Give Rivers Space: The Simple Flood Risk Fix

Short Wave

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4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

With much of California's massive snowpack yet to melt, downstream communities remain on high alert for flooding. Hundreds of homes were destroyed or damaged during the record-breaking winter, which tested the state's aging flood infrastructure. To prevent flooding, communities often raise levees next to rivers higher and higher. Today, NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer talks about a new approach: just giving rivers some space to flow.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.4	Hey, Shortwaveers, Regina Barber here.
0:07.8	There's still a lot of snow in California's mountains.
0:10.4	It's been a year for the record books.
0:12.8	A year that has showed how a lot of infrastructure for floods just isn't ready to handle all that
0:18.0	water.
0:19.0	It's been a heartbreaking weekend for the residents of Pahorow in Monterey County.
0:23.0	The levee breach Friday put the town under water.
0:25.8	Hundreds of homes were flooded.
0:28.1	And a lot of communities are asking how they can protect themselves from disasters
0:31.6	like these.
0:33.0	So we brought NPR's climate correspondent, Lauren Summer.
0:36.1	She's been reporting on a solution.
0:37.7	Hey, Lauren.
0:38.7	Hey, Regina.
0:39.7	And yes, the whole idea behind this is to work with nature instead of trying to contain
0:45.3	it.
0:46.3	So there were two communities that flooded this winter, Pahorow and Planada.
0:50.2	And they had a lot in common.
0:51.4	They're both lower income, largely home to farm workers, and both flooded when levees
0:56.4	broke.
0:57.4	So what went wrong with these levees?
	...

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