With all due respect to the Kali FReepers, it's stories like this that make me glad I live on the other side of the country.
Posted on 11/01/2005 6:19:32 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - A major Northern California earthquake could severely damage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee system and jeopardize the water supply for two-thirds of Californians for more than a year, a top state water official warned Tuesday.
Last year, the unexplained collapse of a single levee shut water pumping for days and cost $100 million to repair. An earthquake could lead to the collapse of many sections of levees, which channel Northern California rivers on their run to San Francisco Bay, said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources.
"This is not a worst-case scenario," he said. "We think it's a plausible scenario of what could happen in the delta."
Snow told a joint hearing of three state Senate committees that a 6.5-magnitude earthquake could collapse 30 levees, flood 16 delta islands and damage 200 miles of additional levees. Some 3,000 homes and 85,000 acres of farmland would be flooded.
The ruptured levees also would allow salt water to rush in to the river system, causing an immediate shutdown of the pumps that send water south to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California water districts.
Cities would have to use alternative water sources and resort to rationing, Snow said.
Three state highways and railroad tracks would be submerged, and petroleum and natural gas pipelines would have to be shut down. Damage could reach $30 billion over five years, Snow said.
It would cost $1.3 billion to strengthen 500 miles of delta levees so they are not subject to erosion in a flood, but even that would do nothing to make them more resistant to earthquakes, said Leslie F. Harder Jr., the water resources department's acting deputy director for public safety.
Among the possible long-term fixes are flooding some islands that are surrounded by levees. Flooding would equalize water pressure on the islands, making a levee collapse less likely.
Despite the warnings, no delta levee has collapsed because of an earthquake, said Thomas Zuckerman, general manager and co-counsel of the Central Delta Water Agency. He said strengthening levees around just three islands at the mouth of the delta could reduce 70 percent of the risk.
Lawmakers said there is not enough money for significant levee improvements. State tax bonds would be needed to make the necessary repairs, said state senators Michael Machado, D-Linden, and Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch.
With all due respect to the Kali FReepers, it's stories like this that make me glad I live on the other side of the country.
let me guess: You live in Florida :)
Well the sky may fall tomorrow, and we may be out of sunlight for a while until we fix it....
let me guess: You live in Florida :)LOL! No. But I spent 18 months researching a place to live in retirement before choosing Aiken, SC. Wonderful, beautiful place.
No big deal. More doom-n-gloom. Sky is falling.
hate to sound like those who are saying told you so, to NO. But, this is not new news.
I read a book written 1998(?) where the author claimed that a major earthquake on a (at the time of the writing suspected) fault under and/or adjacent to the delta would basically destroy LA. I read this book two years ago, and the author had died before the book was published. Since forgot the title and authors name.
East Tennessee is about the safest place in the world to live. :)
California legislators are trying to muscle in on some tasty post-Katrina pork.
We have levee failures every few years caused by normal seepage and rarely do we loose more than 3-4 houses and a field of Asperagus. Why? The delta levees surround flood-plain farm land that can't be developed into housing.
As the story points out, we've never had a levee failure from an earthquake. Why? The fault lines don't run through the delta they run through the costal mountains.
Don't buy into this tranparent fear mongering. It's only objective is to distract you from the hand being stuck in your pocket.
dung.
Note: The dung family has been farming in the delta since 1920 and farming in California since 1889.
>> California legislators are trying to muscle in on some tasty post-Katrina pork.
maybe so, but if $200 or so million had been spent wisely, NO would still be standing, and we'd be at least $100 billion richer
I've always thought about moving to New Orleans.
There are earthquakes in East Tennessee...I remember 2 shaking the house growing up in Knoxville.
Eh, but they're teeny baby earthquakes.
:)
They actually had one in Louden in the spring or the beginning of the summer but it was only in the 3 range. The weird thing about that one is the large bang sound it made, scared all of my dad's neighbors.
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