PRIORITIES • Protect Our Future • Policy to

Protect Us From the Next Flood

Why I believe this — and how I’ll fight for it.

In December of 1955, a levee on the Feather River gave way and Yuba City went under. Thirty-seven people died. People here still measure time against it. Then the levees failed again in 1986. And again in 1997, when the Feather River broke through near Arboga.

Three failures in one lifetime. That is not bad luck. That is a warning we keep receiving and keep filing away.

I’ve knocked doors in Marysville and Yuba City and Live Oak, and I’ve had the same conversation on a lot of porches. People know exactly which side of the levee they live on. They know what their flood insurance costs, and they know what it did to their premium the last time the maps were redrawn. In this part of the district, flood protection comes down to whether your house is worth anything and whether your family is safe in a wet January.

Here is where we actually stand. About 70 miles of levee protecting Yuba City and Live Oak have been improved but still don’t meet current federal standards. The standard changed: a levee now must be more than tall enough, it has to survive seepage underneath it and through it without failing. Ours were built for the old standard, in a valley that now gets its water in a handful of enormous storms instead of a long wet season.

And upstream sits the fix everyone in the Mid-Valley already knows about. New Bullards Bar Dam needs a second spillway — one with gates 31.5 feet lower than the existing ones, so the dam can make room ahead of an atmospheric river instead of scrambling once the water is already coming. The design is essentially finished. The environmental permit came through in June. The construction money is not there. The project runs $210 to $290 million, and the local agency is still out looking for partners.

That’s the whole story of this district in one sentence: we know the fix, we’ve engineered the fix, and we are waiting on Washington to fund the fix.

Here’s what I’ll do — and why

Fund the Atmospheric River Control spillway at New Bullards Bar. This is the single highest-value flood project in our region and it is sitting at the goal line waiting on money. A dam that can draw down ahead of a storm protects everything downstream — Marysville, Yuba City, the orchards, the rice ground, the schools. I’d fight for the federal share directly, and I would not stop at a press release announcing that I asked.

Bring 70 miles of levee up to the current federal standard. Not patched. Not “improved” in a way that still leaves us out of compliance. Seepage control, structural repair, and certification — so the levee holds and the people behind it can insure their homes at a rate that reflects reality.

Stop treating flood money as disaster relief and start treating it as capital investment. Right now the federal government will spend enormous sums after a town floods and comparatively little to keep it from flooding. We pay for the levee either way. The only question is whether we pay before or after, and whether anybody drowns in between. I’d fight to fund prevention on the same footing as recovery — and I’d pay for it the way I pay for everything else on this platform: out of the disaster money we stop spending, and out of making the biggest corporations pay what they owe. Not by borrowing against my kids.

Fix what the flood maps do to families who did nothing wrong. When a levee is decertified, everyone behind it gets remapped into a higher-risk zone and the insurance bill lands in their mailbox — for a levee they don’t own and can’t fix. I’d push to tie federal levee investment to the map cycle, so the households paying the premium get relief when the work is finished instead of years later.

Keep the local agencies in the room. The people who know these levees are here, not in Washington. Yuba Water Agency and the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency have done the engineering and carried the local cost. Their job should be building the project, not spending a decade teaching a federal agency where the Feather River is.

What this means for Our District

There is a reason this is the first thing people raise at a Yuba County kitchen table and almost never comes up in a Washington office. The people who would drown are not the people who write the budget.

Our congressman has represented parts of this valley for nearly 30 years, and the second spillway is still unfunded while the design sits finished on a shelf. I’d rather be the representative who got the concrete poured than the one who sent the letter. I take no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, and no foreign money, so when I go after this money I’m not trading anything for it.

The bottom line

We are one bad atmospheric river away from repeating a disaster we already survived more than once, and the engineering to prevent it is finished and waiting. Fund the spillway, fix the levees, and let people in this valley sleep through a storm. Let’s go build it.

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