We're not talking about a big scary levee break affecting lots of homes. The levee breaks reported in south Sacramento were really leftover breaks from the floods earlier this year.
If these had been in place, at least some of the energy in the storm surge would have been dissipated. This is a self-inflicted wound.
Unlike most animals - with some exceptions like beavers - we engineer our environment. So that allows us to hang on in places that would otherwise be singularly inhospitable.
The system can't do what we're asking it to do. That system was designed to protect mostly agricultural land.
The state's water policy and all its plans for restoration of the delta are predicated on one flawed assumption -- that the delta is a fixed landscape and will look the same for the indefinite future. And it won't.
The probability of a catastrophic levee failure in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the next 50 years is two in three.
This flood is not a disaster. It is an ecological windfall.
New Orleans lost the battle with the inevitable, and we will suffer the same fate in some form here in California.
New Orleans has lost the battle with the inevitable, and we will do the same.
This is a dynamic landscape that is changing at a pace that exceeds the ability of our policy and law to adjust.
