Wolk urges state board to reconsider proposed development s impact on flood protection

SACRAMENTO– Assemblywoman Lois Wolk (D-Davis), Chair of the Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee, today urged the California Reclamation Board to reconsider its decision to allow an 11,000-home development in a flood zone, potentially impacting the Delta and flood protection efforts in the Central Valley.

The California Reclamation Board will meet tomorrow to address concerns about its April decision to approve a permit for the controversial River Islands housing project near Lathrop.

“Approval of the River Islands permit and building large homes on top of Stewart Tract levees would have a significant impact on both the Delta and the larger San Joaquin River flood system,” wrote Wolk in a letter to Benjamin Carter, the board’s president. “Stewart tract is uniquely situated in the Delta, at a crossroads for California’s water supply and the Central Valley’s aquatic ecosystem. The River Islands Project will impose substantial effects on the rest of the Delta and San Joaquin River flood system, which you are charged to protect.”

She warned that placing homes on top of levees will make levee inspection, maintenance, and repair difficult, and levee investigations and upgrades nearly impossible.

“River Islands proposes building huge levees that ultimately will push flood waters either downstream to Stockton or across the River to Lathrop. In the area’s last large flood in 1997, Stewart Tract flooded, thereby saving Stockton from more serious damage, as the San Joaquin floodwaters were diverted and slowed.”

To date, she wrote, no agency has conducted a comprehensive review of what this project means to the future of the Delta, the quality of the state’s water supply or the Delta’s declining ecosystems. In fact, the board’s own chief engineer has said he was not given an opportunity to analyze the impacts of the proposed construction on the expanded levee.

“The Reclamation Board cannot properly approve this project until it can consider the latest scientific information regarding the changing nature of the Delta, its ecosystem, flood and flood protection, and water quality,” Wolk wrote. “We created the Central Valley flood system—and the Reclamation Board—a century ago to avoid one town simply pushing its floodwaters to another town with lesser levees. The board has a responsibility to make system-wide assessments.”