A project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to mitigate flood risk along the American River is receiving pushback from a community group called American River Trees. “We have a rough count of 500 trees that are probably going to be eliminated,” said William Avery, biologist and professor with American River Trees. Community members are coming together to call on the Army Corps of Engineers to rethink their approach to flood control. “Instead of obliterating it and filling it with rock trenches, we want a focused approach where they fix known erosion spots locally with small equipment and not all this junk with trucks coming through,” Avery said. The American River Levee Project will add 11 miles of protection for lower levees. The USACE said in a statement that “several levee sections along the American River were identified as being susceptible to significant erosion from the higher, longer releases from Folsom Dam. The proposed bank protection work will armor the riverbank to reduce and prevent erosion which, if left unaddressed, could result in levee failure.”

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• ABC 10 – Sacramento: Concerns grow over tree clearing along American River for flood infrastructure plan