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OPINION: Does California Really Need More Dams? We’re Running Out Of Places To Put Them

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby George Skelton

You hear this every time there’s a drought or deluge in California: “Why haven’t they built more dams?” Truth is, they’ve built a bunch. And they’re about done with it. Tally them up. There are more than 1,400 dams in the state. At least 1,000 are major and 55 can hold 100,000 acre-feet or more of water. One acre-foot is enough to supply two average households for a year. There are 36 reservoirs that can contain at least 200,000 acre-feet. Eleven can hold 1 million or more.

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‘Flood Fighting Is In Our DNA’: To Live By The Feather River Is To Know Its Power And Danger

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joe Mozingo and Phil Willon

The early settlers snatched up the rich, loamy land along the Feather River to grow grapes and orchards. Edward Mathews, an Irishman who fled the potato famine, was peddling vegetables and didn’t have the cash for that kind of soil. During heavy rains, the Yuba River would flow so hard into the Feather at Marysville, it pushed the Feather back north into Jack Slough, named for a freed slave who in 1861 sold Mathews 200 acres of its poor red soil.

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