Nature Provides Its Own Flood Control. Time to Use It?
Mar 27, 2017 at 1:00pm
That has some calling for a new approach to flood control – one that mimics nature instead of trying to contain it.
It’s being tried in a handful of places in California, including here just below Oroville Dam, where massive flows on the Feather River put levees to the test this winter.
“It looks like a bomb’s gone off,” says John Carlon of River Partners, a non-profit that does river restoration. “That’s what it looks like.”
He’s looking at a levee on the Feather River, about half an hour north of Sacramento. It has a huge gouge where it meets the riverbank.
“You can see this hole that develops and then it just starts eating away,” he says. “And on the other side of that is thousands of acres that would flood if it just eats through that little hole.”
The Feather River levees were hit with a huge amount of water: almost 60 million gallons per minute during the worst storms last month. So this levee will need repairs, which is pretty common for aging infrastructure.
“This levee is at least 80 years old,” Carlon says. “It’s actually old and outdated.”