Assembly Standing Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife

Good morning. Thank you all for being here. And because this is an informational hearing, we're going to go ahead and get started promptly because we've got a lot of wonderful witnesses to hear from about a very, very timely topic. So first I want to welcome new Members to the Committee.

Some of them are Boerner, you get the award for being here on time. Don't go changing is what I say. That's right, that's right. And ready to go, I might add. So we've got nine new Members this session.

I'm looking forward to working with each of them and I want to thank all the returning Members as well for coming. So let's get started. You know, flooding has always been a fact of life in California due to our hydrology and our geology. So that said, we've got severe flooding that's coming every year because of climate change.

And California can sometimes forget during the dry years how vulnerable we truly are. So those memory issues, I think made it very important to have an informational hearing that was dedicated to flooding and too much water. And it is estimated that we may have upwards of $1 trillion in economic losses in a worst case scenario flood.

So the goal of this hearing is to sort of better understand the threat, how we can prevent flooding, how we can manage water so that when we have too much, perhaps we capture it and we'll be that more ahead of the game during dry years. So I want to thank in advance my colleagues for being here.

Welcome Assemblymember Rogers. And I think I saw Patel as well. And with that, anybody else have opening remarks? No. You do. Assemblymember Boerner, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm very happy to join this Committee. I think when we think of flooding, we don't always think of San Diego.

And if you remember last January, especially our Northern California Members, if you remember last January we got an entire winter's, our entire years of rainfall in four hours in San Diego and it caused extensive flooding. Now we often have flooding on the coast and when that combines with king tides, we have our special problems.

But this especially affected ...Member Alvarez and what is now. So I think when we think about, I thought something was off. There we go. So when we think about flooding, it's important to not just think about places with rivers.

It's like it's important to think about places who used to have rivers or sometimes have rivers, and that is now built out and that's now flooding. And how do we manage that? In San Diego we have the benefit of having invested in Years and decades of water storage.

So water storage isn't always our problem, but managing what we assume are going to be increasingly strong atmospheric rivers that give us, like last year, an entire winter's worth of rainfall in a mere hours is something our infrastructure is not set up to deal with.

So, you know, I look forward to working with the chair and hearing the experience from other Members who I know have extensive experience with this, on how we make our entire state more resilient to the threats of the climate crisis.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Anyone else? Okay. Some of them are hard. Welcome. Good morning. So with that, we will go, we'll go ahead and call and start with our first witness, Dr. Jeffrey Mount, who I know is going to be the bearer of informative news. How's that? Interesting and informative. Welcome, Assemblymember Gonzalez. Good morning, Dr. Mount.

Good morning. Okay, that mic should be working. It's, it's, it's, it says it's on whenever you're in the room. So you have that influence, I have that power. Okay. So I had not appreciated how small the screen is going to be. Are you able to see what I'm going to be putting up at all?

No, I'm, I'm, I'm going, I, I'm going to use a PowerPoint, which is going to be a little problematic for some of you to see, but that's okay. I, I, I've used to, I'll explain what I, what I'm showing. So there it is. A primer on flooding in California. So let's go ahead and take that first. Get the first slide.

Maybe we could make it where it is, the full screen so we don't see the queue up of the other slides. So we can put it, I don't. Know who's operating your.

Okay, well, so, so while they're getting together, let me explain who I am. So, I'm Jeffrey Mount. I'm a senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. And many of you are familiar with ppic.

We're a nonpartisan think tank who I like to say makes everybody annoyed some of the time and hopefully not everybody all of the time. Thank you, Abraham Lincoln.

So, and our Water Policy center, which has been there for a decade now and was run by Ellen Hannick and started by Ellen Han, is now in the hands of Letitia Greiner, who's taken over as the new Director. So I'm still, I'm, I'm riffing while I get this, this part this, this part done.

And while we're talking about it, I, I have a long history of working on floods. I got the nickname Dr. Doom many, many years ago from Tamara Keith when she was doing an NPR piece in California after the 97 floods. And my mother woke up in the morning to hear on NPR today, I'm in California with Dr.

Doom. Jeffrey. She was so proud of me. It was great. But any case, I served on the floodboard until I was fired with enthusiasm by Arnold Schwarzenegger on my birthday. I remember that. And I got a great birthday card from a friend.

An illustrator was a picture of the terminator on the front and it, he opened up, said, happy birthday, Jeffrey, you won't be back. So I was fired with. And that's of course, before the Flood Reform act that took place in 2007. I'm still riffing here, guys. You always get to say, we'll let you.

We'll let you. They'll continue to work with you. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Well, actually, and what I'll do is I'll skip over my introductory slide when it does finally show up. And so broadly, I'm going to cover sort of the big things that you're going to hear much more about today. I'm going to explain to you we are at high flood risk, which you started with Assembly Member Papin.

I'm going to then get transition to sort of how we manage floods here in California. And it's a combination of structural and non structural issues. And then of course, I'll wrap up with two things. One is risk is increasing. And remember, when I use the word risk, I'm talking principally about economic risk.

And that is a combination of the economic consequences of an event. And the way most of the time it's calculated is what's the probability of an event? And you're going to hear a bunch about probability today. And then what is the economic cost of that event? So that's when I talk about risk, I'm referring to economic risk.

It's rising. And then I'm going to finish up with kind of an really unpleasant subject, and that is the challenge of an unreliable federal partner on flood, flood management. And I'll try not to say flood control because we don't control floods, we just manage them. I can work with it if you just want to start changing slides.

How hard can it be? There's a little box at the bottom that says, at the very bottom down there it says display. Okay, all right, well, let me, let me keep going because this is Jane Dolan will kill me if I take too long. Yeah.

Okay, so that picture on the bike that was, that should be familiar to all of you. That's the Tulare basin in 2023 when you had that extraordinary bit of flooding down there. In fact, I'm going to show you most of the pictures you will see. Well, how hard can this. No, that's like five.

Slide five. Okay, maybe if we can just go back to slide number two and we'll get you rolling. How hard can it be?

Okay, that's my outline. Okay. And let's just skip that out that. Let's go to the next slide please. Okay. This is to remind all of us that the flood risk is very high. One in five Californians live on a floodplain and are at risk.

And I'm going to show you a picture here of the people and structures on, on the, on the so called 500 year floodplain. Don't believe that it's not the 500 year floodplain, it's just all the floodplains.

But you know, even in 2023, which was by my measures a pretty mild year, we still had five to $7.0 billion worth of economic damages in 2023. So. And then as you've heard already, the, the great Storm186162.

I want to show you a really depressing projection of climate projection that suggests that that storm, which was considered the great storm, the great, the great flood is actually rapidly increasing in likelihood in the future. And that's a tr. That's $1.0 trillion worth of damage.

So that's greater than any earthquake that we have basically modeled in California. So this is why this is such a big issue. I also want to remind you, flood risk as we discovered along the Pajaro river is a kind of classic example, is a major social justice issue.

The people who can least, who are the least resilient tend to be at the highest risk. And work that we did in the LA area shows this to be a really big issue, including San Diego as well. So next slide please. Well, that's not the next slide. Well, this is an opportunity.

Okay, so as I set up this to you, I want to remind you we deal with this. This is great. This is not my first wardrobe failure when it comes to giving talks. So the second slide I was going to show you sets up the issue of the way we manage floods.

And the general category is structural versus non structural approaches. So in the classic case, the structural approaches are just simply to either restore or Redirect floodwater. And of course, we live here in Sacramento in which we rely on the most common structural element for managing floods throughout the world, which are levies.

And I want to remind you at the beginning of this and there will be engineers in the back who will bristle over my statement. But there are two kinds of levies, those that have failed and those that will fail. And that's because there's always residual risk behind every levy. I mean we cannot prevent flooding. Okay.

We just manage it. And Sacramento, I'm happy to answer the questions of this is turned out to be one of the nation's leaders in managing its flood risk. And we can talk about how that came about. But it's very strong.

The Matsui is a place to first look to because they did such a good job in bringing the Federal Government along to help us. So structural. So mostly levies, but we do a lot of other structural investments.

So for example, the beautiful drive I had this morning coming in from Davis going over the Yolo bypass that can without that Sacramento wouldn't exist. Sacramento be wiped off the map about every 10 years. Okay, so now we got. Vulnerability is high and rising. I'm back on my slides. So let's just to keep on time.

Let's go to the next slide, please. He said wincing. Okay, I'm going to keep going. This is rather amusing unless you're watching. So the. I taught at UC Davis for 35 years, so you figure I might not.

We did a lot before PowerPoint. So we're with you just keep growing.

Somehow we all survived. That's right. PowerPoint is the equivalent of hypnotizing chickens is PowerPoint. So the, the. So we so on the structural side, we have probably hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. And I'm going to get so next slide after this without losing the. There we go. So we have hundreds of hundreds.

Hundreds and by the way, one of those is San Diego. We have we have hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, structural investment to manage the four kinds of floods that we have. And you're going to hear about this today. And they. One of them's got a pretty cool name. The first is of course fluvial.

That's what we mostly talk about here in Sacramento. Mostly we're focused on levees, which basically handle riverine floods and we try to prevent overflow rivers and we. And we construct these levees.

But I got to tell you, when you look nationally at damages associated with flooding, the big number turns out to be pluvial, which is rainfall generated flooding when it overwhelms the capacity of local infrastructure to basically evacuate. Like, you know, when we, when we hear here, when we get, when we get intense rains, we'll see flooded streets.

In San Diego, for example, where we had a lot of intense rains, where we had overflow of a channel in particular, which was quite damaging. We also saw tremendous damage on the streets where they just simply couldn't evacuate the water. So that's the pluvial style flooding.

And in California, we are the benchmark for the other kind of flooding, which is very poorly managed, and that is debris flow flooding. And of course, many of you remember the horror stories of Montecito back in 2017, and that's a picture of Montecito there. When these debris flow floods, they're a unique kind of flood.

And as a, as a geologist and training as a geologist are also the most fascinating because they move as this dense mixture of water and sediment and can move at extraordinary velocities. And they're, they're lethal. They're quite lethal. I mean, they, they are our most killer floods. And then the other dimension, of course, is coastal flooding.

And I'm not going to talk too much about coastal flooding today, but this is an issue you all will face. The risk, the economic risk associated with coastal flooding due to sea level rise, certainly in the last, in the next 50, I mean, for the rest of this century, is equal to the risks associated with fluvial flooding.

So this is going to be a lot in front of your Committee. Next slide, please. And I'm going to gloss over this because I've already talked to you. So structural levees, by the way, that should be familiar to many of you. In 1997, when the left bank of the Feather river failed. Next slide, please.

Okay, so what I do want to remind you, though, is that we have thousands of miles of levees, just 2,800, a minimum of 2,800 here in the Central Valley alone, and flood walls and a variety of structures that we have multiple jurisdictions. It's quite chaotic.

The Central Valley is by far the most organized and the most advanced when it comes to managing their flood risk. And you're going to hear about that later today. In most cases, the US Army Corps of Engineers sets the maintenance and operation standards.

And, and then this, then it's, then it's deferred to state and local districts to manage that. DWR has the power to step in. You'll hear about that when, when things go poorly. And we have examples on the pajo river from that next slide please. And again, I already mentioned this.

I think people come from all over the world to look at the Yellow Bypass. Just to let you know, because it is such an extraordinary flood bit of flood infrastructure which now is providing multiple benefits. I mean extraordinary multiple defenders. You know what's out there right now?

A whole bunch of baby winter run Chinook salmon are running around out on that floodplain getting fat and they're going to likely survive and come back because of that time on the floodplain. So you know, it's now providing as I say, multiple benefits. Also extraordinary rice farming goes on there. Next slide. Okay.

Dams you can't talk about, you can't talk about it about flood control without talking about dams. And we, Sacramento was sold a Bill of goods with Folsom Dam. They said it was going to provide 500 year flood protection. And within two years after building it they said oops, maybe it'll be 250 year flood protection.

And by 1986 they said it's not even providing hundred year flood protection. So dams are a unreliable, sometimes unreliable partner in flood management, but absolutely essential. And so I remind you that it's the Army Corps of Engineers which sets the standards for how to operate those dams.

But DWR division of Dam Safety oversees most, most of the dams. The 1500 non federal jurisdictional dams that are in California. Next. I'm kind of rushing through this so I can get, get caught up. But what I want your Committee to, to, to remember is it's not all about the gray infrastructure.

It is the non structural approach approaches which are so important. And, and at PPIC we've been arguing for years this is the most cost effective approach to managing flood risk is the non structural methods.

First we have state hazard mitigation plan and then we've got local, local hazard mitigation plans, most of which focus on federal meeting federal standards. We obviously use land use zoning and sometimes it gets perverted along the way.

But it's mostly tied to federal special flood hazard areas and that is to try to discourage new development in those areas that are mapped out by the Federal Government as special flood hazard areas. And of course that comes to the National Flood Insurance Program which will be insolvent after this year.

Congress is going to have to save it in some way, shape or form. It's just been a pretty tough, pretty tough few years for that program. And of course some proposals are just to eliminate it completely.

And at the top of the list we, when we look at this is emergency response DWR deserves a tremendous amount of credit for working with Cal OES in 2023, particularly in the Tulare Basin flooding, for doing a really good job. What we, when we've looked at it at ppic, we keep coming up with the same conclusion.

Good emergency response and recovery is the, is the insurance that reduces social risk. And say, remember, this usually hits the poor the hardest. This kind of thing, they're the least resilient. The bounce back is great from disasters like this when you've made the investment in emergency response. Next slide.

Okay, so this is a wonky, difficult diagram, not intended to make your head explode, but it has caused mine to explode. And many will. Many of you will be familiar with the, the tremendous advances we've made in starting to project the magnitude of flooding in California, around the world, for that matter.

And simply put, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans pump more moisture into the atmosphere. And our flood makers, which are atmospheric rivers, those are our flood makers, all rely on their strength from that combination of a warm atmosphere and warm ocean. So all our current projections are pointing to an increased intensity of atmospheric rivers.

