California gives rivers more room to flow to stem flood risk

MODESTO, Calif. (AP) — California is on the forefront of a new wave of flood risk management that centers on natural engineering over structural.

The Dos Rios Ranch Preserve is California’s largest single floodplain restoration project, part of the nation’s broadest effort to rethink how rivers flow as climate change alters the environment.

It sits between vast almond orchards and dairy pastures and has been redesigned to look like it did 150 years ago, before levees and dams restricted the flow of rivers across the landscape.

When heavy rains send the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers over their banks, water will run out onto those 2,100 acres, reducing risk downstream and letting ecosystems flourish.