suffered seepage problems in 1997.
Lathrop did not require developers to certify or upgrade the levee, and even opted to build its new City Hall behind it.
"I think that's a pretty good vote of confidence," City Manager Pam Carder said.
But others insist levees are no promise of safety. No matter how tall or broad the levee, they say, people living and working behind them always will be at risk. In the New Orleans flooding, for example, initial investigations suggest it was not the concrete flood walls that failed in some cases, but the levees they were built upon.
With levees, "there are engineering steps that can be taken," said Jonas Minton, a senior project manager with the nonprofit Planning and Conservation League and former deputy director at the state Department of Water Resources.
"However," he adds, "levees are piles of dirt. They have a tendency to fail. If people are living behind levees, many feet below the water surface level, it is only a matter of time 'til some of them flood."
A risky separation of powers
Marci Coglianese, former mayor of the Solano County town of Rio Vista, which sits on high ground along the banks of the Sacramento River, calls today's rampant floodplain development a "schizophrenic breakdown" in public policy.
Everyone in government knows about the Valley's flood risk, she says, but no one wants to take responsibility.
"I'm absolutely terrified that this growth is tending to go to small rural areas like mine that really don't have the staff to deal with this," Coglianese said. "I just can't emphasize enough that this is a real threat to people and to our regional economy here."
Cities and counties have total authority to approve development, but no legal responsibility for flood protection. That duty lies with state agencies - levee maintenance districts - which have limited power to raise money for levee repairs and no say over growth. Federal officials are charged only with assessing flood risk, but that information is often woefully outdated.
The result is a system riddled with loopholes, through which developers routinely - and legally - drive big new housing subdivisions.
The River Islands development, another project in Lathrop, is one example. It proposes 11,000 homes, 5 million square feet of commercial space and three new schools on Stewart Tract, a Delta island that flooded in 1997.
With $125 million already invested in the project, project director Susan Dell'Osso said, the company needed to start building and selling new houses or risk bankruptcy.
But consideration of a state Reclamation Board permit to strengthen existing levees was taking too long.
So the company opted instead to begin the first phase of the project by building a new levee inside the existing levee. To start that work, all it needed was a grading permit from the city of Lathrop. Permit in hand, the company started construction in September on five miles of new levees at a cost of $16 million.
"We think we're doing something that is so different and so positive that we were definitely frustrated," Dell'Osso said. "We just changed the project so we could get outside of areas that were part of state and federal jurisdiction."
FEMA has approved the engineering plan for the new levee. If the agency signs off on the finished product, by late next year, Dell'Osso said, River Islands will start its first phase: 2,400 homes, 3 million square feet of commercial space and a K-12 school.
Material for the new levee is being scraped out of the island's interior from areas that will become artificial lakes and canals weaving through the project.
The crest of the levee will be 40 feet wide, about twice the width of most existing levees. Eventually, the company plans to connect the new levee with the old to create a "super-wide" levee 300 feet across around the entire island. (That again will require a state Reclamation Board permit, which the company intends to seek before the year is out.)
River Islands plans to build premium homes atop this super-wide levee, offering wealthy homebuyers a water view.
Aging system, rising risk
California's Central Valley is, by definition, a vast floodplain. Its natural function is to collect rain and snowmelt from two-thirds of the state, and slowly funnel it out to sea.
Today, this natural floodplain includes 1,600 miles of levees on the state's two largest rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin. It also includes an additional 1,100 miles of levees in the Delta where the rivers meet.
As time passes, maintaining this levee system is becoming more difficult and costly. Already, delayed repairs are piling up.
The state Department of Water Resources estimates Central Valley levees need about $5 billion in work. There is no funding set aside for this work, nor even a full grasp of the problem's scope. In a January 2005 report, the department calls the levee system a "ticking time bomb."
These levees date back to the Gold Rush. All originally were built by farmers to protect crops, not cities. Most have been reinforced since pioneer days, but they still sit on unstable soils subject to seepage and settling.
They also are subject to liquefaction in earthquakes. Add in two more problems - sinking of Delta islands caused by farming, and rising sea levels caused by global warming - and you have a four-pronged threat to urbanization of the region.
Since 1900, according to the Department of Water Resources, at least 153 levee breaks have occurred in the Delta alone, flooding more than 250,000 acres. Some of this flooding occurred on land in the Delta's secondary zone now filling up with homes.
