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In 1995, the Yuba County Water District requested permission from the federal government to begin
restoration work on 30 miles of levees along the Yuba and Feather Rivers in Northern California.
The Army Corps of Engineers produced an environmental impact statement for the project, which found that
43 clumps of elderberry bushes would be disturbed by the work needed to repair the damage that time had
done to the levees.
After consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it was concluded that while elderberry bushes are
not on the list of threatened or endangered species, Valley longhorn elderberry beetles are. As a result,
the Service demanded that this potential insect habitat be protected even though no beetles had ever been
seen in the area of the restoration work.
The Corps ruled that before any work could begin on the levees, an 80-acre mitigation site would have to be
constructed, costing $1.9 million. Various state and federal agencies decided that the mitigation site should
be constructed on the river side of the Feather River levee, and that it should include a wetland. Despite
protests from the local reclamation district - which feared that the seepage from the wetland would weaken
the levee - a large pond was created in close proximity to the levee.
After the pond was built, increased seepage was noted on the land side of the levee, just as the local reclamation district had predicted. In December 1996, a catastrophic levee failure that claimed three lives occurred at the lower end of the mitigation site. In addition, the levee failure did the following:
- Flooded approximately 500 homes;
- Flooded 9000 acres of prime farmland;
- Displaced 35,000 people;
- Flooded the four largest employers in one of the poorest counties in the state; and
- Caused $400,000 worth of damage to the mitigation site.
Because of Endangered Species Act restrictions, the Fish and Wildlife Service barred local governments from making full repairs to the levees until spring. Only temporary repairs were allowed, and then only those repairs needed to stop the immediate threat of water flowing through the damaged levees. Once the water stopped flowing, all repairs were discontinued until the Fish and Wildlife Service completed their consultation procedures with the Corps.
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