And you know, San Diego got to see and so did La. I mean, I mean, the amount of mudslides in La, not this winter, but the winter before was, was off the chart. Last time that happened was in the 1930s. Give you an example. It'd been a long time.

So all these projections, and of course, this is the very famous Daniel Swain, who I'm happy to say was a former student of mine at UC Davis, has been doing these projections. So let me offer you something disturbing when I look at those projections, because I am Dr. Doom after all. I should go dressed like Dr. Doom to these things. When I looked at Daniel's work and I got a hold of him, I said, here's something to remind you.

All of the global, the global circulation models that are used to make these simulations are tied to one thing and one thing alone, and that is the, the temperature, the surface temperature of the Earth. All of them derived from changes in the surface temperature of the Earth.

And you know, you come up with different results, but that's what they are. So you can use that as a benchmark for what to project in the future. And I will tell you, you know, this, this.

I've put 2022 when this, when this paper was published on it, and I got a hold of Daniel right away and I said, well, but wait, we're really kind of at 1.5, aren't we? He said precisely. Here's the thing.

The great flood of 1861-62 otherwise known as arc storm, because we've modeled what the damages would be like if that flood came again, what the failures would look like, the evacuations of tens of thousands of people and the $1.0 trillion worth of economic damages. That flood may now be our hundred year flood. That's what the.

But the way the Federal Government calculates the so called hundred year flood is all based on the hydrology of the past. So they go, they take their existing hydrology and they calculate the one, the probability of flood with a 1% probability.

Which is partly why we were so surprised when the Mississippi river had four of these 400 year floods in the space of 15 years. And it's the method used to calculate these flood maps which basically don't accommodate current climate. And they sure are not looking forward, okay?

And that is our most fundamental, the roots of our most fundamental problem for flood management. We're planning for the past, we're not planning for the present, and we sure as heck are not planning for the future.

And I will tell you, by 2050, it is my Dr. Doom's prognostication that by 2050 all major flood control systems in California will be out of date. They will not meet federal standards, which by the way, the federal standard you're going to hear about this today is a minimal standard. And I don't know a floodplain manager who thinks it's sufficient anywhere in the country.

I've never met somebody who thinks it's sufficient. I've got somebody who wants to build on that floodplain who thinks it's sufficient, but I don't know. Next slide please. So, all right, if this is so bad, why don't we do something about it? And this is what I want to want to wrap up. Why do we not.

Why do we don't address this. Well, I actually. Assembly Member Pap and kind of got to it. Out of sight, out of mind. That's a real problem. Next slide, please. Okay, so there are economics and economic winners and losers on floodplains. And this is a big thing, a rational approach to flood management.

You would have never developed Natomas from the beginning, early years. I was saying, I think you guys are making a big mistake, but you develop it because there are strong economic incentives. The tiny town of Lathrop to the south of us here should not be developing on that floodplain. They're at extremely high risk.

They haven't got their levees up to date yet. And maybe Jane will address this. But they're not up to you should not be developing. Okay, that's me in my head as the scientist.

But the person who is trying to Fund the police force and the fire Department and their schools and everything else in their town, there is a very strong incentive to build. We can go all the way back to Proposition 13 for that. You all know that know how this works. So floodplain winners and losers.

The second issue is we're already here. The LA River. There is no room for the LA river because of bad choices that were making in the 1930s. After a series of floods, they decided to build right up to the river because some engineer told them that if they make a concrete line channel, all the water will run out to the sea real quickly. I'm blaming the engineers in the back of the room. I always beat on engineers. It's a way of life.

The third is institutional inertia. We've always done it this way. Let's just keep doing it this way because it's so hard to do it a new way. And this is particularly rife with the Federal Government. And of course there is the flood memory half life. We forget natural disasters that don't come very often.

And so it's really hard. We're really good with droughts and fires because droughts last a long time and they seem to be coming pretty frequently and fires just about every year. So we're really good at staying, but we forget. And then finally, costs. I told you this was not going to be a happy talk. Next slide.

So years ago we did a study at ppic. We looked at who's paying what for water in California. And overwhelmingly of the 30 plus billion spent every year on water, though, you know, of course it's on water supply and water quality. That's where most of the money is spent.

A tiny little fraction of that is spent on flood management. So $2.7 billion. Again, this is. This is in 20162018. And of that, of course, user fees, I mean, this is. Fees are paying for the majority of that. But a tiny little slice is General obligation bonds and a tiny little slice is federal money.

But next slide, please. By our calculations back then, the current need is about to Invest is about 1.4. And actually we think that's much higher. It's probably closer to $2 billion per year is needed to invest. And we're investing less than $1.0 billion a year. Much less than $1.0 billion a year.

Probably closer to $600 million a year. In flood management. So that's a statewide estimate. We're going to update all of this, by the way. We're starting at PPIC to do a, to a full update and we call it paying for play. Paying for climate adaptation is our, it's his project.

So look at over the next couple of years and we'll update all of this. But because these things are now out of date. But it's really expensive and it's what we call a fiscal orphan.

It is a fiscal orphan because it doesn't have regular ratepayers paying in, which is why water supply supply does so much better because you're paying a water Bill every month. Most of us are not paying a flood Bill.

And Proposition 218 won't let us aggregate those costs in an area because if you pay for flood, you have to be directly affected by it, even though it would help the Committee. You have all heard plenty about Proposition 218, I'm sure. Next slide. Okay. And now here's my, my most unpleasant subject.

We are bound at the hip with the Federal Government when it comes to flood management. Everything planning, reservoir operation and management, levy oversight, levy construction. All of Sacramento would have been out of luck if it was not for federal investment and the Army Corps of Engineers to show up and do it.

So funding of new construction relies 75% for federal federal money, permitting and licensing. I mean, if there's federal facilities involved, you're definitely dealing with federal permitting and licensing, FERC licensing in particular for reservoirs.

The flood insurance program that we rely upon that only 7% of the 7 to 10% of the people who should have flood insurance in California actually have flood insurance still, that's federal. Yeah. So it's really bad. Our uptake on flood insurance is really rotten. And then finally, emergency response.

We rely so heavily on the Federal Government to show up for emergency response. I am not saying that the Federal Government is out of the business of that, but there's some uncertainty right now and I think that's a fair assessment of how involved they're going to be.

But the one place they have been really ratcheting back is federal investment in new infrastructure. So that's for you all to kind of think about as you're, as you're going forward. Again, we're going to tackle this at ppic, but give us a couple of years to work on it.

We'll have some suggestions for you on how to, how to pay for all this stuff, alternatives for how to pay for it. But I think this is something that we have to worry about next slide. I think that's my last slide. zero, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Tough work ahead, but I'm optimistic.

I know I don't sound that I am because everybody is a hydrologist. The day after the flood, we're going to have flooding here, and that will bring focus to the, to the Legislature. And I think that's when we get stuff done.

You need only look at what happened in the Flood Reform act under Schwarzenegger and what happened Hurricane Katrina and the Paterno decision, which you will all hear about later today, which is probably the most consequential court decision on floods. With that, I'm happy to be yelled at. Answer any questions that you might.

You might have. Thank you so much, Dr. Doom. It's been wonderful to have you. We have met before, so I, I've heard some of the predictions and I can appreciate the desire to, to do the prospective modeling so that at least we have some greater understanding of where we're going to be.

I do have a question or two, but I'd like to turn it over to my colleagues to see if any of them have a question. Question. Senator Rogers.

First of all, thank you for the standup routine while we got going. Obviously, most of us have been, as you said, every single county has been through an emergency declared flood since 1992. Most of us are familiar with the slow it, sink it model.

And obviously that's what dams are supposed to achieve, is slow down the water so that then you can use it when you need to and try to sink it when you can. There are other technologies that are out there that are emerging, like aquifer recharge.

Can you touch a little bit on how some of those might impact some of the data that you gave us? And also if you have any suggestions that you want to make to the Legislature about where investment would be better needed, I think many of us sit on budget committees related to this.

So that last part is. It would take me all day, but what are the investments? But let me go real quickly to the aquifer recharge thing. So we got to see that in 2023, and the Governor basically expedited the ability to take water off the San Joaquin River.

San Joaquin river, in my view, is the most flood risk river. Fortunately, there's very few large cities along the San Joaquin. But in terms of its levee system and its, it's. It's in pretty bad shape and is a, Is a tremendous challenge. However, it's an extraordinary opportunity to do groundwater recharge precisely where you need it.

The caveat that I want to give you is during these really large storms with the major atmospheric rivers, the amount of water that you can pull off that river and use for recharging aquifers is, is modest. So the flood risk still remains in all of those.

But you know, they were able to show they lowered stage a little bit on the San Joaquin river by basically diverting water to groundwater recharge.

So I would be, I would be remiss at PPIC if we didn't tell you we think the number one problem on water is become storage and that the number one opportunity is groundwater storage.

We've been writing about this for a decade now and there are some places that infrastructure investments can make a big difference on flood management as well at the same time as water supply. And that's where I think it's big. And then on the budget stuff, you know, I just gave you my short list.

I honestly, I would, I would encourage you to look at what happened in the flood reform act that created the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. It might be a model for elsewhere in California as a way to go.

So just as a quick follow up, when you say that very little of that water was able to be diverted into aquifer recharge, is that a technology issue or is that regardless of the technology, that's just going to be the function?

Zero no, it's complicated and it's complicated in a couple of ways. First, it's an infrastructure question. I mean, setting up the infrastructure to actually deliver it to the, to the places where you're going to get your greatest benefit of groundwater recharge. So that's an infrastructure issue which could be, is it modestly expensive?

We're not talking like billions of dollars kinds of investments. It's in the millions. I mean those numbers don't scare you all, but so, and so, so in this case it's a structural issue and infrastructure investment. But of course then you have the second character problem is the permitting side of this. Water rights, clean water rights.

This is a big deal and the state board has been slow taking their time on trying to, how to figure out how to permit when you can take water off a river. But in the, in the periods where we're talking about high flood risk, it's no problem. I mean there's, we can't choke down the water that's, that's, that's coming. So I don't think there's any.

And that's, and the, and the, and the, and the board's current, the State Board's current proposals to basically we've got it set up really represent no problem during the very high flow events, much bigger problem in the modest flow events. And that's where people are legitimately fighting over how to, how to, how to do that. I don't know if that answered your question. Okay.

I'll go. Assembler Boerner and then Assembly Member Hart.

Yeah. I want to thank you for the presentation and making me laugh before 10am I usually don't talk to humans before 10, including my own. But when you were saying, I think, you know, the thing I'm going to take away from this is you were saying that, you know, we have certainly not calculated properly our risk for today and certainly not for tomorrow. How much of that is a calculation problem and prediction problem and how much is that an innovation opportunity? Because necessity is the mother of invention.

So one of the things I talked about was institutional inertia. And when we developed the National Flood Insurance program in the 1960s, we, we set national standards, floodplain standards, and the technique at the time that was used was this look backwards. That's that hydrology of the past is the predictor of the hydrology of the future.

I mean, and then that scientifically has been debunked thoroughly. I mean, there's General consensus. I mean, you know, it'll always find somebody. But the consensus that we're missing, and we gave it a big fancy name, hydrologic non stationarity, so that people wouldn't understand what we're talking about. But they, but so this is an institutional inertia problem.

And so it's a policy issue. This is not a technology, this is policy. This is 100% policy right now. And there are a lot of people who are legitimately afraid of changing that policy because it's so disruptive, particularly in areas where they're developing on floodplains. So that's a. But as I say, this is your shop. It's a policy question. I know. I got to get off here soon.

And my question is, how important are the federal cutbacks to NOAA in terms of having advanced.

Okay, I promised not to. I was going to. There's so much chaos right now. I mean, I was just on the phone last evening talking to people about what does this mean for us. I mean, not only that, but they, they just got rid.

Sorry, I'm not going to be bashing on the Federal Government here, but because we're ppic, we're nonpartisan Steer it down the middle, make everybody mad some of the time. But there are some real consequences we haven't thought about. The. The engineering that we use for flood management today came out of the Hydrologic Engineering Center.

That is a tiny little shop in Davis. I mean, it's an upstairs in a. In a nondescript building. And it is the brightest minds of the core who were producing the models we use to basically do that. They eliminated it this week. So it's gone or closed. They closed the shop.

And at noaa, we're now at a tipping point. I'm hearing from my colleagues in noaa. I mean, there's. Remember, NOAA does so much more than just weather forecasting. And. But I'm hearing that we're. We may be at a tipping point there. So we're in a period of not creative destruction. That's the best way to describe it.

And I don't know what it's going to look like, but we can't privatize. Accuweather is not going to get in the business of flood forecasting because accuweather will be bankrupt in the first flood. They can't do it. It has to be the Federal Government and their immunity has to be there.

So I don't know how that's going to work, but a whole lot of bright minds are now sidelined on that. So I very worried about that as an issue. By the way, DWR does a pretty good job with that. So I think we're going to be okay in California.

I think they can pick up some of the slack on that because they got a lot of really talented people. But. And if not, they know how to go out and hire the talented people to do this. But yeah, for the rest of the country, I find this very alarming. What's happening at Noah. Sorry, I didn't want to end on That note.

But we're not ending. It's okay.

Hello. So if you're a Doctor Doomsday, I must be nurse practitioner Doomsday, because I have been talking about this for a long time when it comes to our water systems in California. I'm from Tulare, California. So the floods hit us really hard.

And what a lot of people don't know is we were under drought protocols the same time we were under flood protocols in the Central Valley. And to me, that's very indicative of our water systems needing the love and the funding that they deserve.

But on the recharge thing, you know, we could talk for hours on the science behind it. And I do have concerns because we in ag really love the ability to recharge. We love our ability to flood irrigate. That's been dramatically cut throughout the years.

But we do see now that we're incentivizing recharge, but then we have high fees for pumping water then to, you know, recycle it again and again. So my questions are forecasting with the land use policy changes that are coming with Sigma and other things throughout California.

Do you forecast that the flood risk could get even higher for the State of California if we lose that ability to recharge on agricultural land?

So to come back, thank you for that question. So there is a nexus there between floods and recharge because that's when we're going to be doing the most recharges during these high flow events. And to a degree, those are going to be tightly connected. And I'm actually quite optimistic about the progress on that in the valley.

