There’s no easy way to say this. A state agency is helping affluent property owners barricade an equity gateway for many of Sacramento’s poorest, non-white residents.
If this sounds impossible today in California, here’s how it happened.
In recent months, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board overstepped its responsibilities for flood maintenance and operations. The state agency became the literal gatekeeper for residents along the Sacramento River levee who want to keep outsiders out.
The greatest coach in Sacramento history invented himself in 1944. He was 25 and serving in the Army Air Corps. He walked into a courthouse in Los Angeles, filled out a name-change petition, and with a judge’s permission, became Sherman Chavoor.
Gone forever was Izikiel Correa, the Portuguese kid from Hawaii. Gone was the link to Guilhermo Correa, his abusive father who worked cane fields around Hilo and loaded freighters on Oakland docks. Gone were insults, insecurities and poverty.
There was a real Sherman Chavoor. He was a UCLA football star in the 1930s, honored for courage and sportsmanship. He became a teacher, football coach and high school principal in Burbank. When Izzy chose an identity to steal, he chose well.
Darrell Steinberg is a timid politician, and timid people should never be mayor. Timidity was the hallmark of his political career. It sustained him for three decades before it finally, inevitably ruined him.
The pattern began in 1992. He entered politics as a City Council candidate to replace Kim Mueller when she moved to the federal judiciary. Steinberg won easily. He secured valuable support months before Election Day. He campaigned against a weak field populated by unknowns and has-beens. The race was over before it started.
Temporary chain-link fences showed up overnight. Stretched across the Sacramento River levee, blocking the gravel path, disheveled and lurching like drunks after a party. One fence ran into the water, breaking federal and state laws. Somehow, the fences were approved by state officials from the Central Valley Flood Protection Board.
In May, a staff member at Central Valley Flood issued temporary permits for two private, cross-levee fences and gates in Pocket. The new barricades went up fast.
They were erected by property owners near the river, the small, loud group that spent years fighting to keep the public away from the levee.
Ryan Nickel works with scientists who fight crime. He’s a crime-busting scientist himself, an expert in DNA analysis. But there’s a difference. Around the office, Nickel is known as the guy who runs marathons.
“We have a great team, but yeah, they don’t see me as a scientist,” he says. “They see me as a distance runner.”
The label carries an ironic touch. Nickel works for the Sacramento County district attorney’s crime lab, where the goal is to nail people after they go running.
Things look good on new sections of the Sacramento River levee. The roadbed gravel is neat and smooth, baking in the summer heat. But wait until winter. Things get ugly when rains come.
I have an idea how much money it costs to repair the levees and bolster them with slurry walls. It’s a big number. The project, which has taken about three years and isn’t finished, carries a price tag of $1.8 billion, paid by taxpayers. Who can bring context to that much money?
People visit the levee to inspect their investment. They walk along the new gravel roadbed and enjoy the views. Sometimes they see new damage, months after Army Corps of Engineers contractors finished another section of seepage walls and levee rehabilitation.
