Yuba City >> Work crews with heavy machinery started emergency repairs Thursday to a levee that protects Yuba City, and was damaged by high flows during the Oroville Dam spillway emergency.

The $28.5 million project will create a seepage cutoff wall and rebuild 2.9-miles of levee along the west side of the Feather River that protect 80,000 people.

“If that levee broke, the city of Yuba City would flood,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, during a press conference announcing the start of the work.

The levee in question runs downstream from near the junction of the Feather and Yuba rivers. Seepage was noted during the spillway crisis, necessitating the emergency repairs.

“We want to do everything we can to ensure the safety of these communities,” Gallagher continued. “It starts with fixing the dam up there; the other big part is ensuring that we have safe levees that keep those flood waters from our communities in the wintertime.”

Heavy equipment rumbled in the background during the event on the levee in which Gallagher and others expressed gratitude — and amazement — at the speed at which the necessary permits had been obtained from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Central Valley Flood Protection Board.

“If you had asked me three weeks ago if we were going to get permission to modify a federal levee in time for this construction season, I would have laughed at you,” said Mike Inamine, general manager of the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency, lead agency on the work.

The Department of Water Resources was also praised for coming up with the money quickly after it was authorized by the governor.

The work is expected to take until the end of the year, and the Feather River Parkway on the water side of the levee has been closed down for the construction period.

Speakers also stressed that there were numerous other levees along the Feather and Sacramento rivers that need repairs as a result of the winter of 2017.