I mean, because you've got a whole lot of willing farmers out there who are willing to do this because they see it in their self interest. You've got a willing state government which wants to do this. You have some regulatory hurdles that you've got to get over.

And indeed, the Legislature could probably weigh in on that and bring some. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying you probably could weigh in on that and make it a little easier to basically permit recharging.

But in the end, when these, as we have various names from frog chokers or whatever, these huge flows that come through that we have like we had in 971997 and we had in 1986. And by the way, we have these about once a decade. It's the way to, the way to sort of think about it.

Recharge is off the table. I mean, it's not an issue. There's nothing preventing recharge. Frankly, there's going to be some levy failures that are doing a pretty good job of recharge emerging in those areas. So I don't think that's a limiting factor for you.

It's those intermediate high flows which are far greater for the San Joaquin Valley and their efforts to meet Sigma and to increase the amount of storage that comes in.

This is why, this is why ppic, we've been very clear in this over the years when we did some of the early work on the San Joaquin and projections on land retirement in San Joaquin improve. Every, every single effort you make to improve recharge during wet periods directly benefits meeting SGMA standards in the Valley.

It won't solve the problem because the laws of physics still apply. But it won't solve the problem. But it really will help. So I don't think flood management is your issue. It's permitting basically to get water to those places.

Well, on the same topic of the Central Valley, we know 25 year storm events are coming, right? We know knew this one was coming. And I just don't think we were prepared even though we did our best to be. But the devastation was real. I mean we had to evacuate tens of thousands of animals.

We have people that still aren't back up and going because we don't even know what was in the flood water that was on a lot of these sites. But I feel like you made a really good point. We're great at our flood response.

You know, the response that we saw in the Central Valley was just really top notch. But my fear is we have great response. But are we really funding the future of this and that? We're not focusing just on response, but on mitigation as Well.

I agree 100%. Yes, you should be doing both. But I do want to make, make sure you understand that the Tulare Basin response to the Tulare Basin was kind of. It was really a good lesson for us.

I mean I remind you that the Director of DWR went down to the basin and started knocking on doors and was told to go away because we don't want the government to come in.

And then later DWR showed up, people helped out and there was a lot of cooperation and it made a real difference in the emergency response. So I think those investments, particularly collaborative investments, hopefully with the Federal Government, but certainly with state government, really paid off there.

So again I really want to tell you recovery is the keep to think about investments. Sorry, I am using way too much time and Jane Dolan is going to kill me.

I just have one more quick one from Assemblymember Gonzalez and I appreciate your trying to get through the answer. I just as quickly as possible. We got a full agenda, but thank you so much. Go ahead.

Thank you so much for, for this insight. Where are the communities specifically that are at greatest risk because of the no management there?

Okay. So in every community there is some form of management and so what I would argue it's insufficient management that you have to worry about. So let's take the entire San Joaquin system.

So there we have a system which is probably the weakest link in our flood control and all of those Small communities, think fireball places like that, those small communities in that part of the world and the Tulare Basin, some of those small communities that are there, the planada places like that, where we have historically made very minimal investments.

And the reason is that economic risk calculation, right, because the economic risk is not high. So the priority is going to go elsewhere. But my scariest risk is the places where we do have robust flood management systems.

Let's take the LA river as an example, or San Diego, parts of San Diego as an example, where we have flood systems where we have built right up to the edge and we have concentrated economic development in areas which are ultimately going to be at risk. I mean, which are at considerable risk and will ultimately fail.

It'll fail at some point. Those worry me the most. Those are the lay awake at nights to thinking about that. I think Sacramento is probably one of the most advanced flood management systems around. And yet after Hurricane Katrina, it was labeled the next Katrina and, and for national.

And of course, so you're probably going to hear some about this, but it's the major investment that went on here. But the social justice questions are principally here in the valley and they're, and they're on parts of the central coast. I mean, take what happened to Pajaro is a kind of really classic example.

You know, they, I was involved in that in, in as early as 97 trying to get some flood, getting, improving flood management. And of course Santa Cruz County and Monterey County were at war with each other and it was, it was a complete mess. And then they finally got some help, but it didn't come in time. So.

So with, with these looming threats, what are the current mitigation, mitigating factors or, or operations or policies? What are we doing with the current threats to mitigate them?

I'm not going to say nothing because we're doing a lot in various places. But compared to the need, scaled relative to the need, a modest amount. I mean, we're not talking about sea level rise yet.

And the chair of your Committee, this is something that she worries about every day because that's the highest economic risk associated when you look at it from an economic standpoint. So I would say not much. The Bay Area is getting organized.

I think the state is starting to really do a good job of thinking about the sea level rise question and the coastal flooding issue. But remember, just one project, one significant project takes at least two decades to build. So this is something you have to start thinking about now. So I guess my answer to you is not Enough is the short answer to your question. Not enough. That's for today's risk, not the future risk. Okay.

Right. And it will all take money.

That's why I ended with that. It's about money.

Yeah, I recognize that. And I recognize the Federal Government being a big player in an unknown at this point. And we know that our localities in the state are going to white knuckle it to a certain degree here as well, for perhaps the at least nearest future.

And I appreciate the comments, both from Tulare as well as at least my district or the coastal districts. And I think our need to remain nimble can certainly make up for what we may lack in dollars. For example, when you've got a flood incident, can you act quickly to take water off, recharge aquifers, et cetera?

So, thank you so much for being here, Dr. Mount. I really appreciate it. And with that, we'll move to our second panel. So while I'm introducing if Ms. Hollander, the Deputy Director for Flood Management and Dam Safety at the Department of Water Resources, could come forward, as well as Jane Dolan, who is chair of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, two key players here. Welcome to both of you. I think we'll have Ms. Hollander go first.

Yes. And we also have a PowerPoint as well. Perfect. Okay. But I'll introduce myself while we're getting that up and tell you a bit about what I'm going to speak about. So, good morning. Thank you for having us. I'm Laura Hollender, Deputy Director of Flood Management and Dam Safety at the Department of Water Resources.

I'm going to be talking about the state role today in flood management, how we as the state, the different facets of flood management that we have a. Which is all of them, quite frankly. But I'm going to focus specifically on our roles and responsibility and some emergency response activities that we do statewide.

Okay, so there is my first slide, and I like this picture. We wanted it to be the first picture because it does show the Sacramento river and the confluence of the American river right next to downtown Sacramento, so surrounded by water. Next slide, please.

The next slide, I was just going to sort of reiterate what we heard from Dr. Doom, Jeff Mount that there is various types of flooding in the state and that all 58 counties have declared a flood emergency at one point or another. So there's flood risk throughout the entire state.

I'll just talk through some of the next couple slides. So we also heard from Jeff that the state's approach to flood management is multi layered. The first thing that we really try to do is get a sense of what is the risk.

We assess the risk, study the risks, do modeling to figure out where we need to invest and where we need to do action. So there's a risk assessment, planning side of what the state does. And then it is what you heard about before. How, how do we then mitigate the known risk to the extent we possibly can.

And some of that is through the structural means, through actual improvements like we heard about. And then the non structural means by letting rivers have their natural floodplains, giving them room for the water to flow, so buying easements along waterways and that sort of thing.

And then as we heard, no matter what we do to mitigate, we can't fully get rid of flood risk. There will always be some risk. And so, then the next part of what we try to really focus on at the state, we have a statewide role in emergency response.

Let's see, could we move to slide 4 if possible? Keep going. Okay, so this is our first slide on emergency response. We talked a bit about forecasting and the importance of that. That is a huge part also of what DWR does. We monitor the rivers.

We have a joint, the California Nevada River Forecasting System where we right now with the Federal Government monitor flood stages. We give out early warnings. Once there is a stage that reaches monitor, we contact the local agencies so they do high water notifications and then we deploy resources.

We have a flood operations center where we can deploy flood fight materials, give technical advice. We work with local partners. We also provide technical advice to local agencies and that is a statewide role. Next slide. So again we have various authorities about which we operate. We work very, very closely with the other local agencies.

Cal OES, local agencies have the first response in an emergency. So when the local agencies run out of resources, that's when they call us. That is when the state comes in. We provide flood fight materials and assist as we can. Then working with our federal partners is very key as well. Next slide. Some of our preparedness activities.

Every season we go out and do about 12 flood preparedness coordination meetings. Up and down the entire state where we work with our local agencies and federal agencies to prepare for floods. We also do outreach and have online resources.

We also have grants where we grant money to local agencies to prepare their own emergency response plans as well. And next slide, please. So again, even with all the preparedness, some risks remain and some of the challenges that we face right now include aging infrastructure. We heard a bit about that.

A lot of our flood system up and down the state is old on the order of decades, some structures even 100 years or more.

So upgrading our existing infrastructure and operating and maintaining it, it takes a lot of funding, a lot of time and a lot of our effort to take care of what we do have, but also improve it to the extent we can for the future of climate change, more frequent, more extreme storm events.

And you heard a little bit about that before. But that is a huge challenge that we're working on in the state. And also we heard about flood insurance and the very, very modest amounts of people in the state that actually have flood insurance. That is something we worry about, the recovery after floods.

We're working on some strategies at the state to think about community based insurance and other strategies for flood insurance that aren't necessarily the National Flood Insurance Program as well. Next slide.

And so, like we've mentioned before, some of our tools for managing residual risk is also the land use planning that we talked about and wise use of floodplains, expanding participation, like I just mentioned in the flood insurance program and our ongoing operation and maintenance. Next slide.

And this is some of the things that the state really tries to assist in. We do provide technical assistance up and down the state. So if local agencies need help planning for flooding tools, mapping, that sort of thing, we can provide that assistance. We also are the state representative for the National Flood Insurance Program.

So we implement that on behalf of the state. And we provide a variety of different types of grants up and down the state, from coastal grants to small communities grants. And we also work with our federal partners at the Army Corps on our flood subventions grants, which I think is the next slide.

Yes, so there's the Federal Subventions Program. This is a really important program. Talking about the importance of federal partners. Again, the state pays with the locals a state cost share, but the Federal Government, generally speaking, takes up a large and pays a large portion of these projects. It's a very important partnership.

This is, you'll hear later today, but the Pajaro River Project is one of these projects. So it's a really important program. Next Slide. Again, we can't understate the importance of federal partnerships that we have with our with the Army Corps and FEMA, but also all of our local partners.

It really does take the branch, three branches of the government really working together well to do flood risk management in California. Next slide. And we talked a little bit about planning earlier. Jeff mentioned it, but it's very important to us.

In 2013 we did have funding with the Army Corps to do what we call a flood future report where we really went through and worked with the local and did an in depth planning exercise to really try to understand risk.

That is a lot of where we had the information that we did have on the Tulare Basin because we really did spend some efforts there.

That is one thing we're hoping to update as well so that we have the data and tools when the emergencies are statewide that we understand where we need to come in and how we can help. Next slide. Okay.

And then I'm just going to briefly talk about the unique role of the Central that we have in the Central Valley and then turn it over to Jane. So in the Central Valley we have 1600 miles of levees, weirs, bypasses that are known as the state plan of flood control.

The state has a unique role and has unique liability for these structures. Due to the paterno decision that Dr. Mount mentioned earlier. This was due to a levy failure in 1997 that flooded the town of Linda. The court essentially ruled that when the state took on responsibility for the operations and maintenance of those levees.

If we knew that there were deficiencies but did not plan to fix them, that we would be liable. We have large state liability in the Central Valley that we don't have elsewhere.

After the Proterra Decision and after Hurricane Katrina, which we heard about a little bit earlier, the state did pass legislation to require 200 year flood protection for urban areas in the Central Valley. Many communities are working towards that still right now. Next slide.

With this higher liability, we have also a need to really think about how we plan for improvements in the Central Valley and how to balance risk with investment.

Part of what SB5, that law that was passed does is it requires the state to develop a Central Valley Flood Protection Plan to plan for the planning horizon of decades of flood risk in the Central Valley. Next slide. And I'm going to turn it over to Jane.

Alrighty, that was a great segue, Ms. Dolan.

Good morning Committee Members. As a President of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, I do chair, chair all of the meetings and I certainly appreciate being invited and you all organizing this meeting on a very important topic for our state.

And just as a disclaimer, I have no desire to hurt, harm or act upon anything with Mr. With my pal back there. I have three marks here that I'm going to use to talk because I'm from Chico. So I don't have this big city view of the world. But I am now as a Flood Board Member.

Next slide, please. This slide something for you to maybe call your homework. I'm not going to read from it. It is a slide that marks the evolution of flood actions and actions after that to either call for something to be done, some new Bill, some new action for that. But it shows the evolution.

I wanted to show this because what has been done, what has happened, is going to happen again. And so we learn from what worked and what did not. The initial attempt to handle flood at all was in the upper Sacramento River area. And it was to control it and to direct away mining debris.

Because the first immense settlers to the area were to do gold. And they did a lot of destruction for our rivers. So that was the first intent. And most flood fights that occurred at that time were by individuals and landowners, some who agreed with their neighbors, some who did not. And it was quite, quite boisterous.

A lot of fierce arguments. And worse. It brought a focus to, from the federal agencies first to give a focus to flood issues and protection and control in upper Sacramento. Because California was not yet a state.

So the first thing that occurred was the Federal Reclamation act of 1830, which gave some semblance of how you can protect your land. But then there was the gold ran out, or the Gold Rush ran out. And cities and communities began to form.

And the state became a state and became a partner and passed the flood control Act of 1861. At that time, there were 350,000 population in Northern California. And then again came partnership and assistance from the Army Corps of Engineers, who have always been an amazing federal partner for all of the work in California.

And what they did was study. They studied in an effort to try to define a system for flood control. And they got that. But then other things occurred. And so that system was not funded or put in place. But what came was the State of California did recognize reclamation, that things needed to be done.

And created what was called a reclamation board, which is now called the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. The Sacramento River Flood Control Project, which was identified there, brought about federal resources and levees began to be built.

