Still reeling from a wild weather season, California chalked up a fourth request for federal disaster aid, as Gov. Jerry Brown lodged the request en route to Washington earlier this month.

“Putting the price tag of California’s brutal winter storms at $569 million, Gov. Jerry Brown asked President Trump […] for a fourth federal disaster declaration to help speed up recovery and repairs across the state,” the Los Angeles Times noted. “The estimate of damages, a number calculated jointly by state and federal teams, was accompanied in Brown’s letter by a long list of storm damage that left Californians fleeing flood waters and a number of roadways damaged by slipping hillsides and erosion.”

Despite some friction between Brown and Trump over changes to federal law that could cut against the grain of state Democrats’ priorities, the president hasn’t hesitated to grant the governor’s wishes for relief. “Brown’s request for a federal disaster declaration follows three similar requests this winter amid widespread weather-related damage. The three earlier appeals were granted, expediting assistance for flooding, problems on roads and bridges and other issues,” the San Francisco Chronicle recalled. “The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services has also requested assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration for individuals in Colusa, Lake, Lassen, Plumas, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, where the flooding from February storms damaged more than 200 homes and businesses.”

The most recent grant came mid-month, in the midst of Brown’s latest request. “President Donald J. Trump declared a major disaster exists in the state of California and ordered federal assistance to supplement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides from January 18 to January 23, 2017,” the White House announced.

Careful politics

Visiting FEMA acting administrator Bob Fenton in D.C., Brown struck a conciliatory tone, but limited it sharply. “Brown, who put the storm damage at well over $500 million, said he came away from the meeting feeling positive after being told that Trump is ‘very concerned’ about disaster relief for California,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “But Brown also stood by his recent denouncement of the Trump administration’s decision to review federal greenhouse gas standards, a move the governor recently characterized as “an unconscionable gift to polluters.”

Brown’s posture chimed closely with public sentiment in the Golden State. “Fifty-three percent of California voters say state leaders should try to work with Trump on areas of disagreement, even if it requires compromises, while 47 percent of voters say California leaders should oppose the president even if it risks losing federal funding to the state,” according to a poll conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and reported by Politico. “The preference for compromise comes despite Trump’s deep unpopularity in California,” the site added. “Yet in two major areas — the economy and jobs and improving roads and infrastructure — more Californians say Trump administration policies will have a positive than negative effect.”

A cracked mirror

Previously, the administration joined a broader effort in Washington to reckon with the consequences of California’s sometimes crumbling infrastructure. “Trump declared a presidential emergency during last month’s crisis at Oroville Dam,” the Sacramento bee noted. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers broadened their view of similar challenges nationwide. “The recent events at the Oroville dam in California, together with ice jam flooding on other major waterways and other flooding events, has forced the Environment and Public Works Committee to take up the status of U.S. dam, levee and other flood control infrastructure,” the Washington Examiner reported. “The new chairman of the committee, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, has made infrastructure development a top issue for the panel this Congress, in light of President Trump’s focus on infrastructure and job development.”

Dams aren’t the only part of California infrastructure on the hot seat. Following a big-ticket Sacramento request for federal building funds, a new report has concluded that the number of state bridges in dangerously inadequate condition reaches into the thousands. 

“Of the 55,000 bridges across the U.S. that were deemed structurally deficient in a report published by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, more than 1,300 California bridges fall under that category,” KCRA and the Associated Press reported. “That means that of the 25,431 bridges in the state, 5 percent have one or more key bridge elements – deck, superstructure or substructure – that are considered to be in ‘poor’ or worse condition, the analysis found.”

Although the bridges haven’t been labeled near collapse, the numbers threw the sheer scale of California’s infrastructure woes – amid heavy costs on marquee projects like high-speed rail – into stark relief. “The state has already identified 4,075 bridges that need repair, which comes with a price tag of $12 billion,” the channel continued. “Across the country, ARBTA noted that deficient bridges are crossed about 185 million times a day. The top 14 most-traveled deficient bridges are in California.”

Hat in hand

A near-catastrophe surrounding the potential failure of the state’s Oroville Dam has thrown additional light onto what California gets for its spending and doesn’t. “Shock over the emergency evacuation downriver from the Oroville Dam has given way to serious questions about how California is coping with its aging infrastructure – which the American Society of Civil Engineers says would cost the state a staggering $65 billion per year to fix and maintain after years of neglect,” the San Jose Mercury News observed.

Residents and officials are divided over where that kind of money should come from. “Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed investing $43 billion in infrastructure over the next five years, with the vast majority of the money going to transportation,” the paper added. “California voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond in 2014 for a range of needs from flood control to water storage, but that falls far short of needs for flood control and increasing the water supply.”

Wishes and hopes

In fact, the state has drafted up a bid for $100 billion of federal infrastructure funding on over 50 projects, itemized in a letter from Gov. Brown to the National Governors Association. “Brown’s administration has pledged $4.3 billion of the state’s budget to go toward the repairs on the list, and has given legislative leaders a deadline of April 6 to submit candidates for any transportation funding,” the San Francisco Business Times reported. “Other projects on the state’s list for federal funds include levees, reservoirs, bridges, ports, recycling centers, public transit upgrades and more veterans services operations.”

