These Sacramento County levees have serious damage
A single Cosumnes River levee sustained $1.5 million in damage after recent winter storms tore out a hole the size of a football field. But the federal government’s emergency management has not yet agreed to give local officials the money to fix that embankment. The agency has refused to fund this stretch of the river for years, saying the barriers do not meet the criteria for intervention because they were not built to meet the agency’s standards. It regards them as “levee-like” structures, not levees. The policy has had lasting repercussions in this corner of south Sacramento County, where certain parts of flood infrastructure stay broken for years. In 2017, for instance, storms battered levees along a 15-mile stretch of the Cosumnes. Local officials asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for help fixing 16 pieces of infrastructure damaged during the floods.