The cost of building a home in southwest Manteca could jump $3,145 on April 20.
That’s the date a fee on new residential construction to help fund 200-year flood protection improvements will go into effect should the City Council approve flood control impact fees Tuesday. The council meets at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.
The council vote comes 20 years after floodwaters from the 1997 levee breaks that inudanted upwards of 70 square miles between Manteca and Tracy. Ten feet of water was still covering homes in the Wetherbee Lake neighborhood at the western end of Woodward Avenue on Feb, 7, 1997.
Fees are also being established for commercial, industrial and multi-family developments in the 200-year floodplain that is within the city limits. The fee is $1,417 per 1,000 square feet of commercial, $1,096 per 1,000 square feet of industrial, and $904 per unit of multiple family complexes.
Had the fee been in place earlier CenterPoint would have had to pay $442,784 for flood protection fees for the 404,000-square-foot distribution center they are building for Tactical 511. That said if the 500-room resort with indoor waterpark and conference center that has environmental clearance is built it will cost whoever builds it in excess of $400,000 for flood work fees.
The proposed Manteca fees that reflect the flood fees the Lathrop City Council adopted last week cover 900 acres of undeveloped land within the city limits along much of the Airport Way corridor, everything south of the  120 Bypass west of Union Road and an area straddling Woodward Avenue, and a little over four-tenths of a mile east of Union Road. The Lathrop fee covers 4,100 acres.
The fees levied by the two cities on new construction in the 200-year floodplain with cover $62.4 million of the overall $176 million enhanced flood protection work. A presentation prepared for Tuesday’s meeting noted funding sources for the $113.6 million balance were identified but does not elaborate about where it will come from.
The “fix in place” work covers the cost of seepage berms, cutoff walls, erosion repairs, encroachment remediation, and pipe penetration rehabilitation.
Developers could avoid paying the fee by constructing some of the needed improvements.
Should a 200-year flood occur with multiple levee failures along the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers south of the Interstate 5 bridge before the merger with the 120 Bypass, engineers have indicated it would:
uflood 4,200 existing homes with 3 feet or more of water.
uendanger and force the evacuation of 10,698 residents in Lathrop outside of River islands, Weston Ranch in Stockton, and southwest Manteca.
uforce the evacuation of San Joaquin Hospital — the county’s major trauma center — as well as the county jail.
uforce first responders at five fire stations, the Lathrop Police Department and the county sheriff to abandon their stations and key communication centers in the middle of a major emergency.
uLathrop High and Weston Ranch High would have water flowing through their campuses as would six other Manteca unified elementary schools.
uforce the closure of portion of Interstate 5 — the major West Coast freeway running from Mexico to Canada — and the 120 Bypass.
uwater would swamp the wastewater treatment plant serving 75,000 existing Manteca residents and more than 13,000 of Lathrop’s nearly 20,000 residents.
udisrupt Union Pacific Railroad train movements as well as damage tracks that Altamont Corridor Express relies on.
u182 commercial and industrial properties from Costco to the Lathrop Target and Tesla Motors to Simplot would be flooded.
And that’s just for starters. Modeling shows a number of existing homes would likely suffer water damage in fringe areas that could receive upwards of three feet of flood water.
Manteca, Lathrop, and Stockton aren’t the only communities impacted by the Senate Bill 5 mandate. There are 85 cities in 33 Central Valley counties that have to comply.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com