Floods show California’s climate dilemma: Fight the water, or pull back?
As California battles a second week of lashing rain and snow that have flooded communities, broken levees and toppled power lines, the state is facing questions about whether its approach to handling crippling storms is suited to 21st-century climate threats. For decades, federal and state planners built dams and levees in California to store water and keep it at bay. But as climate change increases the risk of stronger and more destructive storms — like the one that was battering Northern California on Wednesday — experts and some policymakers are urging another approach: giving rivers room to overflow.
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- Los Angeles Times: California’s aging levees are being pushed to the breaking point by climate whiplash
- The Sacramento Bee: A Sacramento County levee has a hole the size of a football field — What it will cost to fix it
- Los Angeles Times: California ‘storm train’ may rival notorious El Niño winter of 1997–98
- US Geological Survey: News release: USGS crews continue to measure record-high streamflows in California
- Fox Weather: See some of the most catastrophic atmospheric rivers and flooding in California history