Sacramento Topics

A working model of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, in a Sausalito warehouse, helps the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers simulate flows and currents in the waterways.

Contract workers were busy on the Folsom Dam Auxiliary Spillway on Thursday, March, 7, 2013. The $962-million cooperative project between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Department of the Interior seemed unfazed by the across-the-board budget reduction triggered by the failure of Congress and the White House to reach a deal on federal spending called the sequester.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building a floodwall on Morrison Creek as part of the South Sacramento Streams Group project. The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency on Thursday approved another project to boost flood protection on 1.6 miles of Unionhouse Creek. A flood insurance requirement will end for 1,500 homes.

Trees grow on the levee on the Sacramento River near the Pocket August 25, 2011 in Sacramento, Calif. A new research report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers appears to disprove its own policy banning trees on levees. The study not yet publicly released, concludes that trees located on the lower third of a levee can actually strengthen a levee and improve flood protection. The Corps has maintained since Hurricane Katrina that trees are dangerous because roots could provide a path for seepage that could undermine a levee. The new study disproves that, and could force the Corps to reconsider a controversial policy that would eliminate millions of trees in the Central Valley.