Levees were built by moving the dirt and whatever else was next to the rivers or streams and pushing them up into what was called a levee. And at that time the Central Valley was given its name, the California Central Valley. This identified Central Valley jurisdiction most and give me the next slide please.

This slide shows the designation of the Central Valley and it's two basins. It's the Sacramento River Basin and the San Joaquin River Basin. It is not the delta, the delta is the delta and it's normally called the Sacramento Central Valley. As from Bakersfield to Redding, the Coast Range to the Sierra Nevadas.

And that is the jurisdiction of the Reclamation Board. And now the board on which I sit. The majority of the population early on was in the Sacramento Basin. It had water, it had gold and people were moving there. And of course the the state capital was in Sacramento and on the river.

So the majority of the population and development of cities and farmings was in that area just about until the 1950s when the San Joaquin began to more robustly develop and expand. Then not shown on this slide, and we're not moving slides, is the great flood of 1862 already spoken about.

And it still claims the name of the worst flood in the history of our state. Over 10 days, 10ft of rain dropped on the entire valley. The entirety of both valleys were flooded 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Talk about recharge.

Our state capital needed to move to San Francisco for a good time so that it could operate. It was a big deal. And the recovery was, was amazing. There were 450,000 people at that time. Imagine if it occurred now and it might other major events. 1902, 1920, 1936.

And let's just jump ahead because we know they happened in 2023 and 2024 as well. So when they happen is not on someone's schedule. The flood of 1955 was also a big one in Northern California.

And it's one that brought a loss of life. Severely damaging Yuba City, Marysville destroyed the community of Linda, damaged surrounding areas, damaged state transportation. Bridges and rails were destroyed. Addressing the Sacramento Feather Yuba river area was always a primary and highlighted concern.

Population growth and transportation define the need to get a system to protect peoples lives, homes, businesses and a way to recover. To handle the flood, levees began to expand and be created in the same way. Not necessarily engineered, not necessarily with anything other than the material that was next to it.

Sacramento was deemed very high risk and they knew that because it was flooding. They even raised their streets and areas past the the first floor of the buildings that had been constructed at the time so that they, they could operate.

But the very levees that they created are the levees that now that need to be repaired and replaced. And construction is going on in many, many places for that. But a lot more needs to be done. Next slide, please.

Then came other floods. 86, 1997 Again, lives lost, mass destruction of property, bridges, roads, infrastructure, farmland and immensely cost to recover. And these were the ones that brought about the paternal litigation that was settled by the court saying the state is liable. So the state is liable. It's that. And then after that in 2005 came Hurricane Katrina.

And it really was these were wake up calls that we need to do something because this can occur in our state, in our area. And I speak to the Central Valley because that's where my, my domain is at this, this point. And it clearly showed something needed to be done. So these events got got attention.

Do I want another slide? Yes, please, another slide. And it was easy to see that it could happen here and we needed to take some action. So the Legislature got active, particularly through the 2007 and 2008 years. They enacted comprehensive flood flood management issues, one of which was statutory direction that a Central Valley Flood Protection Plan be created.

And it gave the authority to DWR to create the plan and the authority to the Flood Board to review it and to make amendments if it saw necessary and to be the adopting entity for the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan. That was the act of 2008.

And at that time the title Reclamation Board was also changed to Sacramento Valley Flood Protection Board and it was given a bit more, bit more work to do. The initial plan was 2012. Five year updates were required. The next update was 2017 and the current is 2022. The first one was a huge effort on many parts.

DWR did an amazing job bringing together all the data, all the information and doing a whole lot of analysis so that we knew what the Central Valley Plan could be and what all the components were. And each iteration and each update of that plan created more of a focus and more of that. The plan identifies what needs to be done, identifies what has been done and identifies the need.

And I will tell you, because everyone's talking about budget here, it has a 30 year horizon and it talks about a need to invest 1 billion a year for those 30 years to meet the needs, to provide for lives not being lost, homes not being flooded, businesses not being destroyed and important infrastructure not being damaged.

And I just want to say at this point, this act that created the need for a Central Valley Flood Protection Plan covered the entirety of the Sacramento Basin and for the San Joaquin Basin to a little bit past Stockton.

So perhaps the result of this litigation and the concern and the need and what we see that we're facing yearly wondering is this the year the big Flood is might be time for the San Joaquin Basin to look at asking to be included in the entirety of the plan.

The Central Valley Flood Protection Board maintains jurisdiction for most of its activities. From permitting, from permits for plans, ideas, repair to be to be done, overseeing with DWR operation and maintenance that we have passed on to local entities and others. But maybe we can improve coordination, effort and all the things we need to do.

If the plan covered the cohesiveness of the Central Valley. Next slide please. The plan identified and analyzed issues and the highlighting. I want to highlight what some of these concerns are. What the plan found out and what needed to be done is that almost every community and especially the smaller communities are minimally protected for flood protection.

And if there are levees, and in many places there are not, they are inadequate. Existing levies that have not yet been improved were mostly earthen embankments that I spoke about. But they typically were built upon the fluvial deposits next to these rivers and streams. So therefore little protection might not overtop, but it will seep underneath.

And the flooding can come from above through damage and under rural level of protection pretty much non existent. And the ability for small rural communities to finance that is non existent. My view is if a community is not over is under 100,000 population, it probably does not have the municipal structure to have public works and flood protection and evacuation planning. So all the ones that you know are smaller than that.

And I live up in Butte County, so we have some in our county and near our county and it's. It's a big concern. It became clear and was put in the plan that the need to improve and expand floodplains as a way to direct flood water and to direct it away from people's homes, businesses and the state's infrastructure, particularly for transportation.

Also calls for bringing together all the sources of information so that it can be cohesive and shared and can can move on as staff changes or organizational issues occur. Forecasting needs to be improved and it certainly has. And a main issue is evacuation planning that must go on all the time. It's not a one and done.

And smaller communities and even large ones have. That's a big, big challenge for them. Next slide, please. The board and DWR are very strong partners for all of this and we appreciate them and I think they appreciate us. But also the US Army Corps of Engineers as the federal entity that's been a partner for all of these and they are right now and we hope that they will continue to be.

The Central Valley Flood Protection Board's priorities and points that we believe are important and necessary and that we focus on, along with all of our regulatory duties, are to provide for public transparency, transparency and stakeholder engagement. This was very important in developing the plan.

The first plan did not carry that to the extent that this current board wanted it to be. So with the two updates, we made a big effort on that and it's very, very helpful for implementation and any subsequent updates. This kind of public transparency and stakeholder engagement is the key to success in defining what needs to be done, how it can be done, and obtaining funding for it to be done.

The Board views what we call the Regional Flood Management Planning Program, which was created after the 2012 plan was adopted and identified six areas of regional flood planning. I come from local government. No city, no county alone can handle all of their issues for flood response, flood prediction, flood protection.

But if you form regional alliances, you can define and help each other. This has helped smaller communities because bigger communities are doing projects can can work with them as well. These regional efforts are critical to implement the plan, to gain broad support. oh, thank you for putting those up.

You're very smart and are crucial to having it be implemented.

The six groups are strong partners in plan implementation, but they also are very creative in finding other sources of funding for it to occur and when things arise like a Prop 218 Election so that the local entities and landowners can choose if they wish and we hope to provide the local funding for that.

These regional planning agencies have been really strong in getting those done. And I will mention that there have been formal agencies and associations. The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency was one of the first and the leaders and was starting doing things before The Plan Plan 2012 actually occurred.

And then in my county, the Sutter Butte, we got together and did that as well to help smaller communities and the larger ones. West Sacramento San Joaquin Flood Control Agency Next slide please. Further goals clearly are to continue to work to leverage funding from local, state and federal agencies and continued with the formation of forming a.

You can go to the next slide and also we will continue to support the Conservation Strategy Committee that the board formed after the 2012 plan was adopted. And we will. We will host them and we will use their ideas and we actually have a goal of integrating those ideas into the next plan update. We'll see how that works. The board also created what we call a coordinating Committee which meets every other month and all folks are invited to come.

We, we manage it, but it creates an avenue and a place for communication, shared ideas, sort of Throwing things out, not in a session where you've got somebody with the gavel, but a lot of people with opinions and shared ideas on how to move forward positively, not just complaining.

And the board itself, at its, at our monthly meetings, provides updates of these activities for people who are not able to go slide 9. This slide is going to require some concentration on your part. So this is another homework slide.

It demonstrates both the in progress, the hoped for and the identified actions that are necessary in both valleys, both basins and the Central Valley. So we're going to leave these slides, I think with you because they're going to be very informative as you think through and hopefully work with us to, to get the things that we need.

Next slide, and it's the last one, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. I'll just highlight what we want to do. We want to build and leverage on our local, regional and state partnerships. We want to work together to have the funding that we need to protect the people and the property and the infrastructure of our Central Valley.

We want to focus on protecting local vulnerable communities and through our regional flood management planning. We have made great, strong stride in doing that, which is another reason the plan might best cover all of the Central Valley. Just saying.

It is very important to continue to get the message with all of the other things that we face in life, you as legislators, those of us as homeowners, those of us as board Members trying to do the best we can for the State of California that flood risk protection means saving lives, saving people's homes and businesses protects infrastructure.

And I will also say that the actions that the flood board can take include designating floodway and where floodwaters would go. And so I've already outreached to people who are doing Sigma and other issues throughout, throughout the area that if we could direct where they go, then they won't go to someone's home or the state prison or the state highway. I come from an agricultural county. I would love to work with you on that.

Farmers can be a key, key benefit in this, this occurring for, for them and for the state. So thank you for that very much. I appreciate that. I would love to have the opportunity to meet with any of you originally. And if you want to have our shortened copy of the flood plan, which is only 20 pages, not 280, we'd be happy to share that with you.

Thank you so much. I do have some questions, but I'll turn it over to Committee Members for questions. First, Assembly Member Macedo, thank you so.

Much for your presentation. A big part of what we're learning today is there's so many agencies and people involved with this plan. And that's great because we need all of their backgrounds and expertise. We need to work together because our water systems truly are very connected as a state.

My question that I have is, do you see challenges in that interagency communication that's slowing that process down at all, or is there a way that we can help increase the efficiency of that communication? Because time is of the essence, both in prevention and also answering when we have these situations arise.

Well, it is a challenge. No question about it. When you have your own. Your own agency, your own board, your own whatever, you, you, that's what you focus on. But I think the partnership, that DWR, massive organization so important, they could ignore us if they want, I guess.

I don't think they plan, I think, is a real good example, and I think that it's beginning to have more of a coordination there. We flood board Members attend Delta Stewardship Council. They attend the Delta Protection Council. They attend the local AFCAs, which we call, you know, flood flood agencies.

And just keeping that communication there and pushing it. I'm. I'm a big fan of that. I just do it. I'm just a direct person in that regard. I was a county supervisor. I didn't want to fight with my five cities anymore. I wanted us to work together to make the county better. It wasn't easy, right?

First they ask you, what do you mean? You leave us alone? And then you just keep that communication going. Our coordinating Committee is bringing in more of them as well. So it's clear everybody's got. We always call them their silos. And I think it's breaking down because if we don't work together, we can't work it.

Do you have anything you wanted to add?

I was just going to add and reiterate. Having the Central Valley Flood protection plan as sort of a vehicle that must be updated every five years really does serve as sort of a forum where we gather as local agencies, the state and our federal partners also to create those updates and align on what we envision in the Central Valley flood protection to look like for the next planning horizon. Like she said, 30 years.

I think in the Central Valley, we do a really good job. Statewide, I think we would like to do more, like I mentioned earlier, sort of planning and that base modeling to really be prepared for when the state does need to step in in its emergency response role, but also just to assist technically with agencies as they Prepare as well. Flooding.

My follow up question is, like I said, time is of the essence. Do you have a forecast of any plans or any insight of how we're maybe going to streamline the permitting process for these projects or maybe kind of overcome those regulatory hurdles that are taking an amount of time that we just don't have currently?

I know the state has a variety of efforts that it is working on, but the like was mentioned earlier some of the recharge trying to work in that, that that area in particular is a focus right now. But I know streamlined permitting is something that's important to us and local agencies.

I agree. Almost everyone will say cutting the red tape, cutting the green tape, streamlining is so important. It is the most difficult thing to do. Absolutely. And so perhaps maybe some legislative view on that one, maybe encouraging regular conversations that are not stiff among all the agencies to do.

And I will say some of your own legislation is a little stiff too, but we just will work for that. You know, on the flood board if we, if we have an issue and there's permitting things, we call for a hearing and ask the folks to come forward about how we can get that done.

When something takes a year and a half for a permit to come from. Unidentified agency we're not going to wait a year and a half anymore. We're going to call and say what's going on, what can we help?

And sometimes some of the regulatory entities, in my opinion, they haven't asked my opinion, but you can have it now, they need to kind of like step back and not wait for perfection and Allow things to occur.

Because we're running short of time. You got anything else?

No. I look forward to the collaboration with you. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I just got a couple quick questions because we are running short on time and I appreciate you both being here and we know that nothing happens without a plan and you got to Fund a plan ultimately. So my question is follow up on some of the planning and some of the funding.

And I want to talk just ask very briefly what makes a project ELL eligible for of the flood control subvention program and how many projects you currently got going and then how much has the state committed to those projects? Can you give me a pretty quick rundown?

Yes, I will. Yes. So for a project, the first step is that a project needs to have federal authorization. So once the project has federal authorization, it also needs to obtain state authorization, which means it needs to actually the legislation that goes into the water code and then we go through the process to determine the state cost share and the local cost share. There's some flexibility to go from 70,50 to 70.

And then Pajaro, of course, had its special legislation for its cost share. Right now, my understanding is we have 12 projects, but there are more on the books, meaning there's more in the water code that might not have the funding right now available or appropriated to them for the state cost share. So.

So one question I'll have to get back to you on is the exact, like the aggregate amount right now. I'll have to get back to you on that. I don't have that number right now.

We know you ain't got enough. So I do have a question about dams, though. How many are in the cause? You know, they can play an important part of flood control, certainly, and retaining water for when we need it. So how many are considered a part of the SPFC and after that, how many are high hazard and in need of repair?

