Reis Valley and Mudville: Disasters occur when humans get in the way of a natural process

Building in hazard zones creates a lot of emotional trauma through evacuations, rescues, property damage, injury, and death. Not just once, but repeatedly each time the hazard occurs. This type of short-sighted building ignores natural processes and creates disasters where there don't need to be any.

Imagine yourself in a relatively flat upland pasture in a rainstorm. It rains harder and harder, but the pasture is peaceful--there is no risk or drama, it can rain as hard as it wants and you don't need to do anything. You just hear the peaceful pitter-patter of rain on the wet ground. Now imagine yourself next to a creek in that same storm. As it rains harder and harder, the creek rises, gets very loud and muddy and dramatic, perhaps logs float down the creek, banks erode and topple in, trees fall, and the floodwater rises to the point where you must move to safety. You just went through a lot of drama, while the person in the pasture had a boring day.

And the drama was fundamentally good--creeks need floods in a natural pattern to maintain disturbance-adapted ecosystems. Unfortunately, building in hazardous zones also sets up a dynamic that makes people think negatively of the positive and necessary natural process that threaten the structures--and in the worst cases, people try to control and stop those needed processes, impairing natural function and making the safety of communities dependent on artificial measures that could fail.

If we built on and managed and used land and water smartly, we wouldn't need to worry about the natural cycles of drought, flood, earthquake, fire, and landslides. If a drought is happening, if we are living within our means (a water budget), who cares? If a flood is coming, as long as we stay out of the floodway, who cares? If an earthquake happens and our buildings are strong enough, who cares? If a wildfire or prescribed burn occurs and we didn't develop the most hazardous zones and the buildings near it have defensible space, who cares? If we don't build on or below steep unstable hillsides, who cares if landslides occur?

So why not move development away from the hazard before all the drama happens?

Buildings that are poorly built/designed in hazardous areas should be removed, or moved, or redesigned so that they are resistant to or avoid the hazard. This is something that should happen over time via goals in county General Plans.

The first most basic thing counties need to do is stop allowing new development in hazard zones. For example, all the new sea-level development in the Delta is in the wrong place and a serious misuse of land, water, and betrays the public health, safety, and welfare. This is just saddling future generations with problems (hazards, danger, and expensive adaptation and retreat) they will have to fix.

Example 1: Development of flood-prone and ecologically-sensitive lands in the San Joaquin River Delta

Lathrop, 2003

Lathrop, 2022

Example 2: Development of flood-prone and ecologically-sensitive lands in the Sacramento River Delta

West Sacramento, 1997

West Sacramento, 2022

Example 3: Development of wildfire-prone wildlife corridors in Canyon Country

Santa Clarita, 1995

Santa Clarita, 2022

The next thing counties need to do is create a system of incentives to improve the safety of existing developments over time. to strengthen buildings against hazards, move them out of the hazard zone, or remove them.

If it never rained, then rain would be a disaster. Imagine if we lived on a planet where it rarely rained. I man really rarely--like once a decade. Buildings would not be designed for rain--perhaps there would be no roofs. Every time it rained, it would be a disaster. Disasters are of our own making. They can be minimized with proper planning and design and construction that acknowledges natural cycles and processes.

One more thought. At the beginning of this essay I contrasted the relative safety of an upland pasture with a floodplain. I do not want to imply that I think developing pastures is okay. In fact, I generally believe developing "new" land is a bad idea, given we already have so much sprawl, traffic, pollution, and ecological degradation. New development, where appropriate, can fit inside existing developed areas. This goes for irrigated agriculture as well, the expansion of which further degrades our rivers and aquifers. The following two examples of development causing the loss of Sierra Nevada foothill rangeland have been striking to watch on the ground over the last two-to-three decades.

Example 4: Development of rangeland on Sacramento County's highest peak