Liability?

I agree with the general point of today's Sun-Star editorial: the Delta levees certainly need to be fixed as quickly as possible.
 
However, a faint memory of Paterno v. the State of California and five minutes on Google looking up state liability issues on the Delta levees reminded me that, regardless of the size of the infrastructure bond and the extent of the repairs to the levees, if one or more break, the way things presently stand, the California taxpayers are responsible for paying for the damage. It looks as if each dollar invested in levee repair ends up incurring an unknown amount of liability in case of flood, which could be caused by a number of factors even the state Legislature could not be held responsible for.
 
The alternative that has been developing -- not enough state investment in levee repair and more effort spent on promoting a peripheral canal -- appear to be a combination of choice and response to the drastic state financial and natural resources crisis. If there is any lesson in it, it might be that decades of failure of political will to deal with this, admittedly, thankless, punishing political issue, may not be forgiveable or reparable today. There were three wake up calls in a dozen years: the 1997 floods, Jones Island and Katrina. But the speculative real estate boom during those years was simply dazzling and the future horizons shrunk down to the next flip.
 
Bill Hatch
 
7-22-09
Merced Sun-Star
State budget's impact on levee system
A failure in San Joaquin Delta system would put California's entire water system at risk...Our View
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/181/v-print/story/961043.html
Massive program cuts, state worker salary reductions and IOUs aren't the only consequences of California's budget stalemate.
The deadlock is also preventing the state from selling bonds needed to fund initiatives that have already been approved by voters.
A case in point is Proposition 1E, passed overwhelmingly in November 2006, which provided $4 billion for Delta levee repairs and Central Valley flood control.
In normal times, the levee repair projects that 1E was written to finance wouldn't be scrambling for funding. But these are unusual times and they are impacting Delta levees, as well as projects in the rest of the state.
New projects have stalled for lack of financing. Old projects, financed by private levee districts on the understanding that the state would reimburse half the costs, have had to wait five months longer than usual for reimbursements.
This may come as a surprise to those who recall the hoopla surrounding the state's sale of about $13 billion in infrastructure bonds last March and April.
The bond sale reportedly allowed the state to restart about 7,000 infrastructure projects that had been frozen by the 2008 cash crunch -- including making good on what was owed for completed Delta levee repairs. But new levee repair projects were all but shut out of that money.
That's very unfortunate. The levees don't just keep Delta farmland safe from flooding. They allow fresh water to flow south to cities and farms, and keep that water untainted by tidal saltwater.
A Delta levee failure wouldn't just create floods. It could put the state's water system at risk. With experts questioning the levees' capacity to survive a major earthquake or flood, that catastrophe is far from unimaginable.
Hopefully, neither disaster will arrive before a budget deal is reached. Because funding the levee repairs that Proposition 1E called for will require a new bond sale -- that sale won't happen unless the Legislature produces a budget balanced with more than smoke and mirrors.
With California's credit rating flirting with junk status, there's no guarantee that even that budget deal will be enough to attract the bond buyers needed to make the levees whole. But one thing is certain: A bad budget will keep the levees teetering on the brink.