The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given preliminary indication that it may turn down the county’s request for $1.29 million to help pay for damage caused by last winter’s flooding in the Novato area.
“Unfortunately, as of yesterday we were just told that the levee damages, including some pump station damage, is ineligible for public assistance through FEMA,” Tony Williams, principal civil engineer with Marin’s Flood Control and Water Conservation District, told supervisors on Tuesday. The supervisors serve as the district’s board of directors.
Supervisor Kate Sears asked if the denials represent a change in policy at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I’m trying to get more clarification about why that is,” said Williams, who expects to meet with FEMA representatives on Monday.
Despite the costs incurred so far, Williams also told supervisors, “We did not complete all the necessary repairs. The most vulnerable component of the Zone I facilities are the levees along Novato Creek.”
Following the meeting, Williams told the Independent Journal that the county ran out of time and money to make additional repairs.
Flood District Zone 1 encompasses the entire city of Novato plus a sizeable amount of unincorporated area around the city. Last winter, flooding in Zone 1 closed Highway 37 for days and inflicted $1.5 million worth of damage on Zone 1’s pump stations and levees.
On Nov. 8, Zone 1 residents rejected Measure E, an 18-year tax that would have raised $20 million for flood mitigation projects in Novato and surrounding communities. The tax would have cost owners of single-family homes $46 per year; commercial parcels would have paid a higher rate. The measure needed two-thirds support to pass; instead, more than 67 percent of the voters voted no.
“We heard a clear message,” Supervisor Judy Arnold said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The community asked us to look for flood risk reduction solutions that did not rely on taxes.”
Bill Long, who heads the Zone 1 flood control advisory board, said, “I believe this time Zone 1 had just enough in its reserve account so it could pay the bills for these repairs but we were hoping to get reimbursed by FEMA.”
Zone 1 currently has $2.4 million in its reserve fund, but only a portion of the total $1.5 million in needed repairs has been completed.
Long said Zone 1’s reserve fund is used to pay for the periodic dredging of Novato Creek and Warner Creek. He said if the dredging isn’t done, the risk of severe flooding, perhaps into Novato’s downtown, increases.
Williams said, “One of the criticisms of the tax measure was that there are other sources of funding out there. We know how difficult it is to get FEMA funding even though there is a disaster situation.
“The bottom line not only with Zone 1 but many of the facilities in other flood zones, in particular Zone 7 in Santa Venetia, is that these facilities are approaching their useful end of life,” Williams said. “They’re 40 to 50 years old. The levees in Zone 1 are over 100 years old in some cases. You can only maintain things for so long before you’re looking at replacements.”
Williams said the problem is that the current revenue streams to many of the county’s flood districts is insufficient to cover the cost of those replacements.
Last winter’s storm damage in Zone 1 included: temporary stabilization of severe erosion to side slopes of the Duck Bill detention pond berm at a cost of $200,000, replacement of a pump at Simmons Slough that prevents several major roadways from flooding at a cost of $300,000 and two repairs of levee damage at Heron’s Beak Pond that totaled $700,000.
County engineers have lowered their earlier cost estimates for two of the repair projects by a total of $165,000.
Williams told supervisors on Tuesday that FEMA has approved about $80,000 of the $128,602 the county requested to compensate it for pump rentals to replace the Simmons Slough pump, which failed during last year’s storms.
After Hurricane Harvey devastated the city of Houston this summer, it was reported that FEMA’s $6 billion Disaster Relief Fund was down to its last $1 billion. In September, Congress approved an emergency supplemental appropriation of $7.4 billion.
But the string of natural disasters affecting the U.S. has continued since then with a hurricane hitting Puerto Rico, the wine country fires and now the fires in Southern California.
