California Flood Risks Are 'disaster Waiting To Happen,'
Monday, 01.21.2008, 05:24am (GMT)
While flooding in California's Central Valley is "the next big disaster
waiting to happen," water-related infrastructure issues confront almost
every community across the country, according to engineers at the
University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering in separate
reports to California officials and in the journal Science.
An independent review panel chaired by Clark
School Research Professor of Civil Engineering Gerald E. Galloway said
the area between the Sacramento and San Joaquin river floodplains faces
significant risk of floods that could lead to extensive loss of life
and billions of dollars in damages. The panel's report, "A California
Challenge: Flooding in the Central Valley," was commissioned by
California's Department of Water Resources.
The panel pointed out that many of the area's levees, constructed
over the past 150 years to protect communities and property in the
Central Valley, were poorly built or placed on inadequate foundations.
Climate change may increase the likelihood of floods and their
resulting destruction. The panel recommends that state and local
officials take swift action to reduce the risk to people and the
environment.
The comprehensive flood-risk abatement strategy the panel
recommends focuses on land-use planning and integration with other
basin water management activities.
"The challenges that California faces are widespread across the
nation," Galloway said. "The recent failure of a levee in a Nevada
irrigation canal points out growing infrastructure problems."
Another civil engineering researcher from the Clark School, Dr. Lewis "Ed" Link, also served on the California panel.
"I believe the State of California is taking a very enlightened
approach to difficult issues," Link said. "Supporting this study is a
good example, as is their examination of risk for the entire Central
Valley. They are looking strategically at measures that can create
long-term solutions, a model for others to follow."
Galloway is also co-author of an article in the
January 18, 2008 issue of Science – "Aging Infrastructure and Ecosystem
Restoration" – which calls for the targeted decommissioning of
deteriorated and obsolete infrastructure in order to support the
restoration of degraded ecosystems.
"As we move forward with infrastructure enhancement, we must
consider how, in the process of carrying out these activities, we can
restore and enhance the natural and beneficial functions of the
floodplain, which can at the same time reduce flood losses," Galloway
said.
Link and Galloway were prominent figures in the review of the levee
system around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.
Link served as director of the federal government's Interagency
Performance Evaluation Task Force, which evaluated the hurricane
protection system around New Orleans. Galloway is a former brigadier
general with the Army Corps of Engineers and has been part of the State
of Louisiana review team looking at long-term plans for restoration of
the Gulf Coast.
Source : University of Maryland
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