Notes from the Blue Bear Republic

Forty Days and Forty Nights

I live within a pleasant walk of where the Sacramento and American Rivers come together. There’s a lovely small beach there, in Discovery Park. I can see it from Highway 5 every time I head south toward downtown. Before moving to my current home in Natomas I lived in an apartment within a stone’s throw an overflow canal running along the American River just before it pours into the Sacramento along a stretch of road atop a levee called Garden Highway. Every rainy season the American River spills over into the overflow canal, and when I lived in the apartment I could almost throw a rock over the levee road into a water level a good thirty feet or more higher than the ground where I parked my car in the apartment complex.

There’s great faith in the local levee system. So much so that I live in what’s known as a “100 year flood plain”, meaning it’ll go nuts on the average of once every hundred years.

I don’t know when the hundred year cycle is supposed to start.

I don’t have to have flood insurance. My mortgage holder is happy to take my money without it. But I have it anyway, and have had it for a year.

Still, I watch developments regarding flood control. I’d rather not have to put my flood insurance to the test.

The Legislature and governor have recently been far-seeing in this matter. They’ve agreed to put a bond measure calling for $4.09 billion for flood protection along with a $500 million appropriation for levee repairs. Since no legislator or governor wants to explain why billions of dollars has still left the state capital under water after a flood, I think it’s safe to say that my local levees will receive a lot of love under these measures.

For this, I thank President Bush.

Bush came to California and stood next to his famous Republican governor as he told the state that we were pretty much on our own when it comes to upgrading our flood protection.

So, being California, we said, “Fine. We’ll take care of it.” We did the right thing.

California, as a good progressive friend of mine says, is nothing but an ATM machine for the national parties. Bush and his handlers know that there’s little chance our Electoral College votes are coming their way. They’ve also seen in two presidential elections that they can win the White House without them. Bush isn’t going to waste precious federal largesse here. I can accept that. That’s politics.

So we’re left to take care of the issue ourselves. I think that come November we will. And I thank the president for giving us the half peace sign on this to force it to the front of the line regarding voter-approved state spending priorities.

Some of other measures are more problematic. I think the housing measure will have a hard time because voters who are being frozen out of buying their own won’t be happy about spending money to help get a roof over someone else. I think the transportation measure will face a furious attack from alternative transportation advocates, although our state’s car loving voters might fight that off just to get better roads.

But the powerful images of the mighty Mississippi sucker punching New Orleans makes the flood measure a probable lock.

Thanks George W. You’ve done almost nothing else in your second term. This is one case where doing nothing caused something good to happen.

posted by Terry Preston @ 4:50 PM