In the past, the risk to human life from future levee failures has been relatively low. The Delta and the historic floodplains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers north and south of it have been dominated by agriculture and low population densities.
That won't be the case in the next flood.
Three people died in the Olivehurst area, now home to the Plumas Lake project, when it flooded in 1997. By the end of next year, the same area will have about 3,750 new residents. Within 10 years, perhaps 30,000 more.
The state Reclamation Board worked out a compromise with Yuba County to limit Plumas Lake development through 2006 while the area's levees are shored up. Part of the deal requires developers to provide flood insurance to new residents for four years.
That was required because the Plumas Lake area never has been identified by FEMA as lying in a floodplain, even though it has flooded twice in the past after levee breaks. Such maps put buyers and lenders on notice that flood insurance is needed.
Yuba County Administrator McClain acknowledged that Plumas Lake's unmapped status is "bizarre in the extreme."
But it is not uncommon in the Central Valley.
The same situation exists in the Lathrop area, where new homes back up to San Joaquin River levees. Foundations are being poured below the river's water elevation, yet flood insurance is not required.
City officials and builders in the area leave the insurance question up to lenders, who ultimately bear the financial risk in a flood.
Advice goes unheeded
In 2002, the California Floodplain Management Task Force attempted to reconcile the conflict between flood risk and housing need. Created by legislation endorsed by then-Gov. Gray Davis, the 39-member group represented broad interests, including local government, environmentalists and developers.
They agreed on 38 recommendations, including a call to elevate new construction above expected floodwaters, and to preserve farmland, the most flood-tolerant of land uses.
But the group's work was followed by a state budget crisis, a gubernatorial recall and fading memories. Today, the task force report sits on a shelf, largely forgotten by policy-makers. And thousands of acres of flood-prone farmland are being paved over for housing subdivisions.
"It's unfortunate that many of the recommendations of the task force to mitigate future hazards have not been implemented," said task force member Ron Javor, who is assistant deputy director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
But Javor said stopping development in floodplains is not the answer. In a separate study, also in 2002, his department estimates that housing construction in California needs to double over the next 20 years to keep up with demand.
"We have to build housing where we can, and if we take too much land out of housing use, the cost of housing just goes up," he said.
Tim Coyle, senior vice president of the California Building Industry Association, agreed. His group also was represented on the task force, and he insisted that growth controls won't protect people from flooding.
Instead, the building industry supports levee strengthening.
"I don't know how your flood risk is reduced by growth control. It doesn't protect your existing schoolyard or your existing neighborhood," Coyle said. "If you put a limit on the next new housing development, how does that fix the fundamental problem? It's not logical to try and impose development controls."
Others say that is exactly what is called for: that the best risk-reduction strategy is to avoid development in the first place. Keep homes out of areas that are known to flood. Leave space for rivers to swell.
The city of Austin, Texas, did just that: In 1983, it banned development in all areas within floodplains.
For now in California's Central Valley, aging farm levees are the only line of defense for many of the 115,000 new homeowners who soon will put down roots.
It's a levee system subject to constant change from nature and human activity, a system so big that even a basic assessment of its structural condition is a multimillion-dollar task that has eluded policy-makers for years.
A flood last year on Jones Tract in the Delta illustrates the problem. The 11,000-acre island flooded on a calm summer day when a levee broke.
No one died - Jones Tract is a farming island where housing subdivisions are banned - but the flood closed a state highway and a railroad line, and cost taxpayers $75 million.
No one knows why the flood happened. Many suspect a beaver den compromised the levee.
Jones Tract levees are similar to those that now protect thousands of new homes. The very spot where the break occurred had been inspected by an engineer just the day before.
"We're going to see an increasing tendency for Jones Tract-style levee failures," said Jeffrey Mount, a geology professor at the University of California, Davis, and former Reclamation Board member. "Your government has no ability to deal with it. It's a big, dark secret that no one wants to talk about."
One may need the "bubble" to save one's butt from the rising water.
Tempting fate: Flood prone
Valley homes pop up in risky areas
By Matt Weiser -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, November 6, 2005
Story appeared on Page A1 of The Bee
Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here.
At least 115,000 new homes are in the pipeline for flood-prone areas of California's Central Valley, a Bee review of public records shows, and already thousands of them are rising behind levees known to be suspect, on tracts of land that have flooded repeatedly in the past.