Oroville Dam wasn’t mentioned on the list; California’s stop-and-start high speed rail project, projected to run well over the budget authorized by voters, was. “The state said Saturday that repairs to the primary spillway at Oroville Dam — the nation’s tallest earthen dam — could run as much as $200 million but that was before critical damage to the emergency spillway,” CNBC noted. “Repairs to both spillways are likely to run much higher than the rough estimate provided by the California Department of Water Resources.”

Although California’s once-cozy relationship with the White House, forged between leading state Democrats and Barack Obama’s administration, may be history, officials have made reassurances that their focus on infrastructure — a priority shared with president Trump — will not be in vain. “State Transportation Agency Secretary Brian Kelly told reporters he plans to meet soon with new federal Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to discuss the wish list,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Chao, wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, won confirmation to the position as one of the most experienced and established members of Trump’s cabinet. 

SACRAMENTO – A Sacramento Bee story published Monday succinctly described the disaster unfolding at the nation’s tallest dam, where flaws in the Oroville Dam’s concrete spillway are forcing water onto the earthen emergency spillway. Threats of a spillway collapse led to mandatory evacuations throughout Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties Sunday.

“Oroville Dam contains a flaw, some critics assert, one that could damage the structure during a major flood and threaten downstream communities,” according to the Bee. “That flaw is the dam’s emergency spillway, which empties onto a bare dirt hillside adjacent to the earthen-fill dam.” The torrent of water could erode the unprotected hillside, undermine the emergency spillway’s foundation and lead to a catastrophic failure.

The amazing thing is that the news report was first published Nov. 27, 2005. The Bee’s Monday publication was a reprint, given the relevance of the report nearly a dozen years later. It provides necessary context after another news organization revealed that three environmental groups at the time had urged state and federal officials to line the emergency spillway with concrete to avoid the kind of problems on display this week.

A dozen years ago, the dam was going through a 50-year relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League argued in their filings that the 1960s-era dam “did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway” and threaten flooding in communities down river, according to the Mercury News, which broke the story this week.

State and federal officials brushed off the suggestion at the time, arguing that the likelihood of such an event was slim and that it would be too costly to complete those improvements. The dam received its relicensing and the matter faded away. State water officials have been consumed more by drought issues than flood possibilities in the ensuing dozen years. But given the accuracy of the environmental groups’ predictions, it’s worth taking a deeper look at what happened.

At a news conference near Lake Oroville Monday, “the state’s top water officials brushed aside questions” about that old report and didn’t address assurances from a top state water official in 2005 that “(o)ur facilities, including the spillway, are safe during any conceivable flood event,” according to the latest Bee report.

The news story revealed another troubling piece of the puzzle: Congress had authorized the construction of a smaller dam on the Yuba River near Marysville, which is down river from Oroville. The Oroville Dam’s operating plan was predicated, in part, on the construction of this other dam, which would take pressure off the larger facility. But it was never built. In the view of critics, this serves as a touchstone for much that is wrong with California’s water policy.

Former Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Republican from San Bernardino County, criticized Gov. Jerry Brown for spending so much time defying the new Trump administration “that it forgot to do the things government is supposed to do, like maintain infrastructure.” The seven years of drought that preceded this rainy season, he added, would have been an ideal time to fix decrepit levees and dams but the Brown administration was more focused on building a $68-billion high-speed rail line, dealing with immigration issues and boosting public-employee compensation.

That’s a harsh assessment, but there’s much evidence to support the theory of ongoing state neglect. There are available water-bond funds, yet the state government has been lackadaisical at best about spending them. Many of its priorities are about environmental restoration rather than dam protection and there’s been little appetite in the Capitol to build new storage facilities.

Indeed, the governor has been more focused on removing dams on the Klamath River near the Oregon border than on shoring up the linchpin of the State Water Project – the system of levees and dams that directs water from the Sacramento Valley southward.

The Brown administration, which had vowed to fight against Donald Trump on his climate, immigration and other policies, nevertheless asked the president Friday to declare parts of California a disaster area, thus opening up a floodgate of federal aid. But there are other federal policies that the Trump administration could consider that would help protect residents living within the shadow of Oroville and other California dams.

For instance, current mortgage rules regarding flood insurance discourage people who live in the shadow of large dams from purchasing flood insurance policies. Federal lending rules require such insurance for owners of property in flood plains, but flood-protection systems such as dams and levees usually remove the floodplain designation from those areas. Without pressure from mortgage companies, owners typically avoid the insurance, figuring there’s little chance of a dam failure.

“Properties that would be designated as located within a flood plain but for a flood protection system like dams and levees – residual risk areas – should be subject to the mandatory purchase requirement,” argues the SmarterSafer Coalition, which includes the R Street Institute, in a recent study analyzing the federal flood insurance program. Those areas would, of course, have rates that “clearly reflect the decreased risk the properties face as a result of the dam or levee.”

Such an insurance system wouldn’t ensure that state and federal authorities repair their dams and levees in a timely manner, but it would offer a level of economic protection for people who are now sitting in motel rooms, watching the news and wondering whether they’ll have anything left if the Oroville Dam spillway gives way. Furthermore, it would protect taxpayers, who typically pay for the aid after a natural disaster strikes.

For now, watching and waiting is all that most Northern California residents can do. Once the crisis passes, there will be intense pressure on the state government to make repairs to Oroville Dam and others across the state. But news reports make clear that state officials were warned about the very problems now unfolding. 

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.