Thursday Top of the Scroll: CA’s Delta levees are at risk of floods. Repairs could cost $3 billion
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is facing a funding crisis that has bogged down efforts to repair and maintain an aging network of about 1,100 miles of levees that protect the region from floods. These protective ridges of dirt and rocks, mostly on private land, are at growing risk of rupturing, which would endanger half a million people, mostly in Stockton but also in smaller towns and farmsteads. Also threatened are thousands of acres of farmland, highways and water supply pumps that send water to much of the state. … Without substantial improvements to Delta levees in the next 25 years, “more than $10 billion in agricultural, residential, commercial, and infrastructure assets and nearly $2 billion in annual economic activity would be exposed to flooding,” according to an estimate from the Delta Stewardship Council.
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