That degree of growth is equivalent to erecting a city the size of Stockton on a swath of land with the nation's greatest flood risk.
The names of some of the developments even boast of their waterlogged histories - Plumas Lake, for instance, and River Islands.
Yet because of fractured government oversight, much of this construction will happen with little regard for flood risk.
Some say, as a result, the state risks a disaster unlike anything it has seen before. It could be California's own version of the devastating New Orleans flood that followed Hurricane Katrina.
"It's glaringly obvious developers are being accommodated and public safety is being forgotten," said Tom Foley, president of the Marysville-based Concerned Citizens for Responsible Growth.
Foley's group is fighting the Plumas Lake development plan approved by Yuba County in 1993. It calls for 12,000 new homes in the Olivehurst area, which flooded in 1986 and 1997, after levee breaks on the Yuba and Feather rivers, respectively. Homes are being built there now, with 1,500 of them expected to be occupied by the end of 2006.
Large though it is, Plumas Lake offers just a peek at the development coming to the Valley's flood zones.
True tally could be 170,000
Using research by the Delta Protection Commission, a state agency, and the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, The Bee found that at least 115,000 new homes are planned or already under construction in flood-prone areas of six counties between Marysville and Tracy.
The Bee looked at areas in the potential flood zone behind levees, not only areas within a floodplain mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is because, by its own admission, FEMA floodplain maps are outdated.
The Bee also made an independent tally of housing development in flood zones and found that the 115,000 estimate is conservative.
It does not include a general plan update under way in the city of Stockton, for instance, that could allow thousands of additional homes behind levees along the San Joaquin River.
Eric Parfrey, an urban planner and former president of the Sierra Club's Mother Lode chapter, conducted his own review of housing development in the south Delta alone last year and came up with a much larger number: 170,000. Parfrey also found that getting a firm grip on growth is difficult, because no single government agency keeps track.
Nor is any entity monitoring the cumulative impact of growth on water quality and wildlife habitat - or public safety.
"That's literally a recipe for disaster, and people are going to die in the next catastrophic flood event unless we get our act together," Parfrey said.
Much of the state's growth pressure is being absorbed these days by the Valley, with its available land and lower housing costs.
The Delta itself is off-limits to new housing subdivisions under a state law overseen by the Delta Protection Commission. The appointed body has regional planning powers in the Delta's 500,000-acre "primary zone," a collection of islands and sloughs where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge.
But this restriction does not extend to the Delta's "secondary zone" - a surrounding ring of 238,000 acres that is rapidly being developed by adjoining cities, including Oakley, Tracy, Lathrop, Stockton and West Sacramento.
In West Sacramento, a community virtually surrounded by the Sacramento River, more than 20,000 homes are proposed behind levees that encircle the city. In addition, at least one new school and 13 million square feet of commercial space are planned.
In Sacramento's Natomas area, also surrounded by levees, more than 10,000 new homes are expected over the next 10 years.
In both locations, many more homes could be built because of an effort to fight sprawl. Under its "Blueprint" growth plan, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments is urging higher densities and mixed-use development to create urban hubs where people can live near their work.
Endorsed in 2004 by elected officials from the 28 local governments in the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the Blueprint principles could bring 15,000 more homes each in West Sacramento and Natomas, 2,600 in the Delta portion of Sacramento County, and 8,000 more in south Sutter County.
"We did not do an analysis at that time of how much of the growth was in a floodplain or not," said Kenneth Hough, director of community planning for the Council of Governments. "That said, the board is very interested in bringing the flood risks to bear as we develop updates in the future to the Blueprint map."
Putting their faith in levees
Fees and taxes associated with new housing have become a vital revenue source for local governments - money sometimes used to offset the risk. That is the case for the Plumas Lake development plan in Yuba County.
In 2004, the county began $200 million in levee improvements on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, financed by a $29,300 fee on every new home.
Yuba County Administrator Charles McClain said this was the only way to raise money to protect the 25,000 people who already live in the area, many of them victims of flooding in 1986 and 1997.
McClain acknowledged that Plumas Lake is a "Faustian bargain" for his county: paying for levee upgrades by putting more people behind those levees.
