Are we prepared for a worst case scenario?
California may be in the
middle of a severe drought,
but climate change is doubling
the risk of catastrophic flooding.
It's what some call a mega flood.
Our team of meteorologists went to the
top interviewing states lead researchers
for months asking what is a mega flood,
what damage could it do,
and are we ready tonight?
Monica Woods looks back on the spillway
crisis in Orville five years ago
and also looks ahead with the state
is doing to prepare for the worst
all of our tools.
Were tough March on the water.
It looks like a bomb went off there.
Imagine the biggest storm
you have ever been through.
He had a chainsaw his
way out his front door.
Cold hard rain.
Has local creeks and
rivers running high.
All this came underneath the doors.
What if the rain didn't stop?
A levee breaks and now your
neighborhood is taking on water.
In Sacramento region alone, there's over
514,000 people that are protected by
these levies. Studies suggest that
Sacramento is actually one of the
top ten in the nation's most at
risk for flooding due to rivers.
The most intense atmospheric
river storms are likely to become
significantly more intense and strong.
This spillway incident was one of those
instances where did not have time.
Are we prepared?
This is megaflood.
We're already in a world where the
likelihood of a catastrophic flood
has doubled at any given year,
and that's the kind of thing that
keeps people like like us up at night.
Brian Johnson is a member of the
Central Valley Flood Protection Board.
Their mission? Updating the state's
plan to keep us all safe from
catastrophic flooding. People
talk about how we may be
overdue for the big one for an
earthquake in Northern California.
That's probably true for
the big flood as well, a
flood event that would
dwarf the record-breaking.
Water Year of 2017 when the
Oroville Reservoir couldn't hold
the amount of water coming in
from rain and Sierra snow melt.
On February of that year we had a
series of storms coming into the lake.
We were operating the lake like we
normally do to hold back some of the
water and then release it gradually
into the Feather River when we
found the damage in the spillway.
Unfortunately it was damaged that was
too large to repair and really resulted
in a failure of this this spillway.
Making it nearly
impossible to release enough water
from the rapidly rising lake.
Putting pressure on the country's tallest
dam standing over 70 stories high,
the risk of massive flooding
growing by the hour for people
living in the valley below?
Well, miasa mom, the first thing I
thought was get my family out of there.
You know, it was. Excuse me.
It was very scary at that moment.
One set of parents down the street,
the other 20 minutes away,
Mariana and David moving quickly.
It was me, him, for a while,
man, people were going crazy here
and a life they worked so hard
to build, hanging in the balance.
I mean, friends here, I mean, you know,
our house or I was born at, I mean,
it's just a like for example, this.
We built this ourselves here.
We put the trailer here,
we put the porch here, I mean.
Things we worked are, you know, tears,
blood and sweat type of deal into it.
I mean, imagine all that going down.
I mean, yes, losing it. You
work so much you feel like somebody
just took it away from you.
The Rodriguez's remembering the night
they and nearly 200,000 others got
the call for immediate evacuation.
The state responding
to reduce the risk of a repeat
£13 million of reinforcing
steel was put in place
here. And then additionally,
at the emergency spillway over
to the left here we placed A7.
150,000 cubic yards of concrete
to help protect the hillside,
I'm walking on top of the country's
tallest dam, holding back over
3.5 million acre feet of water.
Now, if this whole facility were to fail,
it would send all of that water downhill,
flooding areas like Oroville,
Marysville, and even into Sacramento.
The valley is a natural floodplain,
sitting thousands of feet
lower than our highest peaks.
Snowmelt and runoff moved downhill,
filling reservoirs.
When water is released,
it keeps moving downstream to rivers, a
dangerous place for accumulating water.
The Sacramento River as a whole
is called a perched river,
which means the bottom, the flow line,
the bottom of the river in many cases is,
is higher than the land
that's on each side of it.
So the river is actually higher
than the surrounding land.
