Worse than a Meltdown

In these times of deficit-cutting austerity, especially in budget-impaired California, clearly one area where folks are not spending money would be repairing failing or reasonably-likely-to-fail infrastructure capable of inflicting hundreds of billions of damage, decimating entire major cities, rendering entire regions virtually uninhabitable for years pending repairs. I’ve already blogged about the risks of under-constructed nuclear reactors – like Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, sitting on California coastline – but those are relatively small communities and power grids would reroute the lost electricity to the state from other sources… with minor brownouts and inconvenience.

Southern California is a desert, including the farmland growing a significant portion of the entire nation’s fruits and vegetables to cities like Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino. Through an extensive set of levees (built to keep fresh water in and salt water out) and the California Aqueduct (pictured right above), water from the northern part of the state flows south to form the bulk of the lower part of the State’s water supply. While a properly centered earthquake and ensuing tsunami could trigger a California equivalent of the meltdown and contamination generated by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in Japan, a significantly smaller earthquake (even a well-placed 6.5 – Fukushima Daiichi experienced thousands of times worse at 9.0), centered at or near the Sacramento-Jan Joaquin Delta (pictured left above) could destroy the under-built levee system (which began in the 1850s – incented under the federal Swamplands Act of 1850 and built without any engineering at all – and was substantially complete in the 1930s, when earthquake standards didn’t even exist). Two-thirds of all Californians, in the central and southern parts of the state, get at least some portion of their water supply from this delta region.

A delta-centered catastrophic quake would send waves of salt water into the aqueduct system rendering the water totally useless and forcing the sealing of the aqueduct system, probably for years pending horrifically expensive repairs. With rationing and alternative water resources, Southern California, could survive for 6 to 12 months (depending on existing reserves at the time) before it went dry. Agricultural uses suck down about 80% of the water supply and human consumption the rest. The risks are well-known both to the fed and state officials, and the risk of at least some substantial levee failure appears inevitable. With over a thousand miles of levees at risk, and a cost of repair averaging $30-$40 million a mile, even when those sections of the levee system that are not at risk are removed from the cost analysis, you are looking at billions of dollars of necessary reinforcement and repairs, money which is completely unfunded at present.

In an article entitled Delta Subsidence in California, geology.com describes the Delta system: “The Delta receives runoff from about 40 percent of the land area of California and about 50 percent of California’s total streamflow… Before major dams were built on rivers in the Delta watershed, the salinity interface migrated as far upstream as Courtland along the Sacramento River (California Department of Water Resources, 1993). Today, releases of freshwater from dams far upstream help reduce the maximum landward migration of the salinity interface during the late summer. In the spring, however, reservoirs and Delta exports consistently act in concert to increase the landward migration of the salinity interface over that expected under conditions of unimpaired flows…” Bottom line, the levee system reduces the constant pressures from tidal waves and contains the spring freshwater runoff, storing fresh water that would have otherwise poured into the ocean.

One set of solutions is to move the water through the Delta (through massive new reinforced canals or tunnels) instead of the extensive system that literally moves the water around the Delta. Others believe we need to restructure the levees themselves, leaving the basic system intact. Whatever the cost, failing to upgrade and repair leaves a catastrophe waiting to happen, and no matter how much folks outside of California would like to see us disappear into the sea, the feds would be saddled with relief efforts (hope they do better than Katrina!), and the already-skyrocketing costs of groceries in the land would sear an even bigger hole in everyone’s pocket. But what is really sad is how many other disasters-waiting-to-happen exist in the United States… So much of our infrastructure is over half a century old… and older.

I’m Peter Dekom, and don’t look at me… I didn’t create these messes; I only point them out.