Disaster in Waiting

摘要

The scenario is known as "California's Katrina." An earthquake or superstorm causes Gold Rush-era earthen levees to collapse. Saltwater from San Francisco Bay floods the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, displacing half a million lowland Californians, poisoning the water supply for as many as 28 million more who live in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Silicon Valley, and ruining farmland that produces 11 percent of the nation's agricultural value. The eighth-largest economy in the world could be sunk for months, even years.