In 1990, Gary Estes moved to Auburn, a town of nearly 14,000 in the Sierra Nevada foothills on the North Fork of the American River. Estes, an environmentalist, immediately joined the fight against Auburn Dam. The proposed dam site was only about one mile from his house. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build Auburn Dam to boost flood control in the city of Sacramento, which is about 30 miles downstream of Auburn and which the Corps considers to be the region most at-risk for catastrophic flooding nationwide. But the American River already had the 340-foot high Folsom Dam between Auburn and Sacramento. … He and other Auburn Dam opponents thought there had to be a better way to protect Sacramento from floods―and they turned out to be right. Estes’ search for alternatives to Auburn Dam sparked a new way to operate reservoirs for flood control.