California Floods Show the Limits of Man-Made Solutions
We need to rely less on dams and levees and more on natural systems like wetlands to help cope with increasingly extreme weather.
Levees work best when they partner with nature.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Nobody should have been surprised when California’s Pajaro River burst through a levee this spring, flooding homes and dislocating thousands of people. Warnings that the levee system was inadequate date back decades. California’s recent drought, the worst in 1,200 years, dried out and weakened levees, heightening those concerns. But plans to act on them were still years from being executed when atmospheric rivers packed with rain surged water into the earthen works and cement channels designed to protect lives and property.
It was a human-made disaster, intensified by climate change. And California won’t be the only state to suffer. Across the country, hard infrastructure — from levees to jetties — is proving inadequate to the challenges posed by increasingly extreme weather. Instead, what often works best to control the onslaught is what engineers and architects long sought to replace: natural features and processes such as flood plains and wetlands. Nature-based infrastructure, as the concept is known, remains a relative niche compared with concrete, steel and earthen works. It needs to be a priority.