Paperwork delays blamed for flooding from overgrown rivers. Will the process work better this winter?
Entire towns flooded last winter because of permit delays, according to lawmakers and others. Debris from overgrown creeks and waterways up and down the state hadn’t been cleaned out in years for lack of proper permits. When water barreled down those channels, debris piled up, pushing water over levees and into hundreds of homes and businesses. … The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), the main state-level permitting agency, agreed there were past delays, though it downplayed them as the culprit for last winter’s floods saying agencies could have gotten “emergency permits” if needed.
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