Yeah, so there my. My understanding there's four that are state plan of flood control that have that designation. Of those I am not, I would have to go back and check their actual hazard designation. But we do have outside, there's 1,200 jurisdictional dams that DWR regulates, but four with the State Plan of Flood Control designation.

1200. Do you know the percentage of how many of those are high hazard?

Yeah, I would say most, but I don't have the exact percentage.

Is it about 90%?

I don't think it's quite that high.

90 total. That are. That are high hazard.

Yeah. And their primary purpose is water supply.

I'm sorry, say that one more time.

Their primary purpose is water supply, but they do, of course, contribute to flood control. And they're not as big as the dams in Northern California.

That's right. So their. Their double purpose makes them incredibly important, I think.. I just thought I'd throw that in on the record. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Assembly Member Bennett.

I would just like to offer this observation. I completely agree that we shouldn't have long delay times for permits. I completely agree. We shouldn't have, you know, agencies demanding the perfect and holding up a project. And I also.

But I also think there are two things that go with this that we should recognize, because I think we're all in favor of streamlining. We recognize that some agencies have been moving too slow. Some agencies have, and I've experienced it in 20 years as a county supervisor.

But if we want agencies to move quickly, we want agencies to really focus. They have to have the resources to do it over and over again. I find agencies saying, we've got X amount of work to do and we've got not enough people.

So oftentimes, those of us that are trying to streamline those agencies also think that the solution is to cut their budgets. The solution is to make sure that we're getting every dollar's worth of value out of their budget.

So I'm not suggesting that it's just giving them more money, but we need to get that, that money out of there. But the other aspect of this I'd like to emphasize is almost all of those regulations were put in to protect somebody, to protect something, right? And we should not lose sight.

The word regulation has such a negative connotation. We have to make sure that we remember that the fundamental reason, usually those things are put in for a good reason, and then they get caught up in the bureaucracy of that. And so I just would like to make sure we keep that balance in mind.

If we want streamlining and we want regulatory agencies to do a good job, we have to give them the resources. We have to put the right oversight on them to make sure they use the resources properly.

But we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is the protection, because that's how we'll get the next crisis where people say, why didn't government protect us from this when they did this with the levy? Why didn't they protect us? Well, it's because we streamline it to the point where we wouldn't let that happen. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Assembly Member Bennett. With that, we'll have our next panelist come forward. We have Tom Engler of the California Central Valley Flood Control Association, Meegan Nagy, who is the deputy manager of reclamation for District 108, and Ken Hiatt, City Manager for the City of Woodland. Come on down. Tell us about the state plan of flood control. We'll start with Mr. Engler.

Member Papan. Members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Tom Engler. I'm the engineer for the Central Valley Flood Control Association. Our Association is comprised of local flood management agencies in the California Central Valley, including cities, counties, reclamation and levy districts, as well as urban area agencies who undertake and operate to operate and maintain state plan of Flood control and federal project levy systems.

We closely rely on our partnerships with the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, who serves as a non federal sponsor and Department of Water Resources, who you've heard provides an array of planning, design, technical reviews, inspections and response, and who acts as a local maintaining agency for a number of facilities.

Our Members also work closely with state and federal resource agencies, non governmental organizations and tribal interests to ensure environmental compliance and ecosystem benefits as we work to provide adequate protection for California citizens. You've already heard about how the great flood risk in California and how climate change may continue to exacerbate that risk.

Our state partners have done a good job highlighting the various efforts underway to reduce the risk in our communities and I would like to commend them for all these critical efforts.

I'd now like to provide a quick history on the Central Valley flood control projects, emphasize the state's unique role that you've heard a little bit about already, and then hit on the Paterno decision one more time and then finally end with what you guys can do to help us.

So history, we all know California was the Gold Rush, brought a mass migration of settlers to the state, was a big part to us becoming a State in 1850. What many people don't know is that the Gold Rush also had tremendous impacts on flood control when in 1853 hydraulic miners entered the realm and started using large monitors to wash away hillsides to capture gold in their sluices.

Unfortunately, the process created significant debris known as slickens to run through the waterways and settle in the channel beds of our rivers and streams, basically raising the channel beds and causing extreme flood risk throughout the valley.

Hydraulic mining was eventually stopped in 1884 with a landmark decision, the Sawyer Decision, which is considered the first environmental decision in the history of the United States that decided mining debris posed dangers to private land, Particularly lands in the Central valley. Federal government then formed the California Debris Commission in 1893.

And constructed numerous features to control movement of debris through the system and to flush that sediment out to the ocean. In 1910, Colonel Jackson of the Debris Commission Then developed a report and passed it on to Congress.

That's known as the Jackson Report, which provided a comprehensive project to control floods and flush out hydraulic mining debris in central valley. That plan was then. Under that plan, normal flows would be confined to the river channels, Helping to flush mining debris.

And then high flows would be sent out over weirs into flood bypasses out into the system, as the system naturally did before development in the 1800s. Congress eventually approved that plan in 1917. And after that, it took till about 19 early 50s. For the Federal Government to come in and improve all the levees in the central valley.

It was completed in the early 1950s. And these systems are now known as the Sacramento and San Joaquin flood control projects. So we've heard a lot about the great floods of 1861 and 62. That dumped an equivalent of 10ft of rain and snow over 43 days. It's been described as the worst disaster to strike California.

Caused a lot of damage. The Governor, state Legislature and state employees Were not paid for a year and a half. And 4,000 people died, which at the time was equivalent to about 1% of the state's population. This is also the flood where newly elected Leland Stafford had to row his boat to his inauguration here at the capitol.

The most interesting thing about that flood, and something that might hit home for all of you, Is that they were constructing this capitol building that we're in here today. And you see the doors in the portico on the second floor of the west side of the capitol building Was included in part due to the potential For a similar flood event to occur.

Another flood event happened in 1868, and they subsequently abandoned the first floor that is now the basement of this building, and moved the first floor to the second floor. That was all as a result of the floods of the 1860s. So we've heard a little bit about the state's role in flood control in the Central Valley.

That makes it pretty unique. But because of the numerous local agencies, Cities and counties who had been. Who had flood facilities in the valley, the state, through the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, which was then known as the reclamation board back then, Agreed to take responsibility for the federally designed and constructed Systems.

And in 1953, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Government providing assurances that they would operate and maintain that system. This is again how the state has such a unique role in the Central Valley flood control projects. So where are we today? Systems have performed remarkably well since the 1950s.

We've had a lot of high water events, a lot of floods, and we've done pretty darn well since then. In addition, both the state and Federal Governments have added numerous dams and reservoirs. We know about that. You ask questions about those, that many of those provide flood control and help reduce the peak surge coming down the system.

And talk about the one major flood. You've heard a little bit about the Paterno decision, the 1986 flood in Linda. The levee broke near the Mall In December of 1980, or January 1986, I believe maybe it was December. February. Thank you. So the 1986 flood resulted in another landmark decision which we've talked about, the paternal decision.

There were about 3,000 plaintiffs that filed a suit against local reclamation districts in the state. That case took till the early 2000s to get to the California Supreme Court. And the California Supreme Court decided that the RD was not liable. But the State of California indeed was because based on substantial part that its formal acceptance of the levies from the Federal Government.

And further, they found that the state's acceptance of the levy systems without investigation into their stability and assuming they were sufficient despite reports the levies had risk of failure and subsequent failure to Fund repairs to the levy system was an unreasonable action that caused taking of property.

The state paid out about 467 million to those 3,000 property owners affected by that flood. So what do we need? I recently heard a quote from one of your Senate colleagues, Senator McNerney, who said you never get credit for disasters prevented.

Quote, kind of makes a lot of sense to me because none of us in this room want to have the finger pointed at us at the next flood when we have catastrophic failure because we didn't do enough to prevent it.

After Katrina struck New Orleans and the Central Valley was identified as the highest risk area for flooding in the country, this state Legislature passed several bills to help address that risk. You heard a little bit about those earlier. Most importantly, they required the Flood Protection Board and DWR to produce a plan. You've heard about that as well.

And the plan's been completed and through its updates. According to Last update in 2022 requires about 380 million a year in just routine investment and then about 18 to 30 billion over the next 30 years to bring the system up to today's standard. We know that standard is always changing.

This number is also likely going to change as we better understand the effects of climate change and where that where that's taking us. So we're here today to strongly encourage you to do two things. One, increase the annual routine budgets for flood control. While the flood protection plan identifies 380 million in annual needs, we've never seen that.

We've been lucky to get between 2 to 300 million in surplus years over the last several years. And this January's Governor's Budget cuts that to about 120 million. That's barely enough to keep the lights on in our agencies. Lack of funding here helps keep us from.

It would prevent us from doing the routine operations and maintenance, let the system get a lot worse and then things are going to cost a lot more in the future to bring up to par. The second thing we need is for support on bond measures. Last year we worked with Senator Eggman and flood interests across the state to propose a $6.1 billion bond for statewide flood control dam safety projects.

Unfortunately, it didn't make it through Committee and at the administration's request was combined in a Proposition for the Safe Drinking Water Wildfire Prevention and Protecting Communities and Natural Lands from Climate Risks Bond Act. That was all the, all the various climate bonds were combined into one bond package.

So our 6.1 billion that we had for dam safety and flood control was reduced to somewhere less than a billion, with SPFC facilities getting about 250 million. That's just a drop in the hat of what we need. So consistent funding identified will provide for various programs to help us and our partners advance our goals.

Additionally, we've been tremendously successful in the recent years leveraging those state investments to bring in federal funding to reduce risks, including urban flood risk reduction programs that have brought in over $2 billion of federal investment in the urban areas of California.

Urban areas are defined as areas that protect 10,000 people or more, especially Sacramento, Stockton, West Sacramento, Yuba City City and Marysville. And those are just a few small community flood risk reduction. Small communities are those legacy communities that don't meet the urban standard.

They've secured about 37 million to improve the levy system protecting the severely disadvantaged community in Knights Landing. Basically, we invested about $500,000 in a study, about $10 million in the initial round of improvements. And the Federal Government stepping in to cover about the next 33 of 37 million.

And the Disadvantaged Community Funds is coming from OES Regional Flood Management Planning. You heard about this from the Flood Protection Board. This is the local grassroots part of the Central Valley flood plan. Brings together local cities, counties to provide their input into the plan.

It's also helped us develop all these strong partnerships across the board with the resource agencies, the locals make sure that everybody's happy with what we're putting on paper before we start to implement it. That's a very minimal investment. It takes us about 3 to 6 $1.0 million a year to keep those, those locals involved.

So that's, that's a very small investment. Delta Levy subventions this program's been around since the 1970s to provide flood protection and ecosystem uplift to the Sacramento, San Joaquin river deltas. Funding is critical to maintain water quality standards and protect against levy failure.

Levy failure in the delta could result in saltwater intrusion, which would mean we would have to cut off all diversions to south of the delta interest, including AG in the southern part of the Delta Valley and potable water to portions of La. The statewide conventions program.

I'm not going to get into too much detail on this because you're going to hear some presentations on this in the next panel. But flood risk reduction funding for other interests outside the Central Valley, these are important. They're important partners of ours. We all see flooding. All 58 counties in the state are susceptible to flooding, especially those that burn and then flood. And then finally DWR's deferred maintenance programs.

So what we learned in the flood protection planning process is that we've got a strong backlog of deferred maintenance issues such as pipe crossings, vegetation, sediment management, rodent control, minor erosion, other minor repairs to facilities. These activities are critical to maintaining eligibility for federal rehabilitation assistance. So the Army Corps inspects our levies.

If we're not meeting the maintenance standards, they make us ineligible for federal assistance and a flood happens and the Federal Government does not have to help us rebuild our levees. In closing, as Benjamin Franklin wisely said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

You, the Legislature mandated that the flood community develop a plan to provide protection of the Central Valley. And we, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, DWR and local agencies have that plan identifies the investments needed to execute that plan. And we need your help to do that.

Please help us by increasing your investments, making them more consistent and supporting future flood specific bond measures. Doing this will help us prevent the floods we don't get the credit for. So we don't get the credit for them and blame for not doing anything. Thank you.

Thank you so much. From your mouth to the Governor's ears. Let's move on. Ms. Nagy, welcome. Did I say it right?

No, but that's okay. I'm used to it. It's been my whole life.

Please correct me. That's okay. How do you pronounce your last name?

Nagy.

Naji. Nice to see you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. Chair, Chairman Papin and Members of the Committee. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. My Name's Megan Nagy. So 20 years ago, I was working for the U.S. army Corps of Engineers and was deployed ahead of a storm that was forecast to hit Florida.

As Hurricane Katrina hit landfall, we all breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't as bad as we had predicted. Then it entered the Gulf and we watched as the intensity increased and we sat in horror as it slammed into New Orleans. Watching that first levee breach was devastating. We all quickly regrouped into how we could help Louisiana.

And I spent the next three months there in response and recovery. The loss, destruction and chaos is something I will never forget. I committed from that day forward to do everything within my power to never have to repeat that in my own community again. I'm Megan Naeji.

I'm the General manager of the Sacramento River Westside Levee District and the Knights Landing Ridge Drainage District. I also serve as a deputy manager for flood control at Reclamation District 108.

My districts encompass about 90 miles of state Plan of Flood control levees and protect over 100,000 acres of rural and agricultural areas in northern Yolo and southern Caloosa counties. The protected area includes the towns of Knights Landing, which Tom mentioned, the town of Grimes, as well as the City of Colusa.

I started working for the districts in January 2017. The week leading up to my first day, I watched the forecast and I knew I was going to be put to the test from day one. My third day on the job, we started levy patrols and continually patrolled.

With only a few days a break for 52 days, I got to see firsthand the fragility of our levees. Today's hearings titled Is California Ready for Flood? Based on my on the ground experience, quite frankly, no. The investments necessary to maintain what we have and build resiliency have not kept pace with the need.

We're one storm away from disaster. Local maintaining agencies like mine are preventing disasters every winter that go unnoticed and we strive to stay out of the spotlight.

