- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Potential for Upper Lake levee failure and flooding to be discussed at Sept. 28 workshop
UPPER LAKE, Calif. — The condition of the levees in Upper Lake and the potential flood risk for area residents should the levees fail has prompted the Western Region Town Hall to call a special workshop to update the community on the situation.
The Western Region Town Hall, or WRTH, will host a special workshop at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, at the Habematolel community center, 9460 Main St. in Upper Lake.
The reason for the workshop is to inform the community of potential flood risk due to the condition of the area’s levees, which don’t allow for the capacity of water flow they were designed for, which in turn could lead to flooding.
The workshop will feature several tables in order for government agencies and groups to take part in the discussion of a solution, along with flood insurance agents.
Invited agencies include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lake County Water Resources, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services and Natural Resources Conservation Service, among others.
Lake County Public Works Director Scott De Leon, whose department includes Water Resources, confirmed to Lake County News that he and Marina Deligiannis, the Water Resources deputy director, will be at the Sept. 28 workshop.
WRTH set the workshop date during a special meeting held Aug. 31. At that time, the town hall’s board also discussed a postcard mailer that will be sent out to residents in the potential flood zone ahead of the workshop.
As serious as the situation is, WRTH Board member Claudine Pedroncelli said many community members are unaware of it, and she wants to get them to the workshop.
The area of concern is on the Middle Creek and Clover Creek diversion levees, the diversion structure and Old Clover Creek closure structure in Flood Zone 8.
The county has named that area the “Middle Creek Flood Control Project,” which is operated by the Lake County Watershed Protection District.
The Lake County Water Resources website said the project consists of a system of 14.4 miles of levees, a pump station and a diversion channel to divert Clover Creek overflow around the town of Upper Lake, see map.
“The upper portion of the project protects the community of Upper Lake from flooding by Middle Creek and Clover Creek. The lower portion of the system protects farmland and some residences from inundation by Clear Lake,” the county website explained.
This area is not to be confused with the Middle Creek Flood Damage Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration Project, a 1,650-acre area located south of Upper Lake that extends to the Rodman Slough and along a portion of the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff.
The Middle Creek and Clover Creek levees — which are called State Plan of Flood Control, or SPFC, levees — do not provide protection in a 100-year flood, according to a feasibility study released by the county of Lake in December.
That study found that, with the existing levees in place, a 100-year storm event could result in unprecedented flooding in the town of Upper Lake due to the lack of capacity of the system.
That means the 1,100 residents of the area could see anywhere from half an inch to 10 feet of water covering their property.
The models included in the study showed that in the case of a levee failure, downtown Upper Lake could be underwater at depths of between 3 to 10 feet. In one of those scenarios, the firehouse on Main Street would be under 7 feet of water.
“Nobody can put their head in the sand any longer. It’s an emergency,” said Julia Carrera, a WRTH Board member whose day job is as an inspector for the State Water Board, at the Aug. 31 meeting. Since that meeting, she has resigned from the WRTH Board.
Playing into all of this is changing climate and increasingly extreme weather, with multiple year droughts followed by years of heavy rain, as was seen in 2017 and 2019, and atmospheric river events such as the one that hit Upper Lake and the rest of Lake County hard in October.
District 3 Supervisor EJ Crandell, the chair of the Board of Supervisors, noted during the special Aug. 31 meeting that “the workshop is the most important thing” in the next steps of the process to address the situation.
The workshop, organizers said, will allow community members to weigh in on a number of alternatives for fixing the levee system.
Advocating for a solution
The December feasibility study presented three main alternatives for levee repair and improvement:
Alternative No. 1: Raising and strengthening in place 2.7 miles of levees on Middle Creek and the Clover Creek Diversion that provide direct protection to the community, improving them to a 100-year level of protection; improving “freeboard,” defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, as the vertical distance from the 1-percent-annual chance flood elevation up to the top of the levee; modifying or replacing the diversion structure; extending the Clover Creek levee’s left bank by about 1,000 feet to high ground to prevent flanking; and installing a shallow cutoff wall.
Alternative No. 2: Sediment management and vegetation clearing in the channel to convey 100-year flow, in addition to all of the aspects in Alternative No. 1.
