California's water supply vulnerable to quakes, floods

The California Department of Water Resources has just released a study that concludes there is a 40 percent chance that a major earthquake will flood 27 delta islands between now and 2030, costing billions in repairs and knocking out the water source for 25 million Californians for more than a year.

Without intervention, it is estimated that about 140 levees of California's could fail in the next century due to storms or rising seas. An earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater could result in fatalities, flooding of islands and costs of $15 billion. In California levees have failed about 160 times in the past 109 years. READ MORE

California Department of Water Resources: Delta Risk Management Strategy - Final Phase 1 Report

Army Corps cracks down on flunking levees

More than 100 levees in 16 states flunked maintenance inspections in the last two years and are so neglected that they could fail to stem a major flood, records from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show. California was #2 on the list! READ MORE

National Committee on Levee Safety (NCLS) draft version of the Report to Congress on Recommendations for a National Levee Safety Program, DOWNLOAD

CAValley HUG Meeting Notes

The CA Central Valley HAZUS User Group help a meeting on December 17, 2008. Items discussed at this meeting focused on the HAZUS-MH flood model. Download Meeting Minutes

A California Challenge - Flooding in the Central Valley

The CA Department of Water Resources has released the report A California Challenge - Flooding in the Central Valley. This independent report was prepared by a panel of national flood experts assembled at CA DWR's request. Though the report validates the current flood management funding in-place in CA and recent corrective actions taken by CA DWR, it finds that overall the CV flood control system needs further improvement. DOWNLOAD

Levee Scenarios in HAZUS-MH

Stefan Zink from Michael Baker Jr., Imc. presented a paper at the March 4, 2008 meeting of the Bay Area HAZUS User Group that should also be of interested to the CAValleyHUG. This paper addresses some of the problems in trying to use HAZUS-MH to model levee related flooding in the Sacramento region.

Behind Levee Scenarios in HAZUS: Exploring Possibilities with Different Data Sources, DOWNLOAD