[The risk is heightened by climate changes that could bring less snow and more rain to the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada. As a result, water surging into the Sacramento River and the delta will greatly increase the chances of winter floods.] 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. |
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. |
In California we know we have two kinds of levees - those that have failed and those that will fail. |
In California we know we have two kinds of levees -- those that have failed and those that will fail. |
In California we know we have two kinds of levees – those that have failed and those that will fail. |
In California, we know that we have two kinds of levees: Those that have failed and those that will fail. |
Levee failure is not an 'if', it's a 'when'. There seems to be a willingness to tolerate the human suffering and property loss that might come with these events. |
New Orleans has lost the battle with the inevitable, and we will do the same. |
New Orleans lost the battle with the inevitable, and we will suffer the same fate in some form here in California. |
The probability of a catastrophic levee failure in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the next 50 years is two in three. |
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 system can't do what we're asking it to do. That system was designed to protect mostly agricultural land. |
This flood is not a disaster. It is an ecological windfall. |
This is a dynamic landscape that is changing at a pace that exceeds the ability of our policy and law to adjust. |
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. |