Catastrophic flash floods in the Texas Hill Country over the July 4 weekend have killed more than 100 people – and more bodies are expected to be found.
Though more than 1,000 miles away, the disaster unfolding in Kerr County, Texas, is a reminder of how vulnerable Stockton and other San Joaquin County communities remain to flooding. Delta communities depend on levees to hold back surging rivers.
It’s happened before. California’s Central Valley saw a great “megaflood” in 1861-62 in which 98.4 inches of rain fell over 43 days.
“Floodwaters turned the Sacramento-San Joaquin valleys into a 300-mile-long inland sea. Ships making for Stockton left the river and sailed straight over farms,” Stocktonia columnist Michael Fitzgerald wrote in 2022. More than 1,000 people lost their lives.
The risk continues in modern times. Just two months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an emergency declaration due to the failure of the Victoria Island levee.
To protect Stockton, officials are banking on a $2 billion project to shore up the Delta’s levees. It is aimed at protecting the city from the kind of flooding expected once every 100 years. But it’s a painstakingly long process, and completion is not expected until 2039.
“We are doing everything we can to prepare,” said Darren Suen, executive director of the San Joaquin Area Flood Control Agency.
The Flood Control Agency is working in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers, and they have a list of prioritized levee repairs. Determining what work is done first takes different factors into consideration: not just levees deemed in the worst shape, but those that protect the most populous or developed areas.
First up is a redo of part of the Ten Mile Slough levee, which passes near the Brookside area of west Stockton. It will be followed by construction on levees in the Shima Tract and 14 Mile Slough. Then it’s a matter of shoring up the left and right banks of the Calaveras River. It will all take time.
“You can’t make the infrastructure appear like magic,” Suen said.
Even after all the work is completed, there will an even bigger challenge: protection from the kind of storms that occur only once every 200 years.
But Suen is confident it will all get done.
In the meantime, he emphasized the need for home and business owners to make sure their flood insurance policies are up to date. Just in case.