The difficult part is that sends a message that the system's fine and doesn't need the investment that's necessary it's ironic that investment in our flood control system has become victim to our success in avoiding failure. 2023 was historic water year, but we dodged a bullet because it was preceded by two years of drought.

The reservoirs were largely empty and there was plenty of storage space to accept the excess rainfall and runoff. Had we started 2023 at the 2024 reservoir levels or even average storage, the 2023 flood event would have been very different.

The duration of the event would have been extended by a month or more, keeping high water on our levees, which would have led to widespread levee distress. Unlike other parts of the country, the levees of the Sacramento Valley are generally tall enough to contain the design flow.

We don't tend to see our levees overtopped, but because of the age and design of the Sacramento Valley levee systems, we tend to see the types of geotechnical failures from long duration high water causes. These types of failures are typically sudden and potentially catastrophic.

Unless you are on the levees and rivers daily, it often goes unnoticed how often our systems are working to protect us. The storms that hit the Sacramento Valley in early February of this year only rained for about a week, yet the water remained high in our systems as the dams metered that water out over about three weeks.

This operation is critical to not overwhelming the levees at one time, but places the flood control system under stress for extension extended periods of time.

It's important to understand that much of the Sacramento river flood control system can continue to provide rural, small, underserved communities and agricultural areas like my districts with the protection they need as long as we reinvest in the current system and make targeted improvements to the levies that protect vulnerable communities.

Just as if you purchased a home 100 years old, the bones may be good, but major maintenance and upgrade are needed. There's a lot of wear and tear that occurs when these levees withstand high water annually. So how do we go about addressing these needs?

As Bill Edgar, former President of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, said, we must take care of what we have. The Legislature increased DWR's baseline budget in 2018 to Fund necessary deferred maintenance to meet state and federal standards. Part of this funding was used to create the Flood Maintenance Assistance Program.

In appropriating funding for the program, it was the Legislator's intent that DWR use the funds to reduce future costs to taxpayers associated with State Plan of Flood Control.

Through the program, DWR works with funding recipients like my districts to help keep all local maintaining agencies and state Plan of Flood control facilities eligible for federal rehabilitation assistance that Tom mentioned after flood events and to continue to advance the facilities towards full compliance with federal standards.

The funding has allowed agencies to make great strides correcting outstanding deficiencies. Due to state budget constraints, no funding for the program was available in 2025. DWR's baseline budget needs to be restored and maintained, if not increased, to ensure these programs are restored. To stress the importance of meeting federal standards and the value of this program.

In my district alone, we received over $30 million in federal rehabilitation assistance since 2017. Any inability to meet federal maintenance standards puts this funding for future flood events at risk. The Central Valley Flood Protection Plan included prioritizing flood protection improvements for small disadvantaged communities.

The levies need to ensure that we have at least 100 year level of protection. Grimes, a small community within my district, received a State grant in 2020 for design, permitting and real estate. We were able to use that funding as well as regional flood management program funding that Jane talked about to develop a FEMA grant application.

Using about $20,000 in local funds, $50,000 in regional flood management planning funds, my district was able to develop a competitive application and ultimately resulted in an estimated $26 million project being selected as one of FEMA's 2021 Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities projects.

The $26 million once awarded by FEMA will help Fund construction for levy seepage mitigation that will improve flood protection for the community of Grimes. The state providing seed money resulted in a multimillion dollar federal investment that needs to be expanded across the Central Valley.

Many of the deficiencies noted in federal levy inspections are third party encroachments which have either been constructed without authorization, haven't been properly maintained, or have been inappropriately abandoned. The state, through the Central Valley Flood Protection Board is responsible for encroachment, permitting and enforcement within the Central Valley.

Adequate funding for the Central Valley Flood Protection Board is essential for timely permit reviews and necessary enforcement. Local maintaining agencies have little authority over encroachments and lack of progress in correcting. These again place the federal rehabilitation assistance at risk. So we are stronger when we work together collaboratively to understand the priorities, needs and challenges facing one another.

Since 2013, local flood management regions have been working together to inform the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan and ensure that it incorporates local priorities and issues. This is critical in developing an uncontested plan and bring on board local agencies to help implement the vision. We've worked through institutional barriers, shared successes and developed strategies to access federal funding.

We've worked for the last 17 years to build trusting relationships within the regions. Funding for regional flood management programs will ensure this progress we've made to date is not lost and remains strong. Through local, state and federal partnerships, we successfully flood fought 201719 and 23 floods.

A huge part of the success can be attributed to the extensive emergency response planning that has been done the years leading up to my start. I was able to get our emergency operations plan, meet local emergency response leaders and execute a plan in a matter of days in my first week of work.

After eight years with the districts half of those requiring significant emergency response efforts, the importance of continual investment in our emergency response planning and flood forecasting cannot be stressed enough. In closing, it is important to understand that our climate is changing faster than we're adapting.

Our facilities, already aged and stressed, cannot continue to be expected to withstand the impacts of a changing climate, and we need to collectively decide if we're going to accept those facts. Are we willing to make the necessary investments for our communities, or are we going to continue to gamble?

An emergency is defined as a serious, unexpected and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action. When every high water event becomes an emergency, it's no longer an emergency, it's just another day on the levee. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Mr. Hiatt, welcome.

Yes, good morning Chair Poppin, Members of the Committee, thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be able to speak to you this morning. My name is Ken Hiatt. I'm the City Manager for the City of Woodland and I've developed PowerPoint trust issues over the years. So I've handed out a two page summary for you.

Hopefully you have that in front of you. For those that are not familiar, for those that may not be familiar with Woodland, We're a modest agricultural community, 62,000 just 12 miles to the northwest here of Sacramento and the capital and just across the great Sacramento river and the Yolo Bypass from the International Airport.

Based on some hard learned lessons, Woodlands is a test case, we'll say, for the importance of garnering broad support for flood protection, particularly amongst the population. In our case, that may land on the unprotected side of flood protection. So I'll share a little bit about our story and our particular risk.

The City of Woodland and the surrounding unincorporated area Yolo County faces significant flood risk from both Cache Creek as well as Yolo Bypass, both state levee facilities. The 200 year floodplain encompasses over 39,000 acres.

Cache Creek levees in particular overtop in a seven year flood event resulting in the lowest level of flood protection of any urban area in the Central Valley.

More than 25% of the city falls within a FEMA special flood hazard area including critical infrastructure, economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, our entire industrial area which hosts 10,000 plus jobs, 10 miles of Interstate 5, the city's wastewater treatment plants, as well as a regional water treatment facility which provides clean drinking water to 2/3 of the county's population.

A 200 year flood event would clearly be devastating and it would take decades to fully recover and billions to overcome.

So in spite of the risk that the city is facing, the city has struggled to identify a solution to flood threat that has broad local support and yet at the same time can be funded by both the state and Federal Government.

The solution that the Corps has identified has been authorized for construction by Congress, protects the city, but the rural agricultural community, an area just north of the urbanized area of the city and south of Cache Creek, would not be protected by that project.

The Corps selected plan this plan specifically because it's lowest cost project and also does not induce growth within the floodplain to critical criteria that the Corps carries with their project.

However, the city cannot participate in this solution because of a ballot initiative that local interests put before the community and convince the community that flood protection was not in its best interest. The city now is faced with how do we move forward?

The city is now proposing to conduct a study in partnership with Yolo County and the Department of Water Resources that will identify a much more comprehensive solution that has broad local support as well. As part of that study, we will explore opportunities to implement flood informed reservoir operations and other upstream actions to reduce the peak flows.

We have two reservoirs upstream on Cache Creek that are not part of the state's responsibility, but are both Clear Lake and Indian Valley Reservoir, which are locally managed facilities that to date have not been analyzed as part of flood protection for woodland along Cache Creek.

We will also evaluate how to address increased flood risk that will result from climate change. The modeling that we have done to date for the flood project has not contemplated climate change so clearly that will be important moving forward.

As well as incorporating other benefits such as habitat restoration, recreation and groundwater recharge, we intend to work closely with those who have been to date in opposition of our interest to provide flood protection for our community and identify a solution that they can support. And at the same time, both the state and Federal Government will help Fund.

So we appreciate the state's support to date and this Committee who's supported legislation to help increase state funding support for our flood project, unfortunately was held up. But we do appreciate the Committee's interest in providing flood protection for our community. Thank you. So, really quickly, why did your ballot measure not pass?

Well, we're in an interesting era where misinformation and disinformation can be very persuasive. And as a result, the ballot measure that we put before our community a year ago to essentially overturn a 2002 measure which told the city that we could not invest in a flood protection project that was substantially similar to the prior 2002 core project.

And so, after another 15 years and millions of dollars of feasibility study, the Corps landed on another project, naturally very similar to the one previous. And so the courts told us that project was too similar to the ballot Measure project in 2002. We tried to go to the voters to overturn that, and the opposition was very persuasive and well funded and convinced the voters that it was not in the interest of our community.

Is it that it includes things that are outside the city limits? Is that part of the issue there or. No?

The issue really boils down to the specific initiative language in 2002 that prohibited the city from advancing a project that was substantially similar to the core project in 2002. And the courts opined that the project that we were advancing in 2000 or 2017 was substantially similar enough that we had to go get voter support.

But what's the. What was the objection to the core project in 2002.

Boil it down to. Probably those that were on the wet side of the setback. Levy felt that they were not included in protection and wanted to see a project that provided protection for them.

The project that would provide protection for them, however, would be cost prohibitive, and the Corps would not participate in that project, leaving the state and the local to be able to Fund the project, which we don't have the resources locally to Fund it. And the state, I don't think, was in the same position.

I see. So it was looking for perfection, perhaps.

Correct.

Okay. I just didn't know the background. Very good question. Yeah, I know. I knew that was out there, but I didn't know exactly all the particulars. Well, thank you all for being here, and I appreciate the commencing. Each of you commenced with the vulnerabilities that are amongst us.

And that was partly my thinking about convening this hearing, because this state is an economic engine. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and all the water people that I have come to know so well are in the audience. But this state is an economic engine for this country.

And if we don't get those federal dollars to make sure that this state remains safe and also remains a place where it has this beautiful commodity and necessary commodity that is water, we are in deep trouble. And so that was a part of why I was here.

And I appreciate what you might try to get from the state. And we're working very hard. But the vulnerabilities and what they will do to our economy cannot be understated, in my humble opinion. So as a chair, I get the chance.

I sit in a lot of committees where other people make these statements, and I feel compelled to make them in my Committee, which is why I so fascinated by this Committee and really believe in what could be accomplished here. So I appreciate all of that.

So I do have a specific question, but before I do so, I just want to check with the Committee Members that are here. Anybody questions this relates to the. To the state plan of flood control. And it's my understanding that there are levity. Levies that are not necessarily a part of the state plan. Would you like to see them in there? Do you think they should be added? And I'm going to start with, with you, Ms. Nagy.

I've. In my region, I'm going to speak to in my area, my jurisdiction. I we all of our levies in our including our neighbors are all plan of the state plan of flood control. So the northern Sacramento Valley is largely represented within that.

As you start to get further south into the delta that is where you start to have very interspersed levies that are part of the state plan of flood control and levies that are not. There's pluses and minuses of being part of the state plan of flood control. Tom's probably a better.

I think it has to depend on the individual cases. There's levies in our system that you have non state plan of flood control levies that are protecting areas protected by state plan of flood control. That entire basin should probably be part of the state plan of flood control.

But with the state plan of flood control comes several regulatory agencies. You have to go through a lot more regulatory background to be able to do a project where that the non project levies as we refer to them can do more without that stuff. But there's also the funding opportunities.

You don't have the Federal Government involvement so there's pros and cons and you have to evaluate it on a case by case basis. There are some levies in the system that probably should be added to the state plan of flood control and there's probably a lot of levies that should be left to the private entities who are maintaining them.

Okay, that's fair. So it can be a blessing and a curse depending on who you are and where you are. Okay, I was just curious about that. So and let me just ask you one other question.

This deals with multiple benefit flood management projects and I'd just like to know what do you think are some of the challenges to those and what are the advantages to those sorts of projects.

So my districts are very involved in a lot of multi benefit activities. Reclamation District 108 is a leader in developing projects that are contained within our already existing flood bypasses. And how can we enhance those? So the challenges, the benefits when constructed correctly, you know, they can lower water surface elevations, they can slow down the water.

But in my area for example the communities, it's called a perched levee. The communities are actually on high ground next to the river. It actually slopes away the further you get from the river, the lower the elevation.

So setting back a levee near one of my communities doesn't necessarily help because that's not the Low ground, that's the high ground. It really has to be selective in how a multi benefit project is designed and where it's located. So if it's located in the right location, they are absolutely fabulous.

The other part that is a challenge for a local is when we're required to have a multi benefit element on it and it's maybe in a location that isn't conducive to a great try to slap something on to have those benefits. It's not necessarily perfect.

It adds a lot of cost for a community that already is struggling to meet the flood needs. And not only that initial capital cost, but the ongoing operations and maintenance costs into the future. And so all of those combined make it a challenge in my region.

In the Upper Sacramento area, mid and upper Sacramento area, we've been advocating for a regional approach to multi benefit so they don't have to be linked to specific projects. Let's look at the region and where are the appropriate locations for multi benefit aspects. But don't necessarily make it link to every single project.

Some projects are better gray projects and some projects are better as environmental restoration. So how do we delink that but still give credit to those projects so they can move forward?

Yeah. To add to that, there are a lot of environmental opportunities in the existing flood control system that we should really look to take those opportunities and make those. Like Meegan said, let's look at it regionally and see all the different benefits we can provide to the ecosystem and not have to link those to specific projects.

Some of the multi benefit projects that people talk about, why don't you just set back that levy? What you have to realize is when you set back a levy, it lowers the water surface elevation, which in many parts of the system then lets less water go over the weirs into the bypasses, sends more water down the main stem providing. So basically you're transferring risk from one area to more than likely a populated urban area.

So we have to be really careful on the hydraulics of the system to make sure that the flow splits at those weirs are not changed too dramatically. But there are a lot of opportunities for setback levies in the system and we've taken advantage of a lot of those opportunities.

