Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger walked along the levee located just outside Sacramento where crews from the Department of Corrections filled sandbags and laid plastic … Governor Schwarzenegger watched the work being done. 

 “I mean if you think about it that it’s just the sandbags that are protecting us from disaster right now. I mean it’s ridiculous.” 

Schwarzenegger did not give details but said his bond proposal, to be unveiled this week in his State of the State address, will include a “considerable amount” of money for levee restoration. The levee he visited suffered recent erosion damage after being battered by high waves and wind. Les Harder with the state Department of Water Resources says similar work is being done on levees throughout the area. 

 “You’ve had over the last weekend or so thousands of people basically shoring up a pretty marginal system…” 

Harder estimates it would be a major undertaking to locate all the problems in the thousands of miles of levees and billions of dollars to fix them. Schwarzenegger called the recent flooding in Louisiana a wake-up call to the conditions here in California.