burning down when an electrical circuit fails. As Professor Mount has said, "The way to reduce flooding in one area is to promote flooding in others. That's the way rivers do it and we should follow their lead."

Working with rivers

"There is almost a perfect overlap between the measures needed for implementing an effective flood management strategy and those needed for meaningful restoration of the valley’s fish and wildlife.

Dr. Philip Williams, Hydrology and flood management expert

"When we talk about construction now it’s not necessarily concrete. It’s restoring rivers, putting a meander in, landscaping and revegetation. "

Walter Yep, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Along with the ingenuity of bypass channels along the Sacramento River, more than a 100 years ago Sacramentans essentially flood-proofed their homes by building their first floors one story above the ground. In fact, the city of Sacramento literally raised the ground level of town by about 12 feet in order to escape frequent flooding." In contrast, the San Joaquin River's tiny flood conveyance capacity was overwhelmed in 1997 because of modern era assumptions involving concrete and construction. Poorly situated floodplain communities were surprised when river levees overtopped or broke; it had been long assumed that upstream reservoirs and dams could contain all floods.

However, the failure of flood control to fully contain floods still represents an historic opportunity to embrace a flood management effort that provides greater reliability, greater hazard reductions and, in the long run, lower costs than simply

continuing with the present system. As San Francisco-based hydrology expert Dr. Philip Williams has argued, "a solution which fully integrates flood management and river/watershed restoration would also help increase wetland habitat for waterfowl and fish, the very species that have been largely destroyed by the structures and operations of our traditional flood control system."'

Providing more floodplain storage space, more floodway space, and even trying to reduce flood damages by designing flood system "circuit breakers" could help localize problems within an overall system and preserve key urban

Continued in Beyond Flood Control Part III

Nearly 85 percent of the Sacramento River overflows into the bypass areas like this one in Yolo County during flood events, thus helping protect California’s capitol city from flooding.