A California state audit has found that nearly one-third of local agencies responsible for maintaining vital Central Valley flood-control levees performed unacceptable routine maintenance, in some cases for years, leaving more than 250,000 people and roughly $40 billion worth of property exposed to flood risk. The findings land as state funding for levee upkeep is shrinking rather than growing, even as the system ages and maintenance needs rise.
The audit, detailed in reporting from CalMatters and distributed through the San Mateo Daily Journal, covers a system of 1,600 miles of levees and other flood-control structures that California oversees along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and certain tributaries under the State Plan of Flood Control. Beyond the people at risk, the audit warns that 133,000 buildings and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland sit behind levees whose routine maintenance has fallen short, according to the same CalMatters report.
Money Flowing the Wrong Direction
State water managers told auditors they have provided $400 million to local agencies for levee maintenance over the past decade, but that fully addressing Central Valley maintenance needs would require at least $165 million more every year for decades to come, per CalMatters. Instead of climbing to meet that gap, the audit found that state funding for levee maintenance is dwindling. The Department of Water Resources also acknowledged it has no additional funding available to tackle new critical sites that inspectors will inevitably identify in the years ahead, the outlet reported.
That squeeze is already being felt on the ground. The Knights Landing Ridge Drainage District said it has only enough money to continue erosion repairs through next year after losing access to a state assistance program, according to CalMatters' reporting. As of August 2026, state water managers had been unable to complete repair projects at 14 of 48 critical levee sites identified since 2012, CalMatters reported.
A Legal Requirement Left Unmet
Perhaps the audit's sharpest finding is procedural: California law requires the Department of Water Resources to step in and take over levee maintenance when local agencies fail, but the audit found the department has not followed that mandate, per CalMatters. Auditors urged the department to begin taking over maintenance in those failure cases. In response, the department said taking over maintenance can cost tens of millions of dollars upfront and must be weighed against other investments that might reduce flood risk more effectively — an argument laid out in the department's own letter responding to the audit, as described by CalMatters.
The department also pushed back on parts of the audit's risk accounting, disputing the auditor's count of people and properties at risk by saying it misses important regional flood-infrastructure context and local hydrology, according to the CalMatters report. Separately, the department noted that maintenance contributes to levee performance but is not always the most effective action for reducing risk overall.
A Vetoed Bill and a Different Pot of Money
The maintenance funding fight is playing out against a separate legislative setback. The California Legislature passed a bill that would have created an annual repair fund for 1,100 miles of aging Delta levees, roughly a third of which fall under the State Plan of Flood Control while the rest are privately or locally owned. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure, saying funding already included in the current year's budget made it redundant, according to a report on the veto and its aftermath. That same report notes state estimates put the cost of Delta levee repairs at more than $3.3 billion, and that the state budget separately secured $170 million for levee funding and canal repair after the vetoed bill had originally proposed $150 million for each purpose.
Delta advocates cited in that reporting say the need for dedicated repair funding is especially urgent with an El Niño winter approaching, since climate change is increasing both the demands placed on Delta infrastructure and the risks it faces. The Delta Levees Maintenance Subventions Program, which provides cost-share funding to local agencies for levee rehabilitation and maintenance, remains one of the state's existing tools, according to the Department of Water Resources.
Local Managers Push Back on the Findings
Not everyone agrees with how the audit characterized conditions on the ground. Meegan Nagy, general manager of the Knights Landing Ridge Drainage District, said local agencies simply lack the funds to work through deferred maintenance and carry out larger projects, and that the district has only enough funding to continue repairs through next year. The district also warned that erosion sites which could otherwise be proactively repaired risk becoming critical once high water arrives.
Tom Engler, responding to the audit's findings, said he was still reviewing the report and had mixed reactions — agreeing with some findings while calling others completely off base. He argued that inadequate funding is squarely the fault of the California Legislature, and that most of the levee system's most threatening problems are long-term structural issues dating back to the construction era rather than maintenance failures. Engler also said some agencies landed on the unacceptable list because of factors like burrowing rodents and overgrown vegetation that obscured more serious issues, or because inspections occurred before scheduled grazing of plants and brush was finished, with managers failing to update the state afterward. Engler maintained that, in his view, the levees are in good shape and the maintenance has been done.
Adam Borchard urged lawmakers to seriously and earnestly invest in Central Valley flood-control infrastructure going forward. The Department of Water Resources, for its part, has said that failing to fix levee problems could put federal disaster-recovery funds at risk — a warning that underscores how much is riding on a maintenance system that, by the state's own audit, is falling behind even as the stakes keep rising.