The only thing holding back this
water are what we call levees.
In Sacramento regional alone,
there's over 514,000 people
that are protected by these.
One break in the system can cause deadly
and massive destruction like these levee
breaks in Yuba County from 1986 and 97,
the communities that would
most likely be affected,
it would be in the low
lying areas of the valley.
They were effectively wetlands and
now they're being protected by
levees like Natomas, West Sacramento,
the city of Sacramento,
Stockton, Lathrop and Manteca,
all home to large growing
community developments.
And that's why close to $8.3 billion.
Is being spent on levee improvements
through a federal civil works program.
By the funds that have been allocated,
we've we've improved about 140
miles of the 300 miles with about
another 160 miles more to go,
which
will offer protection to about
1.1 million people and over
$100 billion worth of assets
near where the Sacramento
and American rivers meet.
Another big project is underway to
move water away from high risk areas
in Sacramento and Yellow counties.
This is the. Lower Elkhorn
Basin levee setback project.
We're setting back the existing
Sacramento bypass levy by approximately
1500 feet and the yellow bypass
levy by approximately 1500 feet.
This will help alleviate downstream water
flows by allowing more water to flow
into beneficial areas for agriculture
and the environment.
This project is being implemented
in close coordination with
another project coming shortly,
the Sacramento we're widening project.
Together these will reduce the water
surface elevation in the Sacramento.
Ever by as much as a foot adding another
layer of protection during big flood events.
But these structural changes can only do
so much in the face of climate change.
With research showing California's
risk of a mega storm doubling
due to warming. It will be a
challenge for sure because the the
infrastructure that was constructed
back in the 30s forties and 50s
like the the the dams and levees
and the hydrology information that
was available at the time at which
those structures were designed.
Is pre all of this,
Joe says. This is a time of Renaissance
though, with improving forecast,
giving water managers like the
US Army Corps of Engineers new
flexibility in a program called Fiero
FIRO forecast informed reservoir operations.
And it's this idea that if you
understand forecasted events better,
if you can get better forecasts,
then you can make better
water management decisions
knowing when to keep water
in and when to let water out.
We've made significant progress,
but that progress isn't happening at a
pace and scale that we know is needed.
And with climate change,
winning slowly is losing.
Winning slowly is losing well.
While we don't like a drought,
it kind of is a double edged sword
because we do get some construction done
right and it's needed construction,
as you were seeing there,
$8.3 billion being spent on that.
I love what Todd Bernardi said in our
interview and I wasn't able to include it,
but he said it's like getting in a
car you always put on your seat belt
for fear of getting in a car crash.
You're hoping you don't need it,
but if you do,
you're glad that you have the protection
that is like our levees and dams.
Spend the money now in drought
periods to get protected for the
potential of something like a
catastrophic mega flood and Monica,
something that we've been covering
here on to the point are unhoused
individuals living in the levees.
And it's something that we've seen is
something that we've been following which
is not only dangerous should something break,
but it's also concerning because it
causes some risk to the integrity
of the infrastructure, right?
And so that makes it vulnerable.
What happens is you kind of Burrow into that,
let's say there's big water
flows coming through,
it continues to press on that.
And a road parts of the levee.
Now, it's not just the homeless
or people that are unhoused.
It's also Beavers in some of
the wildlife that are out there.
So the US Army Corps of Engineers,
they do a lot of surveys to make
sure that those levees are intact
and structurally sound.
Alright, Monica, thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
We also have another piece that's coming
up tomorrow and we'll be looking at
how do you evacuate, like you said,
Oroville Dam, when it broke,
some 200,000 people had to get out.
Scary stuff.
And it is something that Brendan's
gonna be looking at tomorrow.
Yep.
Alright Monica, thank you again.
Our series on Mega funds runs all this week.
Right here onto the point.
Make sure you don't miss it.
For more about what a flood could do,
visit us online at abc10.com
slash to the point.