Study Finds Sacramento Area Levees Inadequate

摘要

The levees that were designed to protect homes and businesses in California's Natomas basin—a region just north of the American River in Sacramento that was formerly agricultural but is now increasingly residential—might not provide the level of flood protection (100-year) for which they were originally certified, according to a draft of a new report commissioned by the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency (SAFCA). The Natomas Levee Evaluation Report focuses on levees along the north bank of the American River, the east bank of the Sacramento River, and the south bank of the Natomas Cross Canal—an excavated channel that drains tributary rivers into the Sacramento River. It sees problems with bank erosion, seepage both under and through the levees, and inadequate freeboard—the distance between the top of the levee and the design water surface elevation.