- 2003 February 2 Sacramento Bee David Whitney
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Sacramento, Calif., Congressmen at Opposite Ends of Flood Control Issue

Feb. 18--WASHINGTON--A stalemate over Sacramento flood control appears to be settling in, and the consequence could be a hiatus in Congress on improvements that would protect the city from the whopping American

River flood that everyone knows is coming some day.

It's too soon to predict whether the hiatus will be short-or long-lived, but tensions and long-held animosities are rising as two increasingly powerful local congressmen from opposite sides of the political aisle play a high-stakes game of brinkmanship.

So far, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin, has seized the upper hand in the Republican-controlled Congress. But Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Sacramento, is a shrewd political player with a dozen years more experience that tells him that patience and perseverance will ultimately isolate and defeat Doolittle.

Last week, Doolittle used his rising power within the House Republican leadership to blunt efforts by the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency and Matsui to accelerate planning money for what they regard as the last critical element of Sacramento flood control -- a 7-foot addition to the top of Folsom Dam.
Doolittle also stopped the authorization of a higher spending limit for hardening the network of levees that snake through the city's neighborhoods and back yards. Money for that work will run out in November.

Doolittle is doing this because he thinks building a multipurpose dam at Auburn is the city's best protection against flooding. Such a dam could pay for itself from water sales and power generation, he said. He doesn't want to spend another dime on a hodgepodge of flood fixes with their escalating costs.
Matsui and the SAFCA board supported the Auburn dam until the proposal was defeated in a lopsided House vote in 1992, when the chamber was controlled by Democrats. Since then, Matsui and the agency have worked for alternatives that they think can pass.

Despite the Republicans' dominance of the House, Matsui contends, Democrats and Republican moderates will never pay for a dam of the size and scope that Doolittle envisions.

There is no dispute that an Auburn dam is the superior flood protection for the Sacramento. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said so in its final report on the proposed Folsom raise a year ago.

"As a basic flood control measure, upstream detention is still feasible and considered the most efficient and generally the most effective means of controlling flooding on the American River," it said. "The net benefits of upstream detention measures are higher than those of any other flood-damage reduction measure; thus, the upstream detention is the most efficient plan for flood control."

These words are etched in stone for Doolittle.

"It is so frustrating to talk about this," Doolittle said. "Sacramento is so desperate for flood control. Their lives are literally in danger by not having the Auburn dam. We have a power crisis that is constantly looming and we clearly have a water crisis.

"I'm for Auburn dam not because I have some ego in this," he said. "This is the only regional solution that meets all our needs."
Wrong, insists Matsui and SAFCA. Build the Auburn dam for whatever other reason you want, they say, but for flood control, raising the Folsom Dam will protect the city from the worst probable storms.

After Doolittle's gains last week, Matsui expressed frustration, too.

"He's telling me that if SAFCA and I get on board behind an Auburn dam, then we'll get an Auburn dam," he said. "That's ludicrous.

"My support and SAFCA's support will not get him the Auburn dam," Matsui said. "I don't know what to do. We have a situation where Sacramento County is in imminent peril, 600,000 lives are at risk and about $20 billion worth of assets, for no reason at all. A lot of my colleagues are just rolling their eyes, saying we've never seen a situation like this where one person wants to stop a project that's really needed."

F.I. "Butch" Hodgkins, SAFCA's executive director, joined in the attack on Doolittle, saying his actions endanger families in the Valley, including his own.
"Mr. Matsui has tried to advance the things that are doable," Hodgkins said. "But the fifth most powerful Republican in the House has decided he wants to put people in Sacramento -- including my wife and daughters -- at risk for reasons that make no sense."

Doolittle responded by saying their strategy to isolate and ignore him is proving to be feeble.

"As we've seen in the latest round, and ones before that, they haven't fared so well," he said. "They preach regionalism, but it's really just about what benefits them. If it isn't something they're interested in, you'll never find them there to help."

He was even more pointed in his comments about Hodgkins and the SAFCA board.

"Butch says, 'That Auburn dam, it's never going to be built," " Doolittle said. "Well, what he is saying in essence is that Sacramento is going to flood, we're going to have $40 billion in property damage, we will kill hundreds of people and there's nothing we can do about that. That's not a position I am willing to take. But I think it is shocking that that is the position they are willing to take."

The funding decision last week, on a huge $396 billion governmentwide spending bill for 2003, was probably just the opening skirmish of the year.
Congress is now at work on spending measures for 2004. In addition, Congress may get around to a massive water projects bill in which authorization of the higher cost levee work and the Folsom raise are certain to be key battlegrounds.

Last year, Doolittle managed to block any new authorizations for Sacramento flood control by joining House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, in raising questions about the Folsom project and directing the General Accounting Office to investigate cost overruns on the levee work.

The Corps of Engineers' top brass signed off on the Folsom work after some modifications to address safety issues growing out of the Doolittle-Young complaints, making it ripe for congressional authorization. The GAO report on the cost overruns is not due out until October.

At the moment, however, there is a solid wall separating Doolittle, with his leadership position in the inner circle of the House leadership, and Matsui, a close confidant of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. Neither seems able to advance his own cause without the other.

Asked if there was any compromise that might bring him to a different position, Doolittle paused momentarily and then said, no.

"I wish I could sit here and tell you that there's something less controversial, but there is none," he said. "I just think we have to come to terms with that."

For Matsui, it's a matter of waiting Doolittle out. Surely, he believes, there will come a moment when the rest of Congress will rise up in frustration with Doolittle, and the logjam over Sacramento flood control will be broken.

"We'll find a way," Matsui said. "It's just taking a little more time."