There is a disaster waiting to happen in southwest Manteca as well as other parts of the Central Valley.

It’s caused catastrophic flooding.

Talking about flooding when the temperatures are expected to climb to 102 degrees today might strike you as odd.

What is odd, however, is us not being worried about flooding until it happens.

The disastrous flash flooding that ravaged the Texas Hills where the Guadalupe River flows is a reminder we are stupid.

Strike that.

We’re systematically stupid and gullible.

Catastrophic flooding isn’t going to happen here, right?

There is no way 110 lives and counting could be lost in flooding in the Central Valley, right?

It was not even a fraction of a second ago, if that, on the measuring stick that is the 4.54 billion year-old planet we live on, that California experienced a flooding event that makes what happened in Texas seem like a slight drizzle in comparison.

It happened 164 years ago when warm precipitation in late December and through January turned into California’s version of 40 days and 40 nights of biblical rain fame.

The flooding was well-documented.

Virtually, the entire 450-mile length of the Central Valley reverted to its prehistoric status of being a gigantic inland sea and then a lake.

Communities were wiped out.

Dead livestock and wild animals peppered floodwaters.

The then “great cities” of Sacramento and Stockton were underwater with some parts up to 10 feet or more.

Can’t blame greenhouse emissions or fossil burning cars on this one.

It happened in 1861-62, long before Greta Thunberg was a twinkle in her great-great-great-great-great grandparents’ eyes.

It will happen again.

Science, in the form of tree ring research known as dendrochronology, points to such “catastrophic” weather events routinely hitting what is today the Southwest region of the United States that reaches as far north as Redding.

These were not far and few between events on nature’s clock where the existence of mankind covers such a few movements of the secondhand.

They have occurred again and again. Sometimes hundreds of years apart and sometimes within dozens of years of each other.

The human conceit swirling in the blame game revving up in Texas is in the assumption that mankind has the ability to determine the scope and pinpoint the exact location of what falls from the sky.

It also means there is somehow a computer model or something that can be created to project how impermeable ground had become in the Guadalupe River watershed after years of intense drought and development.

First and foremost, the loss of live appears 100 percent contained in known flood zones where similar events have happened before.

Add to that the desert region of the Southwest United States from California’s Mojave desert to most of Texas is prone to monsoon weather that includes periods of intense rainfall in summer, and the real question is why there wasn’t more advance warning as it is why significant development was allowed in an unprotected flood zone?

And before anyone turns this into a political issue as Gov. Gavin Newsom might be tempted to do as he ramps up his 2026 presidential campaign with his swing through South Carolina this week, they might want to look in the mirror.

One of the longest identified flood control projects that would deliver by far the most protection against elevated flooding for Manteca, parts of Lathrop and even Southwest Stockton in terms of cost, has been stalled for years by the very government bureaucracy that Newsom is supposed to oversee.

It is widening the Paradise Cut that starts north of the Interstate 5 and Interstate 205 transition just before water reaches the most problematic mile or so on the San Joaquin River in terms of flooding threats.

The California Department of Water Resources leadership has identified widening Paradise Cut as a pivotal project that would lower flood stages and avoid potentially billions of dollars in flood damage.

It would operate much like the 40-mile long and three mile wide Yolo Bypass that can handle up to four times the flow of the Sacramento River channel during flood events.

The Paradise Cut project would be much shorter and less expensive.

There is already commitment for about half of the land needed with money to do much of necessary work courtesy of Cambay Group.

They are the same developers who were able to get 200-year flood protection in place for the 15,001 home planned community of River Islands at Lathrop by working around California’s lethargic bureaucracy that has a death grip on bloated regulations and is immune to common sense solutions.

Despite budget cuts for now that involve the federal share of the $467 million 200-year flood protection for Manteca, Lathrop, and Stockton, the work is moving forward.

That’s because much of the local share of more than 60 percent has been identified. The funding including impacted property owners voting to tax themselves for 30 years to help cover the tab.

Both the 200-year flood protection and Paradise Cut projects have had the proverbial albatross known as the California Environmental Quality Act slowing or weighing them down.

Paradise Cut, which requires the state to take the lead as opposed to the 200-year flood protection effort that is a basically a local undertaking, is a victim of the “Sacramento Hummingbird Effect.”

Governors and legislators talk a good game in the midst of flooding and even drought disasters about how they will take steps to reduce the chances of it happening again.

They may even float a bond issue that includes identified projects as they did after the 1997 floods that inundated 70 square miles southwest of Manteca and almost collapsed a dry levee protecting farmland than now is covered with thousands of homes.

But the 2000 bond issue funds went to other projects.

And the state, as the clamor politicians fielded from constituents died months later as the 1997 floods disappeared in the rear view mirror, moved on to other things.

The Paradise Cut widening, identified repeatedly by state hydrologists as the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to protecting upwards of 70,000 people from flooding, has gone nowhere in nearly 40 years.

Newsom’s CEQA reform does nothing to expedite flood protection projects.

And after six years at the wheel as governor, Paradise Cut and other water-related projects have progressed — if at all — at a speed slower than the Pacific Plate and the North America Plate along the San Andreas Fault.