"Basically it's the newcomers paying to reconstruct the levees that are protecting the people who have lived here since before World War II," McClain said. "It will be the best, the highest level of flood protection provided by any set of levees anywhere in the state."
Lathrop, a city of 12,500 south of Stockton, is putting its faith in existing levees along the San Joaquin River. City leaders are planning to add 9,000 homes in an area west of Interstate 5 even though parts of the adjacent levee suffered seepage problems in 1997.
Lathrop did not require developers to certify or upgrade the levee, and even opted to build its new City Hall behind it.
"I think that's a pretty good vote of confidence," City Manager Pam Carder said.
But others insist levees are no promise of safety. No matter how tall or broad the levee, they say, people living and working behind them always will be at risk. In the New Orleans flooding, for example, initial investigations suggest it was not the concrete flood walls that failed in some cases, but the levees they were built upon.
With levees, "there are engineering steps that can be taken," said Jonas Minton, a senior project manager with the nonprofit Planning and Conservation League and former deputy director at the state Department of Water Resources.
"However," he adds, "levees are piles of dirt. They have a tendency to fail. If people are living behind levees, many feet below the water surface level, it is only a matter of time 'til some of them flood."
A risky separation of powers
Marci Coglianese, former mayor of the Solano County town of Rio Vista, which sits on high ground along the banks of the Sacramento River, calls today's rampant floodplain development a "schizophrenic breakdown" in public policy.
Everyone in government knows about the Valley's flood risk, she says, but no one wants to take responsibility.
"I'm absolutely terrified that this growth is tending to go to small rural areas like mine that really don't have the staff to deal with this," Coglianese said. "I just can't emphasize enough that this is a real threat to people and to our regional economy here."
Cities and counties have total authority to approve development, but no legal responsibility for flood protection. That duty lies with state agencies - levee maintenance districts - which have limited power to raise money for levee repairs and no say over growth. Federal officials are charged only with assessing flood risk, but that information is often woefully outdated.
The result is a system riddled with loopholes, through which developers routinely - and legally - drive big new housing subdivisions.
The River Islands development, another project in Lathrop, is one example. It proposes 11,000 homes, 5 million square feet of commercial space and three new schools on Stewart Tract, a Delta island that flooded in 1997.
With $125 million already invested in the project, project director Susan Dell'Osso said, the company needed to start building and selling new houses or risk bankruptcy.
But consideration of a state Reclamation Board permit to strengthen existing levees was taking too long.
So the company opted instead to begin the first phase of the project by building a new levee inside the existing levee. To start that work, all it needed was a grading permit from the city of Lathrop. Permit in hand, the company started construction in September on five miles of new levees at a cost of $16 million.
"We think we're doing something that is so different and so positive that we were definitely frustrated," Dell'Osso said. "We just changed the project so we could get outside of areas that were part of state and federal jurisdiction."
FEMA has approved the engineering plan for the new levee. If the agency signs off on the finished product, by late next year, Dell'Osso said, River Islands will start its first phase: 2,400 homes, 3 million square feet of commercial space and a K-12 school.
Material for the new levee is being scraped out of the island's interior from areas that will become artificial lakes and canals weaving through the project.
The crest of the levee will be 40 feet wide, about twice the width of most existing levees. Eventually, the company plans to connect the new levee with the old to create a "super-wide" levee 300 feet across around the entire island. (That again will require a state Reclamation Board permit, which the company intends to seek before the year is out.)
River Islands plans to build premium homes atop this super-wide levee, offering wealthy homebuyers a water view.
Aging system, rising risk
California's Central Valley is, by definition, a vast floodplain. Its natural function is to collect rain and snowmelt from two-thirds of the state, and slowly funnel it out to sea.
Today, this natural floodplain includes 1,600 miles of levees on the state's two largest rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin. It also includes an additional 1,100 miles of levees in the Delta where the rivers meet.
As time passes, maintaining this levee system is becoming more difficult and costly. Already, delayed repairs are piling up.
The state Department of Water Resources estimates Central Valley levees need about $5 billion in work. There is no funding set aside for this work, nor even a full grasp of the problem's scope. In a January 2005 report, the department calls the levee system a "ticking time bomb."
These levees date back to the Gold Rush. All originally were built by farmers to protect crops, not cities. Most have been reinforced since pioneer days, but they still sit on unstable soils subject to seepage and settling.
