Harold Kruger

Appeal-Democrat

Jan 7 1997

Phil Lee probably knows more about Yuba-Sutter levees than anybody, but he doesn't know what caused the levee failure at Country Club Road.

"We're not sure what kind of failure (occurred) and what was the mechanism for failure," Lee said Monday. "We're still waiting for the forensic infor- mation. We're going to be looking at reviewing the Marysville-Yuba City reconstruction project."

Until recently Lee was the Army Corps of Engineers’ project manager for levee repair work in Yuba and Sutter counties stemming from the 1986 flood.

The Army Corps had completed scheduled repairs in District 10 and Marysville.

A contract was awarded a few months ago for work in Reclamation District 784, but an unsuccessful bidder protested, halting work until the complaint is resolved. Lee said the contract controversy may be decided in a few months, allowing work to begin in the spring.

Studies of levees in RD 784 showed they offer less than a 100-year level of flood protection in many areas.

A 100-year level means there's one chance in 100 on the average of a flood in a year.

"The levees here are less than 100 years," Lee said. "It's public knowledge that with any kind of event like this you will have a potential flooding situation."

This storm was big, dumping even more water than the 1986 event, according to Don Wilson, Yuba County Water Agency engineer-administrator.

Inflows to Bullards Bar Reservoir peaked at 107,000 cubic feet per second, Wilson said. In 1986, they were 94,000 cfs.

Inflows to Englebright Reservoir were 104,000 cfs, compared to just 60,000 cfs in '86. "It's very difficult to know what Mother Nature is going to do with the system here," Lee said. "The only thing we're going to say is the Corps stands ready to work with the locals to make sure the levees hold."

But local officials again voiced frustration Monday about dealing with the Army Corps.

"They put all their faith that they could make the levees work, and they haven't made the levees work" Wilson said.

Water Agency officials for years have pushed for another dam to control the Yuba River, but the Army Corps was opposed.

"It was considered and the high cost made it economically infeasible," Lee said.

But Wilson blamed environmentalists who "have got the feds so scared they’re not looking at the real solutions. They won't even look at upstream storage."

With no new dams in sight, it's up to the levees to hold back the inland sea. "There's a risk living in this area. That's all I can say," Lee said. "The locals would have to accept it. The Corps is trying its best to locate every weak link in the system.

Lee said it's hard to know "what Mother Nature is going to do on the levee system, especially if it's a levee that undergoes days of saturation."

Lee denied a claim made Saturday by Steve Jones, the attorney for RD 784, who said a pond just upstream of the Country Club Road break had allowed water to undermine the levee.

The pond was part of an 80-acre environmental mitigation area created to make up for the loss of elderberry bushes and other wildlife habitat that will occur when the '86 levee repair work is done.

Jones said RD 784 officials had protested the pond's construction in late 1995.

"We had a number of meetings with RD 784's president and the operations chief in the last year. We addressed that issue," Lee said. "We did some geotechnical borings and analysis, and we made the determination that the pond itself is located sufficiently far enough from the levee that it would not have any detrimental effect to the levee."

Lee said the local officials agreed with the Corps' conclusions.

"As far as we know, the issue has been resolved with RD 784," Lee said.

Local officials criticized the Army Corps for creating the mitigation area before starting the levee repairs.

"The federal regulations show where their priorities are," Wilson said. "They'd rather take care of a few elderberry beetles that nobody has seen than fix the levees that protect people."

Lee said the federal Water Resources Development Act of 1986 requires the Army Corps to do environmental mitigation prior to or concurrent with any levee repair work.

Lee said levee reconstruction work in Yuba-Sutter will proceed, although perhaps under some different assumptions.

"We're going to be looking at the levee reconstruction work in view of the levee break to make sure the new design and construction will make the levee beefed up so it can withstand the high flow conditions along the Feather," he said.

Wilson said the Army Corps may have a bigger job than when it started after the '86 flood.

"Half the stuff they were going to restore isn't there now," he said.