Section 12645 Of Article 2. Projects In The Sacramento-san Joaquin Watersheds From California Water Code >> Division 6. >> Part 6. >> Chapter 2. >> Article 2.
12645
. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) In 1911, the Legislature adopted a flood control plan for the
Sacramento Valley, as proposed by the federal California Debris
Commission, and created the Reclamation Board to regulate levees and
other encroachments, and to review and approve flood control plans
for the Sacramento River and its tributaries. The state's adoption of
a valleywide flood management plan was intended to create a unified
plan of flood control and to reclaim lands from overflow. Six years
later, California gained congressional authorization for the United
States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to collaborate with the state
in building and maintaining the Sacramento River Flood Control
Project. The federal government transferred completed portions of the
Sacramento River Flood Control Project to the state as portions were
completed, and the state, in turn, passed responsibility for
operation and maintenance to local districts organized to provide
flood control within their boundaries.
(b) The state and federal governments have built or rebuilt
levees, weirs, and bypasses to increase conveyance of flood waters
downstream. The Sacramento River Flood Control Project and the
federal-state flood control project in the San Joaquin Valley include
approximately 1,600 miles of levees and other facilities to reduce
central valley flood risk, now defined as the State Plan of Flood
Control in subdivision (j) of Section 5096.805 of the Public
Resources Code. The Corps often constructed federal "project levees"
in both the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds by modifying
existing levees. The federal government transferred completed
portions of the Sacramento River Flood Control Project to the state,
as portions were completed, which in turn passed responsibility for
operation and maintenance to local reclamation districts.
(c) In 2003, a state Court of Appeal in Paterno v. State of
California (2003) 113 Cal.App.4th 998 (Paterno), held the state
liable, in a claim for inverse condemnation, for failure of a levee
that was operated and maintained by a local levee maintenance
district. In settlement of that litigation, the state's liability was
substantial because homes and a shopping center were built behind
the levee and suffered from the resulting flood.
(d) The Legislature has authorized funding for numerous flood
control projects throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin River
watersheds. These statutory authorizations included varying
provisions regarding responsibility and liability for operation and
maintenance of the flood control facilities, and may or may not have
incorporated the specified facilities into the federal-state
Sacramento River or San Joaquin River flood control projects. After
the court ruling in Paterno, the status of each flood facility became
critically important to determining liability, and legal ambiguities
led to questions about whether particular facilities were
incorporated into a federal-state flood control project. In some
cases, despite a location between two project levees, certain levees
remain outside the jurisdiction of a federal-state flood control
project, with local agencies retaining liability.
(e) In 2006, California voters approved the Disaster Preparedness
and Flood Prevention Bond Act of 2006, which authorized the issuance
of general obligation bonds in the amount of $4.9 billion for flood
protection and defined the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River
federal-state flood control projects as the "State Plan of Flood
Control." The following year, the Legislature passed a package of
bills to reform state flood protection policy in the central valley.
These laws required the Department of Water Resources to develop, and
the Central Valley Flood Protection Board to adopt, a Central Valley
Flood Protection Plan, which is broader than the State Plan of Flood
Control, affecting the entire watersheds of the Sacramento and San
Joaquin Valley. These laws included provisions intended to limit
state liability to facilities identified in the State Plan of Flood
Control. These laws did not specifically address the facilities
described in this article.