"Old Levees Haunt Rural Yolo"

That is a sub-head for a story in yesterday's Sacramento Bee. Here's the lede:

Residents in three Yolo County hamlets – Clarksburg, Yolo and Knights Landing – say their towns haven't flooded since levees were built in the early 20th century.

But now, in the midst of a devastating economic downturn, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has redrawn its flood maps – which are the basis for federal flood insurance premiums – and the unincorporated towns will be reclassified as high-risk flood zones come 2010.

The story by Hudson Sangree notes that these unincorporated places, which lack money and political clout, have few options for fixing the levees, some of which were built by farmers a century ago.

Read more here.