They also are subject to liquefaction in earthquakes. Add in two more problems - sinking of Delta islands caused by farming, and rising sea levels caused by global warming - and you have a four-pronged threat to urbanization of the region.
Since 1900, according to the Department of Water Resources, at least 153 levee breaks have occurred in the Delta alone, flooding more than 250,000 acres. Some of this flooding occurred on land in the Delta's secondary zone now filling up with homes.
In the past, the risk to human life from future levee failures has been relatively low. The Delta and the historic floodplains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers north and south of it have been dominated by agriculture and low population densities.
That won't be the case in the next flood.
Three people died in the Olivehurst area, now home to the Plumas Lake project, when it flooded in 1997. By the end of next year, the same area will have about 3,750 new residents. Within 10 years, perhaps 30,000 more.
The state Reclamation Board worked out a compromise with Yuba County to limit Plumas Lake development through 2006 while the area's levees are shored up. Part of the deal requires developers to provide flood insurance to new residents for four years.
That was required because the Plumas Lake area never has been identified by FEMA as lying in a floodplain, even though it has flooded twice in the past after levee breaks. Such maps put buyers and lenders on notice that flood insurance is needed.
Yuba County Administrator McClain acknowledged that Plumas Lake's unmapped status is "bizarre in the extreme."
But it is not uncommon in the Central Valley.
The same situation exists in the Lathrop area, where new homes back up to San Joaquin River levees. Foundations are being poured below the river's water elevation, yet flood insurance is not required.
City officials and builders in the area leave the insurance question up to lenders, who ultimately bear the financial risk in a flood.
Advice goes unheeded
In 2002, the California Floodplain Management Task Force attempted to reconcile the conflict between flood risk and housing need. Created by legislation endorsed by then-Gov. Gray Davis, the 39-member group represented broad interests, including local government, environmentalists and developers.
They agreed on 38 recommendations, including a call to elevate new construction above expected floodwaters, and to preserve farmland, the most flood-tolerant of land uses.
But the group's work was followed by a state budget crisis, a gubernatorial recall and fading memories. Today, the task force report sits on a shelf, largely forgotten by policy-makers. And thousands of acres of flood-prone farmland are being paved over for housing subdivisions.
"It's unfortunate that many of the recommendations of the task force to mitigate future hazards have not been implemented," said task force member Ron Javor, who is assistant deputy director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
But Javor said stopping development in floodplains is not the answer. In a separate study, also in 2002, his department estimates that housing construction in California needs to double over the next 20 years to keep up with demand.
"We have to build housing where we can, and if we take too much land out of housing use, the cost of housing just goes up," he said.
Tim Coyle, senior vice president of the California Building Industry Association, agreed. His group also was represented on the task force, and he insisted that growth controls won't protect people from flooding.
Instead, the building industry supports levee strengthening.
"I don't know how your flood risk is reduced by growth control. It doesn't protect your existing schoolyard or your existing neighborhood," Coyle said. "If you put a limit on the next new housing development, how does that fix the fundamental problem? It's not logical to try and impose development controls."
Others say that is exactly what is called for: that the best risk-reduction strategy is to avoid development in the first place. Keep homes out of areas that are known to flood. Leave space for rivers to swell.
The city of Austin, Texas, did just that: In 1983, it banned development in all areas within floodplains.
For now in California's Central Valley, aging farm levees are the only line of defense for many of the 115,000 new homeowners who soon will put down roots.
It's a levee system subject to constant change from nature and human activity, a system so big that even a basic assessment of its structural condition is a multimillion-dollar task that has eluded policy-makers for years.
A flood last year on Jones Tract in the Delta illustrates the problem. The 11,000-acre island flooded on a calm summer day when a levee broke.
No one died - Jones Tract is a farming island where housing subdivisions are banned - but the flood closed a state highway and a railroad line, and cost taxpayers $75 million.
No one knows why the flood happened. Many suspect a beaver den compromised the levee.
Jones Tract levees are similar to those that now protect thousands of new homes. The very spot where the break occurred had been inspected by an engineer just the day before.
"We're going to see an increasing tendency for Jones Tract-style levee failures," said Jeffrey Mount, a geology professor at the University of California, Davis, and former Reclamation Board member. "Your government has no ability to deal with it. It's a big, dark secret that no one wants to talk about."
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