But from a multi benefit standpoint, I think we have a lot of opportunity in the existing system that we need to take advantage of. And then look at those key points that can support a setback levy or set forward levy or transitory storage.

As we mentioned earlier, flood manage aquifer recharge in the southern part of the valley is looking fairly promising. So those types of things we definitely do look at. We need to continue looking at, but we can't link everything to multi benefit because there's just not always the opportunity.

Great. Thank you so much. Okay. With that, we'll move on to our next panel. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it, and good luck in woodland. Our final panel, flood control subventions program.

We have Karen Cowan, Executive Director of California Stormwater Quality Association, Mark Strudley, General manager of Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, and Jason Uhley, who is General manager of Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. I'm only seeing two people, so I'm guessing Jason coming up. Okay, well, we'll start with Karen Cowan. Welcome.

Good morning. I think we're still morning, Madam Chair and honorable Members of the Committee. So my name is Karen Cowan. I'm the Executive Director of the California Stormwater Quality Association. And thank everybody for having us here today.

We probably have a little bit of a different perspective from what you've heard today, so I'm really glad that we can be a part of this conversation. Next slide, please. The California Stormwater Quality Association represents a lot of Californians. So the Members we have are people who are regulated under stormwater permits.

So our mission is, on behalf of stormwater permittees, we advance sustainable stormwater management protective of California water resources. And every single part of that mission statement is very important to us. We have two different types of regulated folks in stormwater. From a municipal lens, you have the phase one folks. Those are the very large urban communities.

And then you have phase two or the smaller ones, 100,000 or less. The majority of Californians are really regulated through an MS.4 permit. The smaller communities tend to be in Region 5, which is the Central Valley region, the Central Coast region, and the North Bay region.

There's phase two all throughout the state, but that's where the largest kind of clusters are. So we represent almost all phase one communities and a good portion of the phase two community as well. Next slide, please.

So the reason why I want to talk about it from a stormwater perspective, if you think about it, everything we're talking about is rain. We just call it different things in different places, but it is rain.

And the more we think about it in terms of rain, I think the smarter, more effective policy decisions we make as a state, rather than siloing things into different buckets of waters, literally. So from the stormwater perspective, again, this is rainwater. Stormwater, you call it floodwater. It is what happens when it rains.

So Casca, as an organization, we have a strategic plan. And as we are ourselves not Regulated, our Members are regulated. We do have a little bit of a luxury of taking a step back to say let's focus on solutions.

A lot of times we talk about process, what should be in a permit, how do you change a permit when a permit comes up for reissuance. But this is the opportunity, if you call it multi benefit. I really talk about outcomes, like what are the outcomes we're driving towards?

So this is what really we do as an organization and what we mean by lead. So we have a document here, the Vision for Sustainable Stormwater Management, which is very, very outcome driven. And where I think we have this significant overlap when we talk about flood, I should also mention again, we talk about stormwater or flood.

All of these people who I'm talking about from a municipal lens, they have the same system. That's why they're regulated. They have a flood control system, so a drainage system, whatever it may be, they have these equal responsibilities in terms of flood control as well as the water quality side, which is why they have the MS.4 permit.

And again, I don't think that these are opposite goals. I think that they are complementary goals so long as we make smart policy decisions that allow them to be complementary and not contradictory. Next slide please. So in our vision, these are the outcomes that we advocate for on behalf of our Members, projects and programs.

The first thing there that will probably resonate with you in this particular Committee is maximizing stormwater capture. So that basically means where we can, in the state, we put water into the ground rather than having water runoff.

The other equally very, very co equal important goal here, this is where that nexus comes together, is minimizing pollution through true source control.

So rather than asking our local communities at the local level to magically remove pollution after it's been introduced to the environment, we figure out why at a statewide scale, perhaps we might be having a problem and fix it at the problem at the source.

Because it's not only inefficient and ineffective and almost impossible to ask every Wilder body everywhere to come up with a magic treatment system for every single thing. It shifts the burden onto local communities and it is just not effective.

Those two things are what we advocate for hard and what you'll hear from us in different bills that are introduced to you and where we would ask for some support and having both of those things from a legislative perspective be supported. Policies, permits, legislation, that's your role.

Things that make the local communities do things we hope are in alignment with these goals. Public education, this is everybody understanding again that Stormwater is rainwater. It is a valuable portion of what we have. It is a resource in California.

So rather than thinking about it as this terrible, horrible thing that nobody wants, how do we protect it, how do we get it into the ground? And how do we all understand that it's an important and special part of our water supply and funding? Every single person here today said, guess what?

Please give us money and we can do what you would like us to do. The thing, in addition to just investing in projects, what you should know about stormwater, it is a fiscal orphan. I'm going to take the Public Policy Institute's phrase. I think it's perfect for stormwater. There are not ratepayers because of Prop 218.

The bar is insanely high for local communities. We've had some communities who've been successful. The most successful one that is wonderful is in the LA County area. But in terms of what it provides, it provides $280 million a year where the need is over $1.0 billion.

So if you think about that on a cumulative basis, it's providing, and that's an old number. I'm sure LA County is a higher number now, but it's roughly, maybe at most, 25% of the need. So there's a huge 75% gap where we have some money. Right? So you just take that up to the rest of the state.

There's a huge, huge gap and there's not a ratepayer base to support this infrastructure. Next slide, please. So this is, I think, a really great way, hopefully, to understand of how the stormwater world and the flood world and how this is all the same world comes together.

This is an atmospheric river graph developed by Marty Ralph from Scripps Institute. He was a keynote speaker at our conference a couple years ago. And when he put this up, I said, aha. This is the magic sauce. I can show everybody what this means.

So this is a way to communicate to people when an atmospheric river comes, which is where the majority of California's water comes from, in these atmospheric rivers, are they beneficial or are they hazardous? So this is a scale that shows duration.

So how long is the storm event coming in over a period of time on the bottom and then on the top there, you see how much rain is coming, right? So some atmospheric rivers are mostly beneficial. Some you get kind of a mix all the way up to where you get to primarily hazardous.

So this, to me is another way you can think about stormwater capture and flood control down towards the bottom of that, where we have Low intensity atmospheric rivers. We have an opportunity to do what we can do for stormwater capture.

But at some point when you get to the top of that and somewhere, perhaps in the middle, I don't have actual numbers for you, but we really, really need to think about that. Then the shift for municipalities becomes flood control, right? That's our primary driver from a regulatory perspective.

From the water quality side, the MS.4 requires everybody to do everything in that entire chart, which is a whole other conversation for another day of why that's very, very difficult. But I do think that this is a way to show that these are complementary things that we can capture stormwater and we can do flood control.

We just have to really, from a policy perspective, understand what we're dealing with in terms of duration and intensity of storms and what the mission for municipalities are under different circumstances. Next slide, please. So here's some great examples of why stormwater capture is really important.

We have the Governor's water supply strategy that identified stormwater capture as one of the primary goals for CAPT California to invest in to reduce barriers and again invest in as an opportunity for new water. And we also did a report with an independent team of economists on the socioeconomic value of urban stormwater capture.

So not even flood control and not water supply, all the benefits it brings to a community, and what they found is it's basically a one year return, which is almost unheard of for environmental investment.

So if you're going to invest $1.0 million, $1.0 billion in a community, you will get $1.0 million or $1.0 billion back with in one year and those benefits keep going. So it is a very, very underutilized and very under invested resource with massive potential.

And we have the quantitative information, which is probably just obvious to us when we just think about it qualitatively, is that if you put these projects in neighborhoods who don't have green spaces, you are massively increasing that socioeconomic benefit.

Because even beyond water quality or anything else, you're putting green spaces into communities, increasing public health and opportunities that are just wonderful investments for communities. Next slide please. True source control. We supported SB 54, Senator Allen's Bill on plastics, which I'm sure you're all very well of, particularly maybe right now.

But for us, that's a really fantastic example of thinking about trash. If we have trash, and the majority of which that comes through the local waterways is really plastic based, are we going to ask every community, just as our first line and only line of defense is to scoop it out, physically scoop it out of Water boys, obviously there's a need to do that.

Or do we also think about why we have so much plastic in our environment in the first place and ask us as a society perhaps to consume less, have less plastic and have less trash. We also have a program called Our Water, Our World, which is about aquatic toxicity essentially.

But for the day to day consumer, it's I've got a pest problem. How do I come up with a solution that maybe doesn't even need a pesticide or has a product that is the least toxic product possible?

Again, trying to get to the source control so that we're not trying to treat aquatic toxicity, we're trying to prevent it in the first place. Next slide, please. We have a public education program that we are rolling out. We just came up with our public website last year and our branding logo.

It's Rain Ready California Protecting and Collecting Water for Our Future. So if you can remember anything, perhaps out of that presentation today, this is it, right? This is what we're all trying to do. It's what we're asking our policymakers to do.

It's what we're asking ourselves to do because we all are actual people who live in this world and make choices. Next slide, please.

And I also want to thank everybody for any work anybody did to get the climate Bond Pass Proposition 4, that was huge from a stormwater perspective, because for the very first time in the funding measure, we were included as a direct line item, which means we were the goal and not a side benefit of somebody else's goal.

And I think that recognition of the role that stormwater plays and again, the opportunity that stormwater has is really important. So thank you to everybody for that on both counts, the funding as well as the direct line item. Next slide. And that's it. I end all my presentations this way because I think it is the most.

Another really important thing to always emphasize is that we're all in this together. We all have shared common goals. And the more we focus on achieving our goals, the more we can do together. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Rain ready, California. Simple but concise. Okay, so, Mark Strudley, you're up.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'll try to advance the slide myself. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this hearing. And I'm humbled to be amongst such a talented collection of legislators and practitioners. I'd also like to thank all the support over the years from Speaker Rivas, Senator Laird and the Coastal Congressional delegation.

And I feel compelled to share that. I would not be sitting here if it weren't for the mentorship I received many years ago from your first guest, Dr. Jeff Mount. He and I go way back.

I also want to thank the Committee for digging into the topics of this hearing, topics about which I, the agency for which I work, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency and the other partner agencies here are clearly passionate.

I would hazard a guess that staff at almost all the approximately 1300 flood management agencies across this wonderful state have inherited the responsibilities and facilities they manage. That responsibility is to protect the built environment, working lands, and most importantly, lives from the devastation of flooding in areas where early settlement always, always, almost always required proximity to waterways.

Many of our facilities that provide this protection levees, flood walls, pump stations are aging and in dire need of updating a replacement. A topic of frequent conversation and one that is not new.

While I could spend my time here with you encouraging the growth of the Subventions program, applauding our voters for ushering Prop 4, and generally voicing concern about the vast financial needs in front of flood risk reduction, I intend to share a slightly different narrative with you.

The challenge we face in the coastal areas of the state, in contrast to the Central Valley is available accommodation space for flooding Adjacent to many coastal towns and cities in California, coastal floodplains are subject to a regional climate that drives agriculture in those areas towards year round multi harvest berries and truck crops, the fruit and salad bowl of our nation.

Unlike almond orchards and rice fields, these crops are not flood tolerant. So when you combine crop type with the geography of smaller coastal floodplains, you have far less tolerance for multi use landscapes that work well for flooding like the Yolo Bypass.

The historic result of settlement and geography in the Pajaro Valley led the Army Corps of Engineers to deliver a levee system for our community in the 40s, but sadly it was undersized, structurally insufficient and constraining to the behavior of a lowland floodplain river.

It remains this way today, only providing protection against the flood that would on average happen once every eight years. It isn't much better than if the levees were never built, which would result in flooding once every two to five years on average.

So in 1966 the Federal Government committed itself to building new and improved system despite the myriad troubles with federal funding that led to over 50 years of planning, the details of which I won't belabor because they've been widely circulated in popular media accompanying the catastrophic flooding we're all talking about from 2023.

We are finally off to the races with construction anticipated starting this year for this project, we've been able to work quickly and creatively with the limited time and space available to us through strong partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers Engineering with Nature Program and the State Department of Water Resources Floodmar program.

In particular, the incorporation of off channel excavation inside new setback levees offers enhancement to groundwater recharge, geomorphic function and habitat creation, all while reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions because you're reducing the amount of material you're needing to secure from off site quarries.

This all leads to an acknowledgement that doing nothing in our valley, in other words leaving the system as is and not building the project, is far more environmentally damaging than implementing a project. And that in turn led to landmark streamlining and a perfect example of cutting the green tape.

Thanks to Speaker Revis and Senator Laird with AB 876, which leveraged the project's federal NEPA analysis to comply with CEQA and gave us a pass on state environmentally and regulatory requirements prior to AB 876 and in carrying out various other projects, we have found that the relationship between local agency, applicant and regulator is one driven more by oversight instead of partnership.

This is consistent with the recently released observations of the California Assembly Select Committee's report on permitting reform. Local agencies are treated akin to developers. Even though we are not profit driven.

We typically have far less resources than the private sector and only pursue gray infrastructure projects when the inheritance factors I mentioned earlier, geography and history prevent us from going green. Additionally, the regulatory process tends to exude a one way flow of information from applicant to regulator.

AB 876 provided us an opportunity to model a better way for interacting with our regulators. While AB 876 only required my agency to coordinate once with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, we have elected to engage with our regulators on a more regular basis.

Their regulatory responsibility presumes an expertise, so we are inviting our regulators to chime in on project design as we march through this multi phase project. We want the flow of information to be bi directional. While we can't promise the inclusion of all desires and project design, we welcome all the ideas and input we can get.

From the regulator's perspective, they lack resources and we've talked about this already a little bit.

Their interaction with us right now is out of their own benevolence and forward thinking because in the absence of permitting fees, their partnership is on their own dimensions and I suspect that part of the reason why typical regulatory process is so one dimensional is because the regulators are not resourced nor directed through legislation or policy to this kind of interaction.

This needs to change if we are to respond in an efficient manner to the ground moving beneath our feet created in part by climate change. And this type of relationship needs to extend from capital improvement into operations and maintenance permitting.

