California budget mess may affect levee work

California's warning it may halt most state construction projects within weeks could freeze part of the Mid-Valley's levee rebuilding drive, as area officials wonder what other projects may shut down.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Tuesday warned the state would cut off nearly $5 billion in public works loans and bond funds — unless the Legislature can craft a budget to reverse a deficit of $11 billion and counting.

What a cutoff would mean for projects in Yuba-Sutter remains mostly unclear, but at least one faces a shutdown of a year or more — the setback levee at Star Bend, on the Feather River in Yuba City.

Long a weak spot among the Feather's flood walls — only a huge sandbagging effort prevented a levee burst there in the 1997 flood — Star Bend is due for construction of a new, straighter levee behind the current one.

The project received more than $16 million in state bond revenue from Proposition 1E. But even a short delay in its delivery could stall the project up to a year, said Bill Hampton, general manager of Levee District No. 1.

"Any delay of a month might mean we have to wait a complete season" between rainy winters unsuitable for building, he said. "We intend to do this job all in one season. We have to, because it involves tearing down an old levee and building a new one at same time."

Elsewhere in Sutter County, few other public works plans are in immediate danger from the state fiscal crisis, according to Public Works Director Doug Gault. If an impasse lasts into the new year, though, the county could cut into its annual road maintenance budget, which leans on $1.6 million in state support; a quarter of the funds have reached the county so far.

Caltrans funding for road improvements — such as freeway bypasses on Highways 99, 70 and 65 from Tudor to Lincoln — also is up in the air.

The agency has not yet put together a list of road projects at greatest risk, according to Mark Dinger, a spokesman for Caltrans' District 3 office in Marysville.

But if the state makes good on the funding cutoff, he said, even projects already awarded bond money and loans could be halted as early as next week — and possibly worsen the state's unemployment problem.

"Every $1 billion of construction supports about 18,000 jobs directly or indirectly," said Dinger. "Just in terms of jobs lost, it would be huge."

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