Natomas Makes The News In La La Land

In case you missed it, the Natomas Basin made it into the Los Angeles Times last week in a story about Sacramento officials’ flood prep.

My fave part of this article? It appears the reporter failed to interview anyone who lives or owns businesses in the neighborhood and yet they were able to write:

“When heavy rain begins to fall, folks here peer nervously at the sky and riverbanks.”

Okaaaaaaaaaaay.

Who did the La La Times interview? Let’s see:

County Supervisor Roger Dickinson, “Every winter we hold our breaths and hope this isn’t the year something happens before we can finish the work. There is a sense of the clock ticking.”

And Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency exec Stein Buer who is quoted as saying, “I never sleep during storms.”

Mayor Heather Fargo adds, “To me, floods are the biggest risk to public safety we face and the biggest risk to our economic viability. In our 12-step recovery, we are way beyond denial.”

And, finally, Jeffrey Mount, director of UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences, said of city leaders chimes in, “They placed a higher value on tax and economic growth than public safety. Call it the Clint Eastwood strategy: Do you feel lucky? New Orleans lost the battle of the inevitable, because inevitably it happens.”

The reporter obviously spent a lot of time chatting up Buer because the article covers the flood exec’s childhood in Norway, building kayaks and navigating Western waterways.

Mount touts Buer, “as competent a flood manager as there is in California.”

I hope our friends with the Fix It Now group read this article as it’s got lots of material to support their case that the current time line to repair Natomas-area levees is not aggressive enough!

Click here to read Sacramento officials prepare for the worst — massive flooding for yourself.