It’s a miraculous jump in weather when it goes from 100 plus degrees by noon to partly cloudy with a chance of showers in a few short hours. It’s safe to say that flood season is right around the corner.

Promoted as a way to reduce flood risk and save lives in California’s Central Valley, a compromise has been reached with the implication of Senate Bill 5.

The agreement is to restrict any future development – starting in 2015 – in the Sacramento and San Joaquin areas that are either listed as flood zones that lack necessary repairs or risky areas that have the tendency to flood without imposing a threat or creating barriers on community and economic growth.

Furthermore, according to the California Progress Report, SB 5 would require California to prepare a Central Valley Flood Protection Plan by 2012.

In the meantime, according to the Sacramento Bee, the state Department of Water Resources has provided Central Valley cities and counties with maps showing where flooding could occur from 100-year and 200-year storms. This means they are so severe that their chances of occurring in any given year are 1 percent and 0.5 percent respectively, said Jim Sanders of the Bee Capital Bureau.

These maps provide land-users with a physical view of the areas that are “dangerous development areas” in order to prevent companies from the risk of future fatalities or lawsuits.

This compromise is important to Sacramento because we possibly have the worst flood risk in the country. Furthermore, Sacramento State resides next to the American River levee, one of the spots being called into question.

Don’t forget January of 1997 when the South Fork of the American River in Coloma-Lotus, California flooded. This was a disaster that brought Central Valley people together in an effort to reconstruct and salvage what they could of families, homes and land. Keeping that in mind, we have the opportunity to act and make a difference before something bad happens again.

We need to be more involved in this compromise, and at the very least, aware of its effects because ultimately, without the proper precaution for the future, we stand against the possibility of our school flooding. Sac State students as well as Sacramento residents need to resurrect the spirit of Hurricane Katrina.

We have all seen the devastation a major flood can have, and although if our school did flood it would not have the same drastic effects that were brought on to New Orleans, it would still have a major effect on thousands of students, and us in its entirety as a community.

Talecia Bell can be reached at [email protected]