Flood board coming to Marysville

The Central Valley Flood Protection Board will come to Marysville next week to give some final resolution to Linda homeowners who've been told their properties encroach on a right of way to fight floods.

In a series of action items scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Yuba County Government Center, the board will consider a recommendation to establish a 20-foot clearance at the base of the neighboring Feather River levee, and allow property owners to use the remaining state land under a permit, until further notice.

But one affected property owner, who said the state has staked out a line marking the levee toe, said there is another problem with a particular irony for a flood fighting effort.

"It all floods," said Monty Hecker, who owns Elite Universal Security on Riverside Drive, home to many of the affected properties, of where the access road would go. "There's no drainage for this."

Someone patrolling on the 20-foot clearance during a high-water event, he said, is as likely to be stuck in mud and water as be able to monitor the levee's stability.

"We can't figure out why they did what they did," he said.

About 50 property owners on Riverside and Feather River Boulevard first received letters from the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority last summer saying their back fences extended onto the state's right of way at the base, or toe, of the levee.

The letter told property owners that crews would remove the encroaching fences and replace them with fences further from the levee. Many property owners balked, saying they'd never heard of such a problem before, even though they'd owned the property for years, in some cases decades.

Two property owners who had buildings without the encroachment said they were afraid they'd have to tear them down, at cost.

Under the solution being proposed by flood board staff and supported by TRLIA, that shouldn't be necessary, said TRLIA Executive Director Paul Brunner.

"Those two families' structures would be allowed to remain there," he said, though the families would have to apply for and receive encroachment permits from the state.

TRLIA will still cover the costs for taking down existing fences and replacing them, but the new recommendations will give property owners anywhere from three to 10 feet more than under the previous ones, he said.

Yuba County Supervisor John Nicoletti said he sees the proposed recommendations as the nearest nexus between what the state and the property owners want.

"I really think we're ending up in the same place," he said, adding no one who remembers the flood of 1986, for example, argues with the need for a levee-access road. "And not a lot of land gets taken up."

If the board gives its approval next week, Brunner said, TRLIA and engineers can begin looking at issues such as drainage and elevation changes, with work on the fences not likely to start until spring.

The authority will also cover costs for real-estate documentation to apply for the needed permits and licenses, a figure expected to be about $150,000 and shared between state and local sources.

Nicoletti said he'd acknowledge the buildings within the encroachment, which also covers one on Hecker's property, will have to be accounted for.

On the other hand, he said, a majority of affected residents are happy to receive a new, more secure back fence, at no cost to them.

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4786. Find him on Facebook at /ADbvandermeer or on Twitter at @ADbvandermeer.