Dan Walters: California belatedly sees peril

Except, perhaps, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, it's difficult to find much land in California that's not imperiled by some variety of natural or seminatural disaster.

If you build homes along the coast, you must worry about storm-caused landslides and earthquakes. If you build in the mountains, there's the ever-present threat of wildfires. And if you build in the interior river valleys, levee breaks and flooding from winter rains is the looming threat.

Our tendency has been to ignore the potential perils and build homes, even entire towns, wherever it suits our fancy, with little thought to the potential consequences. When calamity strikes, as it does periodically, we clean up the mess and, with insurance settlements and government funds, rebuild and await the next episode.

With its ever-increasing population, California must expand housing, commercial services and public infrastructure, and there are few viable options to using disaster-prone lands, whether it's the vertical, high-density development in coastal cities that those on the left encourage or the low-density suburban-style expansion that those on the right prefer.

That said, we may be -- belatedly -- getting smarter about how we develop, recognizing the potential dangers and attempting to mitigate the effects on life and property. We now impose tougher construction standards on buildings along earthquake faults and are beginning to crack down on what kinds of housing are built in the forests.

The latest advance came last week, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited a park adjacent to a levee in Sacramento's flood-prone North Natomas region and signed six bills aimed at forcing developers and local governments to consider flood safety as they plan subdivisions near rivers.

The compromise package was born of the devastation of New Orleans by floods from Hurricane Katrina, new appraisals showing that Sacramento could suffer the same fate, the potential that global warming would increase flooding, a court decision that makes the state responsible for damage when state-federal levees fail, and voters' enactment of levee repair bonds.

"Floodplain development is another one of those issues that have not gotten the attention that it deserves," Schwarzenegger said. "For years nothing got done because growth and safety concerns were always at odds. Now we have the support of the builders and local governments, and also the water agencies in the state."

Among other things, the legislation would create new maps of flood-prone regions, bar local governments from approving development not enjoying 200-year flood protection and make them liable for damage if they unreasonably approve developments later stricken by flooding. Fittingly, a day after Schwarzenegger acted, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cracked down on development of North Natomas.

Given the lack of action on other major issues, the flood package may be the most significant achievement of the 2007 legislative session. But more should be done to protect lives and property from California's propensity for natural disasters, including a broader array of insurance policies, better emergency preparedness and, most importantly, even tougher development and construction standards.

It's ludicrous, for example, that taxpayers and insurers should be on the hook when residents of a scenic mountain area -- whether it's Lake Tahoe in Northern California or Lake Arrowhead in Southern California -- build wood-framed and sometimes wood-roofed homes that can fuel wildfires and then fail to maintain clear perimeters. It's equally ridiculous that misguided environmental feelings prevent brush and dead timber from being removed from such areas.

About the writer:

• Reach Dan Walters at (916) 321-1195 or dwalters@sacbee.com. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/walters.