Reclamation District 800 remains $7.5 million in the hole after the January 2023 storms even though it has already been reimbursed for this levee repair at the end of Fig Road in Wilton. The board received the financial update at their Dec. 21 meeting.

WILTON, CA (MPG) - Trustees with the Reclamation District 800 (RD 800), which maintains the Cosumnes River levees, discussed some welcome news at their monthly board meeting at the Wilton Community Center on Dec. 21.

• The United States Army Corps of Engineers  (Corps) will provide the district “a free bunch of data” after it surveys the levees and banks on the north side of the Cosumnes River. It will then make recommendations to mitigate the risks.

• The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is creating a hydraulic model of the river between Michigan Bar and Twin Cities Road, which should make it easier to predict future flooding.

• Both projects should help secure future funding. As of the meeting, the district was $7.975 million in the red. Most of that stems from emergency repairs to the levees after the January 2023 storms.

RD 800 maintains and repairs 34 miles of privately owned levees along the Cosumnes River between Rancho Murieta and Freeman Road off Dillard Road in Wilton and Freeman Road off Grant Line Road in Sheldon. The funding to maintain the levees at a 10-year flood standard comes from an assessment district that generates only $514,000 a year.

Corps survey

During his engineer’s report, Patrick Ervin said that he, attorney Rebecca Smith, President Brian Takamori, and Trustee Leland Schneider have been talking to two representatives from the  Corps and DWR about participating in a pilot study. Over the next 10 years, the Corps plans to put together a national database of all private levees in the nation with an assessment of their conditions and risks.

Discussing the new federal and state help at their meeting are, from left, engineer Patrick Ervin, attorney Rebecca Smith, bookkeeper Perla Tzintzun-Garabay, President Brian Takemori, and Trustees Mark Hite, Leland Schneider and David Utterback. Trustee Jack Kautz was absent.

Smith said RD 800 was included in the pilot study with several other small districts in California after a district in Louisiana dropped out. “We just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” she said.

Ervin said the Corps has limited resources since it is a pilot program and could only commit to two days of inspections on the levees. “So, obviously with this district, they can’t do the entire thing in two days because it is too extensive,” he said. “What we have settled on with them is the north side levees in the interest of time.”

After the survey, the Corps will produce a report outlining the deficiencies in the RD 800 north levees with an estimate of what it will take to get them up to par.

Director Mark Hite asked whether up to par would mean a 100-year flood standard. Smith said their contacts at the Corps and DWR don’t expect to get anywhere close to that. The goal of the risk assessment and recommended mitigations “may be bringing everything up to a five of 10 years,” she said.

Nonetheless, Ervin and Smith both said the Corps will be providing the district “with a bunch of free” data that it has never had before. While the district has some levee locations that have been surveyed during repairs, it will now have a breadth of survey data it never had before. The Corps survey was expected to take place mid-January.

President Brian Takemori asked if any of the Corps work would help the south side of the river, where Wilton and parts of Sloughhouse are located.

Smith said their DWR representative also had been pushing the Corps to do both sides of the river, but the Corps will want to preserve their resources. If the Corps surveyed both sides, “It would cover less than the entire system,” Ervin added.

Smith said the board could use the $500,000 state planning grant that State Senator Roger Niello secured for the district in 2023 to do some of the same work on the south side. “You will want to maximize that because half a million dollars will go really fast,” she said.

Schneider said another part of the issue is access, which logistically is easier on the north side of the river. He said the Corps is considering a drone survey “So they would be able to grab both sides, but that is not a guarantee,” the trustee said. “Another thought was that once we get them here, they might want to keep on going.”

DWR modeling

Turning to the DWR plan to model the river, Ervin said he was going to meet with three of the developers after the meeting to show them to some sites for ground verification of their model. However, because of the difficulty of access on the south (Wilton) side due to recent rains, they would view some of it from the north bank.

“I said if you guys want to walk 1,000 feet through trees and mud, go ahead. But I think we can see some off the sites from the opposite side.”

The engineer will also take them to the huge Bradley Road break on the north side. It’s been repaired.

Ervin said DWR expects to wrap up the hydraulic model by February. He hopes it will include additional elements such as the hydrology of Deer Creek.

“One of the things we talked about in the meeting is to be able to use that model as a planning tool to better predict flows…focusing our resources on raising the elevation and clearing (the channel as much as we can, ” he said.

Trustee Dave Utterback told Ervin said he should talk to DWR about dredging the massive amount of sand and sediment that has accumulated in the river channel. “They don’t need to raise it, they just clean it out,” he said.

Ervin told him that DWR can use a special kind of aerial flight equipped with “something like a green laser” that can penetrate the water and see the sentiment, “which is crazy. I didn’t even know that existed,” he said.

Ervin also touched on potential for future funding. He said the DWR representative with whom they have been working was a strong advocate of RD 800 going through the Corps process. That will mean the district can now quote the Corps as saying the district levees need a lot of work, which the district has been telling the state for years with no effect. Hopefully, that will translate into DWR regularly funding RD 800 levees.

“It’s all good,” Irvin added. ”The state is  now putting more resources into the district than they have forever.”

Finances

The financial report by accountant Perla Tzintzun-Garabay made it evident why the district is in dire need of more funding. She said the updated amount owed to the Bank of Stockton is $7,475,000. It had been $7,975,000 until the board authorized a $500,000 payment in November. Most of that money came from the National Resource Conservation Services (NRCS) a division of the Department of Agriculture.

NRCS agreed to partially fund two repairs on Lee School Road and Fig Road after the 2023 storms. Of the $1.9 million cost to fix both levees, NRCS reimbursed the district about 75%, Ervin is seeking reimbursement from the California Office of Emergency Services to pay the bulk of the district’s 25% cost share.

Ervin also reported he had nearly completed the voluminous submittals required  to seek approximately $5 million in FEMA reimbursement for another $5.5 million in repairs. However, the district has no guarantee of getting the funds. In the past, FEMA refused to fund a levee repair project that it had previously approved.

Funding for district operations comes from an assessment district that generates only $514,000 a year. RD 800 was already in the red about $2 million before the January 2023 storms.

The district borrowed more money to make extensive emergency repairs after the new storms broke the levee in three locations and caused massive erosion at a dozen levees on both sides of the river. The total cost of the flood repairs was $6.5 million.