The federal government has forced the city to pay $252,000 to
ensure the Uvas Creek levee is sound.
The federal government has forced the city to pay $252,000 to ensure the Uvas Creek levee is sound. And, the city council reluctantly approved the expenditure. If the levee fails its comprehensive re-certification, more than 1,200 homes, 100 businesses and two schools will have to buy flood insurance for the first time.
This all began a few years ago when the Federal Emergency Management Agency started converting its paper flood maps to digital form by inspecting levees throughout the country. When Hurricane Katrina hit two and a half years ago, though, the national inventory became a much higher priority.
Now in order for Gilroy to remain eligible for federal relief funds, the city (paying 45 percent), the Santa Clara Valley Water District (paying 50 percent) and Santa Clara County (paying 5 percent) have until Aug. 1, 2009, to jointly hire a consultant to probe the two-mile-long Uvas levee and hopefully show Washington that it still holds water. The entire cost of the inspection is $560,000, and the water district has agreed to front the entire cost; the city and county have until June 2010 to reimburse it.
“This is another example of the feds telling us what to do without any money, and the little city of Gilroy has to pay,” said Mayor Al Pinheiro at Monday night’s council meeting, when the council begrudgingly approved the expense. Councilman Craig Gartman jokingly likened the federal mandate to “extortion,” Councilman Perry Woodward gave a “reluctant second,” and many city officials have expressed similar opinions.
“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,” City Facilities Development Manager Bill Headley said last year.
FEMA will use the inspection results to update (or not) its 10-year-old maps that outline Gilroy areas where a flood has a 1-percent chance of occurring in any given year. The 140 home-owners in these Gilroy areas can’t receive federally insured mortgages unless they buy flood insurance backed by FEMA, but city officials say protecting the city isn’t much of an option. The two schools that could fall into the new 418-acre flood zone would be Gilroy High School and Glenview Elementary, according to city Engineer Gerry Dutra.
Because the city has agreed to the mandate, FEMA has temporarily accredited the Uvas levee. Gilroy’s only other levee along Llagas Creek was certified in 1994, and FEMA has deemed those inspection records sufficient, according to a Feb. 12 memo filed by Dutra.
Despite Gilroy’s complaints, SCVWD Assistant Officer Ann Drape has disagreed with Headley’s calling the FEMA requirement 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 last year that “levee safety is a shared responsibility with our local partners.”
“FEMA is not requiring this,” Drape 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.” The SCVWD has taken the lead in a county-wide effort to recertify two other levees, as well: the Stevens Creek Levee in Mountain View and the Lower Penetencia Creek Levee in Milpitas, according to Dutra.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspects 13,000 miles of levees a year. Although it teams up with water district officials twice a year (once in the spring and fall) to review the Uvas levee’s external condition, this will be the first inside-and-out inspection of the Uvas levee, which a city contractor built with mostly federal funds in 1989 in response to a flood earlier that same year. The levee was officially certified by the corps in 1990, according to Dutra’s memo.
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.
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 affects run-off?
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 Alamitos Creek levee functioned differently than originally intended. FEMA redrew its maps afterward, and 10 homes in San Jose fell into the flood area and had to buy insurance.
Joan Peros is State Farm Insurance agent here in Gilroy, and she said she’s sold “maybe four” flood policies in the last 10 years since local flood zones haven’t changed.
During the next year and a half, there will be a public outreach process involving the water district, FEMA, and home lenders to address any residents’ concerns, Dutra said last year, 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.”