While the catastrophic flooding of the late excuse me, of the 80s and 90s led to Paterno in the Central Valley, it also led to Areola versus Monterey as a result of flooding in Pajaro, the latter of which essentially says a flood control agency's ability to maintain their facilities to documented performance standards cannot be hindered by regulatory requirements, including an absence of permits, despite the fact that those flood performance standards were largely inherited and created before the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, Porter, Cologne, NEPA and CEQA Coastal Management act, Magnuson, Stevenson, etc.

It puts flood control agencies between a rock and a hard place, and I'll give you one guess as to which liability is more costly, inverse condemnation or Endangered Species Act.

So as we all march forward together, I encourage this Committee to support measures that supply our friends at regulatory agencies the ability to partner to help us get it right rather than simply just telling us when we get it wrong.

To instead of asking for restoration to an historic baseline 50 years ago to help us adapt our aging infrastructure to conditions of the present and the pressures of the future, and to help us go green while recognizing that inheritance means we still sometimes need to go gray.

And before I finish, I'd just like to briefly sidestep and mention how grateful my agency is to the engineering expertise and thoughtfulness of our federal agents at the Army Corps of Engineers. Years more than ever.

Right now they need to be recognized for the fantastic work they are doing to advance infrastructure improvement across the country and in the Pajaro Valley. And they have done a stellar job in being partners with our friends at DWR and with us in Pajaro. I thank you for your time and the opportunity to be.

Okay. We will give the feds their props, no question about it. So, Mr. Uhley, welcome. Good morning.

Thank you, Chair. Members of the Committee, Jason Uhley, Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. And I'm here today.

I'm going to give you a little bit of a history of who we are, talk about the challenges we're facing on the ground, and to provide some recommendations on how I think we could do things better locally and, and at the state level. And so, first, we are a flood control district.

We're a special district created in 1945, and we operate in western Riverside County. So we basically cover from Corona all the way out to Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs. And our primary mission is to build storm drains, channels, levees, dams within our communities.

But we also partner with local water districts to capture stormwater, to recharge our local aquifers. And we partner with our cities and counties to protect the health of our lakes, rivers and streams. One thing, and this has been touched on a couple times, but flood control is a shared responsibility.

And that responsibility goes all the way down to private property owners and all the way up to the Federal Government. And for our system to work well, all these levels need to be working together, and they need to be working in partnership.

And so I wanted to stop and just talk a little bit about our partnerships at the state level. We've talked about this a little bit already, but we typically partner with the state on two fronts. The first is on state subvention funding, which helps us to basically offset the costs, the local costs for very expensive federal projects.

And we also partner with the state on grants through programs like Prop 84, Prop 1e, Prop 4. And we often use those grants to be able to build partnerships at the local level that allow us to do bigger projects than we could do on our own and also promote multi benefit, multipurpose projects.

And so I very much want to make the case that the dollars that the state provides us, we're magnifying the benefits of those on the ground in our communities. And we're very thankful for that support.

And I just wanted to take a moment again to thank the Committee and the Legislature for Prop 4, because it's continuing to Fund these priorities. And so now I want to talk a little bit about our challenges and what we're facing on the ground. And really, we're at the front line of climate change.

Things are drier more often and longer, which is leading to megafires that we've seen since 2017. But at the same time, when it rains, it's raining harder. And so we're seeing stronger atmospheric rivers, stronger monsoons in our deserts, stronger tropical storms moving further north into California.

And for our coastal brethren, we're also seeing the issues of long term sea level rise. I wanted to paint a picture for you, and I decided the best way to paint a picture was to focus on 2022. 2022 in Southern California was an incredibly wild weather year. But I'm only going to talk about three weeks in 2022. And so for us, 2022 started with the monsoon season. We had a number in our desert communities, we get monsoons, they show up as thunderstorms.

And we had a series of many, many thunderstorms that summer, which culminated in this event on October 22, where we, I think we got somewhere between 6 and 8 inches of rain in an hour. Something akin to a thousand year thunderstorm that caused a flash flood that took out the 10 Freeway for four days.

And keep in mind, the 10 Freeway is a primary truck route from our ports to the rest of the nation. Two weeks later,

Just know for the record, that is my birthday.

Oh, okay. Now you threw me off. Okay. But happy birthday, by the way. Two weeks later, we had the Fairview Fire start. This fire ended up burning 28,000 acres in Western Riverside County, driven by the drought, driven by high winds.

And this fire was about to become a very dangerous event for us because it was getting ready to crest a mountain range. And if it crested that mountain range, it was going to drive into Southwest Riverside County, into some very populated areas. This could have been our Palisades.

But at the same time this fire was burning, there was a hurricane forming off the coast of Mexico. So this is the third disaster in as many weeks. This was Hurricane K. It was a Category 2 hurricane.

It ended up plowing into Baja California, losing steam, and then kind of bouncing out into the ocean as a tropical storm. But that tropical storm still had enough energy to throw a significant amount of tropical moisture into Southern California. Some of that tropical moisture ended up being beneficial.

It helped put down that Fairview Fire before it became a much more dangerous event for us. It caused some mud and debris flows along the way, but mostly beneficial there.

But as that tropical moisture worked its way north up into the San Bernardino Mountains, which is at the border between Riverside and San Bernardino, county, those thunderstorms got stronger and they fell on the Eldorado burn scar, which had happened three years prior. And because we were in a drought, that burn scar hadn't healed.

And so the net effect of that was millions of dollars worth of damage in San Bernardino and Riverside County. There were destroyed homes, there were destroyed businesses, there was destroyed high mountain water infrastructure and destroyed roads within the cities, the counties and tribal areas.

And then I got a real short little video here just showing one of those mud flows just pushing that Jeep right along like it's nothing. And so three weeks, three natural disasters, and I don't want you to think that this was a one off event. It wasn't like 2022 was unique.

What we've noticed is every year since 2017, we've had some sort of major weather event that we've had to respond to. In 2023, it was Hurricane Hillary. Hurricane Hillary was a Category 4 hurricane that hit Baja, devolved into a tropical storm, but kept going north right into Riverside County.

It did $150 million worth of damage to our local desert communities. And I think it did $900 million worth of damage statewide. And then in 2024, we had the airport fire. The airport fire started in Orange County, crested the Santa Ana Mountains into Riverside County and burned our mountain community of El Carrizo, and several homes were lost.

Now, in 2025, as we speak, we're worried about the rains in Southern California and the mud flows that we know are going to be coming out of that burn scar back into these communities. Now, I want to just take a minute to tuck on recommendations.

I got a long list here, but I'm going to try and go through them fast. The first recommendation I have is with dealing with mud debris flows. When the state declares a fire emergency, it has a fire emergency declaration. It's always about the fire.

But I can tell you that local agencies, including the cities, the county, the flood control district, that fire isn't even out yet and we're already trying to figure out where the mud and debris flows are going to come when it rains.

And so one thing I would like to encourage the Legislature, the state, the Governor to do is when we have fire disaster declarations, let's include the mitigation for addressing the mud and debris flow risks that we know are coming, because that's really straining local budgets and we need to be able to respond quickly to that.

Second, I just want to again thank the state for its support of Prop 4 for state subvention funding and flood resiliency funding. But I think if we're really serious about wanting to meet our climate goals, we're going to need to figure out a way to develop sustained, steady funding for flood resiliency risk projects.

And I know that's a challenge, but it's a conversation we need to have. Another thing in Prop 4 in the flood provisions, which I am very excited about, is there's a lot of money for disadvantaged communities. And the disadvantaged communities are very much prioritized for flood risk management projects. But the Proposition also strongly encourages green infrastructure.

And green infrastructure takes a lot of space, a lot of right away. And what we've seen in our communities is a lot of our disadvantaged communities are older communities in Low lying areas. When you get in there and you look at them, they've got very narrow roads, they're dirt streets, they're private.

And with climate change producing stronger storms, on average, those roads get muddier faster. Kids can't get to school, parents can't get to work. What those communities need is basically as much paving as we can put into that constrained right of way and the storm drain underneath.

And so I would just encourage, as we're writing those grant guidelines, that for disadvantaged communities, we keep all options on the table because the risk is that we're going to continue to disenfranchise some of the very people that we're trying to help. Lastly, I'd like to talk about regulatory conflict resolution.

This has come up a couple times to your point, Assemblymember Bennett. I think our ideals for resiliency are unnecessarily clashing with our ideals for the environment. It's preventing us from taking effective action on both fronts. There was a Select Committee report by the Assembly that I think came out earlier this month on permitting reform.

There's a lot of really good ideas in there I think that we need to continue to explore, one of which is recognizing that local agencies are actually partners with the regulatory agencies in pursuing both resiliency and the environment.

Another positive outcome from that is it was talking about the needs to be able to focus on maximizing outcomes for both resiliency and the environment and not be so focused on sort of siloed procedures that exist within the regulatory agencies.

Then lastly, I think the Committee report recommended that basically we create a bespoke permitting pathway for flood control districts and local agencies pursuing climate resiliency projects so that we can get our permits through quicker, faster, sooner.

That's really important because if there's one message I hope you took from my presentation is that climate change is here and it's not waiting for the permits. And we are.

And as Mark talked about, that leaves us in a moral, ethical and legal conundrum and we're not doing A service to our communities and we can do better on both fronts. And I want to continue that discussion. And so lastly, this is also a parks Committee.

So I did want to show one slide of a multi purpose, multi benefit project that includes a park. This is Harada park in Eastvale. And it's, you know, an example how multi benefit works together. If we would just build a flood control basin here, that land would be sitting idle 360 days a year.

We partnered with the city, now we've got a park, kids are playing baseball 360 days a year, and the five days when it's raining hard, it floods. Then we reset it and it's back to a park again. These are the kinds of projects that get us as local agencies, excited.

And these are the types of projects we want to keep doing. And so thank you for your time. We'd be glad to answer any questions.

Okay, Assembly Member Bennett, thank you all. And by the way, you get an A for managing the PowerPoint presentations. It only took us four panels, but you are to be commended. Assembly Member Bennett,

I want to compliment you folks for bringing these folks here. I think you guys are as articulate spokespersons for this whole concept as I've heard in a long time. So congratulations to all three of you for developing your skills to be able to do that.

I hope that all of our agencies could listen to this panel because of the invitation that you have out there that we need a new paradigm in terms of how we're working together, that we're all in it together. And I think it's a. The classic shouldn't be that the agency tells you, oh, you did it wrong.

The agency should tell you how to accomplish the goal properly. The agency has expertise, and as they work with lots of different entities, they develop more expertise and they can help solve the problems. So your example about disadvantaged communities know exactly what you're talking about.

I mean, to insist that they have to build more open space when what they really, really need to do is pave that road and put a, you know, put something underneath. We just have to start to have common sense apply here and realize we're all in this together. The regulator, the local agencies, the community, et cetera.

Your comment about local agencies perhaps shouldn't be treated the same as a developer who's going to make private profit and therefore has a revenue source to help pay for this, you know, is excellent.

And all of your comments about stormwater and you know, the unique aspects of stormwater from it can be a detriment to it can be the best thing that happened to us in terms of groundwater and how we have to start to think about that.

And so there's just a lot of common sense that I heard here in this presentation and want to thank you for that. I wish I could stay longer, but I'm going to have to leave and. Just a minute. So thank you for letting me get these comments made.

Well, thank you so much, Assemblymember Bennett. Given that your. Your role as chair of budget sub 4 and doling out money, I hope that we get a box that says common sense. Does this one qualify? And we all agree when we're in policy hearings, that makes common sense. That's the most pragmatic way to go.

And then somehow it gets down to the money and we got, you know, five different bureaucrats that are going to tell you, well, that's not common sense. And it's just, please.

Well, that's why I really wanted to stay for this panel, and that is that, you know, every one of these panels ask for more money and, you know, trying to. Trying to make those decisions, you know, where, you know, what are the priority investments.

So there are more things than just more money, and that is more common sense, you know, that. That we have to have out there also. So thank you.

Thank you so much for being here and thank you to the panel. I really do appreciate it. Not to make it about me, but I came to the Legislature to be pragmatic. That was like my mantra as a candidate. So you made my heart go bitter. Patter my pragmatic heart.

So thank you for being here and I wish you the best, especially you guys and the projects you got going. You're a little more statewide with that. We are going to now open it up to public comments so you can return to your seat.

And thank you for helping to kind of get us sort of back on track, too. We're gonna do. You know, it says one to two minutes on my notes. I would say you don't have to take all the two minutes, but don't get too, you know, hot and bothered if it's a little bit longer than a minute.

Hi. Please say your name and where you're from, too, when you start. Thank you.

I'm Katharine Freeman. I'm with the California State Association of Counties, and we represent all 58 California counties. And we've put together a disaster platform for what counties need. In particular, they need help with flood control. We are the disaster experts.

We're the ones that go to the first line of a disaster and what we want to do is expedite permitting for flood control projects across the State of California. And we'd love to work with you and the Committee to have that happen. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Artie Valencia, and I'm the flood and land restoration program manager at Restore the Delta. So our stance is clear. If flood flows must be diverted to save lives, we support that. However, what we do not support is unregulated flood flow diversion by diverters without the necessary oversight and accountability.

If flood flow diversions are to be considered, there must be strict conditions and limitations to ensure both public safety and environmental protection. First, a proper agency must formally declare a flood stage during periods of extreme continuous rainfall before any flood flow diversions occur. Because without this, we risk unnecessary diversions even in manageable rain events.

Second, we ask for mandatory reporting and accountability to require exporters to report when they begin and end flood flow exports. And then third, there must be a transparent and publicly accessible data system in place to track who's diverting flood flows, when it is happening and where water is going to ensure and accountability.

And then finally, I just want to highlight those flood risks in the delta region. You know, currently our delta levees are not up to federal standards. We encounter levy boils, erosion and maintenance issues during wet periods due to the historical disinvestment. And so underwater code 12.42.1, unlimited flood flow diversion is a dangerous prospect.

While the codes allow for temporary diversions in response to imminent flood threats, it's not a free pass for unrestricted diversions without the proper oversight. We shouldn't ignore those safeguards that could lead to these consequences that could include all of these backwater effects, levee erosion, seepage issues, what have you.