Feather levee fixes to cost $200M

Voters who will decide whether to fund levee fixes along the Feather River now have a cost estimate.

Officials with the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency on Wednesday placed an estimated $200 million price tag on a project to bolster levees along the Feather's west bank. The upgrade — meant to pull much of Sutter County out of a federal flood-hazard zone and the resulting flood-insurance rate hikes — requires a new property tax landholders must approve in a mail-in ballot that would run from Feb. 24 to April 14.

"We have a chance to fund this essentially at 40 cents to the dollar, and not subject to high insurance rates," Interim Director Bill Edgar told the agency board. "We have that opportunity if we can roll out our rationale to the voters."

Local governments would need to raise $80 million, with state and federal funds making up the difference. Bob Cermak, engineer for the Sacramento firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, said the cost forecast is based on a 30-year bond issued at 7 percent interest.

The flood agency's so-called early implementation plan involves shoring up 31 miles of levee from Yuba City north to the Thermalito Afterbay in Butte County, with completion as early as 2014. Officials hope the upgrade will give about 90 percent of properties protection against peak river levels predicted for a once-in-a-century flood.

Still undecided is whether property owners in southern Butte County will take part in the assessment vote. Earlier this month, Gridley and Biggs city officials announced the Federal Emergency Management Agency had reclassified both towns as protected against a 100-year peak flood. Neither town has gone under water since the flood of Dec. 23, 1955.

Had Gridley and Biggs been included in the new FEMA floodplain map, flood insurance on a $250,000 house would have jumped from $348 annually to at least $849 for those buying policies before the release of the maps, and to $1,555 a year for policies bought afterward.

Similar increases are expected in Yuba City, Live Oak and the rest of north Sutter County when new flood-risk maps take effect there, probably in the fall of 2011. County landowners south of Stewart Road came under the higher premiums in December 2008.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com.