Manteca’s elected city leaders — opting to stay the course to enhance flood protection for 8,000 existing residents on the dime of the buyers of future new homes — unanimously rejected a request to suspend building in the 200-year floodplain.The request made by rural residents to freeze growth in southwest Manteca until such time as all flooding impacts have been identified and mitigated didn’t exactly fall on deaf ears during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.Councilwoman Debby Moorhead, whose sentiments were echoed by her elected colleagues, said she understood the fears rural residents have that reside south of where a more muscular and longer dry levee is being pursued to ratchet up 200-year flood protection in Lathrop, southwest and west Manteca, Weston Ranch, and French Camp.“We have a lot more on the other side (of the dry levee) to protect,” Moorhead said of the 48,000 residents that includes Lathrop and Weston Ranch who already live in harm’s way under modeling when conditions align for a 200-year flood event. A 200-year event isn’t one that would happen every year but rather a flooding scenario than has a 1 in 200 chance of happening in any given year.Moorhead added “that doesn’t diminish” the situation the rural residents are facing.The area south of Manteca has flooded 11 times since 1929 due to levee breaks along the San Joaquin River and Stanislaus River. That included 1997 when water lapped at the top of the existing dry levee south of Woodward Avenue that was considered touch and go for 48 hours.