Brigadier General (P) Donald E. Jackson, Jr., deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil and Emergency Operations, visited levee work in north Sacramento, CA yesterday.
During the visit, he was briefed on key projects in the District including Folsom Dam auxiliary spillway construction project and ongoing levee work.
Greater Sacramento, California, is among the most at-risk regions in America for catastrophic flooding, relying on an aging system of levees, weirs and bypasses and Folsom Dam to reduce its flood risk.
USACE is working to modernize this system through a variety of levee improvement projects and upgrades to Folsom Dam – designed to strengthen the entire system and work together to reduce flood risk throughout the region.
A new auxiliary spillway at Folsom Dam is under construction as well as raising parts of the existing Folsom Dam and dikes surrounding the reservoir. Another part of this multi-faceted program is improving a 42-mile ring of levees around the Natomas Basin.
The new Folsom spillway is on schedule for completion in 2017, and the Corps, Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency and state of California have recently proposed further plans for $1.46 billion of work to continue improving Sacramento levees and to widen the Sacramento River weir and bypass.