As memories of disasters fade, the money set aside to address them dwindles. Take the case of the Inverness flood control district, established in the aftermath of the devastating 1982 storm that sent several homes sliding down hillsides, overturned cars and left Sir Francis Drake Boulevard impassable for several days. In the immediate aftermath, residents raised $200,000 for dredging and stabilizing the town’s creeks. But four years later, after most of the cleanup was done, voters declined to approve a parcel tax that would have generated new funding. The last projects undertaken by the district—dredging Second Valley Creek below Sir Frances Drake and improving drainage downtown—were completed in 1987. With the fund’s assets down to just $37,000, the district’s advisory board has unanimously recommended dissolving the district and transferring the remaining funds to the Marin Resource Conservation District, which also undertakes creek stabilization projects. County supervisors will hold a public hearing on May 5 before deciding to close the district, known as Flood Control Zone 10. Jim Fox, the retired Inverness fire chief who chairs the advisory board, encouraged his fellow members to recommend the dissolution. “There was no project that could be found that we could afford to pay for,” he said. “It made no sense to use up whatever money was there just to continue having meetings.” The district is one of several overseen by the county’s Department of Public Works. Bylaws called for four advisory board meetings a year, and each one requires paying county staff for their time. Several years ago, at Mr. Fox’s urging, the district reduced the meeting schedule to just one a year. This year, forecasters are predicting a potentially major El Niño event—a weather pattern that causes an unusual warming of surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It typically occurs every two to seven years and sometimes results in intense rains in California. Some analysts are predicting that this year’s El Niño could be the strongest in 140 years. But no matter what weather materializes, Jerry Meral, president of the Inverness Association’s board, said closing the district makes sense. He’s a water expert who once served as deputy secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. Mr. Meral said the most effective responses for Inverness—such as moving a few threatened houses from harm’s way or building concrete channels to carry stream water to Tomales Bay—would be both expensive and rejected by residents. “If they channelized the creeks, you could imagine what the reaction to that would be,” he said. And it’s hard to mobilize voters to approve funding for disasters before they happen, said Ann Elliott, coordinator of the Inverness Disaster Council, which was created in response to the 1982 storm. “That’s the way of our society,” she said. “We deal with problems as they appear. And since we haven’t had any major flooding, we don’t worry about it.”