Local officials say the Uvas Creek levee is sound, but the
federal government wants to make sure.
Gilroy – Local officials say the Uvas Creek levee is sound, but the federal government wants to make sure. If it’s not, homeowners nearby will have to buy flood insurance.
This all began a few years ago when the Federal Emergency Management Agency started updating its flood maps by inspecting levees throughout the country, but when Hurricane Katrina hit exactly two years ago, levee integrity became a priority.
In order for Gilroy to remain eligible for federal relief funds, the city and the Santa Clara Valley Water District have two years to hire a consultant to probe the two-mile-long Uvas Creek levee and hopefully show Washington that it still holds water.
“It’s a pretty daunting expectation of the federal government. You can be assured that a fair number of questions will be going to our federal representatives,” said City Facilities Development Manager Bill Headley, adding that officials have not identified anything other than the general fund to finance the estimated $400,000 levee inspection, which the water district will split with the city after it finds a contractor early next year.
FEMA will use the inspection results to update (or not) its nine-year-old maps that outline Gilroy areas where a flood has a 1-percent chance of occurring in any given year. Roughly 140 homeowners in Gilroy areas deemed flood zones can’t receive federally insured mortgages unless they buy flood insurance backed by FEMA.
SCVWD Assistant Officer Ann Draper sympathized with this, but disagreed with Headley’s view that FEMA is issuing an “un-funded mandate” and seemed to agree with U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, the corps’ director of civil works, who said in a press release that “levee safety is a shared responsibility with our local partners.”
“FEMA is not requiring this,” Draper said. “They are offering an ability for us to do it. If we don’t, then areas protected by the levee would go back into a flood zone, and the city would lose the NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program].”
This will be the first inside-and-out inspection of the levee, which was built by a city contractor with mostly federal funds in 1989 in response to a 1986 flood.
Draper said the water district has been vigilant in its maintenance practices and compared the imminent inspections to giving somebody a physical who appears healthy, yet might have high blood pressure.
“FEMA wants us to look at the whole system, not just the structure itself,” Draper said. “Gilroy and the water district say they think it functions and is maintained, but FEMA has now asked us to go in and make sure.”
Aside from looking for animal burrows, erosion, tree growth, movement of flood walls and faulty culvert conditions, Draper said there are three big questions that FEMA and the Corps want the consultant to answer: Has the ground underneath the levee changed? Is the levee maintained to the standards it was built? And (hence the city’s involvement) has urbanization covered more land with nonabsorbent pavement that increases runoff into Uvas Creek.
Before the current comprehensive effort, FEMA did “spot-by-spot” inspections throughout the country, Draper said, which happened in 2000 when officials found that the Alameda Creek levee functioned differently than originally intended. FEMA redrew its maps afterward, and 10 Union City homes fell into the flood area and had to buy insurance.
Joan Peros is a Gilroy State Farm Insurance agent, and she said she’s sold “maybe four” flood policies in the past 10 years, since local flood zones haven’t changed.
During the next two years, there will be a public outreach process involving the water district, FEMA, and home lenders to address any residents’ concerns, according to City Engineer Gerry Dutra, but “it’s ultimately up to home owners to purchase insurance during the review period. As of right now, they don’t need flood insurance.”