Alternative No. 3: Raising structures to be above the 100-year floodplain level; considering school modifications for an evacuation center; and other emergency action and evacuation enhancements, including improved mapping of the floodplain and levee breach timing, and evacuation routes and coordination.
Based on the timeline given as part of the December feasibility study, an alternatives comparison was expected to be completed midyear, with the preferred alternative to be selected and information about that alternative to be emailed to stakeholders.
De Leon said this week that the county has not yet made a decision on the preferred alternative, and that the county’s consultant is still working through the process of assessing the choices.
The workshop, which is meant to gather the community’s input on the best levee alternative, has taken several months to schedule.
While the workshop now has a set date, many community members Lake County News has spoken to about the situation are unhappy with the fact that little has been done over the last several years to maintain the levees, which are now heavily overgrown with vegetation, and to clear sediment such as gravel buildup from the channels.
They also question why Supervisor Crandell, in his capacity as board chair, hasn’t scheduled it for a discussion before the Board of Supervisors in order to direct quick action by Water Resources to address the situation.
Seeking county government action
Although it’s forecast to be a potentially dry winter, that hasn’t allayed fears that a levee failure could happen any time.
That’s because, even in dry water years, there can be rain events that can pose a threat for heavy flooding.
That was the case on Oct. 24, when an atmospheric river pummeled the region, landing some of its heaviest punches on the historically wetter Upper Lake area.
Bob Partida, who has lived next to the levee at the Elk Mountain Road bridge since the early 1980s, estimated that 9 inches of rain fell in nine hours that day. He shared with Lake County News pictures of how that rainstorm filled up the levee channel near his home.
“Nine inches in one night and still nobody's done anything,” he said at the special Aug. 31 workshop planning meeting.
Partida said his home has flooded five times in 40 years. While it didn’t flood in October, he’s on edge about the danger to the entire community.
Partida said he wants to know when something is going to happen on the county’s end.
He’s not alone. Since March, Partida, WRTH board members and other Upper Lake residents have been visiting Board of Supervisors meetings to speak during public comment and ask for help.
On March 22, Partida, along with Carrera, WRTH Chair Tim Chiara — who lives in Nice — and Upper Lake resident Melinda Wright all asked the board to take action.
Carrera told the board that she was concerned that the levee is compromised and could break due to a significant rain event, “and the hydrology involved with that will take out the businesses and residences of Upper Lake in a way that we’ve never seen before because the levee has never broken. It hasn’t been maintained.”
At that time, the group presented a 12-page letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors, De Leon and Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, asking for the supervisors to agendize a discussion with De Leon about “remedies for the flood safety of citizens and property of Upper Lake including funding and timeline.”
They also asked that the discussion include the program for maintenance which would keep the Middle Creek flood bypass channel in continuous repair in anticipation of high rainfall and a program for maintaining Clover Creek, including proper channel bed elevations and vegetation control.
A Lake County News Public Records Act request pertaining to the levees showed that in May Carrera contacted the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, about the potential for funding through the Emergency Watershed Program to repair the levees.
Carrera, Chiara and Wright went to the Board of Supervisors again on Aug. 16, when Chiara, on behalf of WRTH, asked the supervisors to pursue funding NRCS through the to restore the levee system to original capacity.
Carrera added a request at that time to clear the levee channels to make them safe.
Wright said they flooded in 2005 and 2006, and the levee was not as overgrown as it is now. “We don’t want to be flooded again,” she said, adding that FEMA had to come in and help them.
Despite those requests, the supervisors have not had a discussion of the matter, the channel has not been cleaned out and it is not clear if the county of Lake has made the formal request to NRCS for help with the levees.
At the Aug. 31 meeting, in response to a question from Lake County News about what comes after the workshop, WRTH members said they hope to sit with Crandell and discuss next steps and then take it to the Board of Supervisors for a full discussion.
Still, they are concerned that they’re running out of time.
“We aren’t going to get what we need this year and we’re probably going to flood,” said Carrera.
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Middle Creek Flood Control Project Map by LakeCoNews on Scribd