Plenty Of Capacity, Adequate Pumping Facilities Helped Sacramento Avoid Rainfall Catastrophe During Storm

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Our record-breaker of a ace soaker didn’t interruption the backbone of Sacramento’s tempest system. The rainfall was non-stop.  But arsenic the atmospheric stream came roaring through, it’s what happened earlier the tempest that made each the difference.

It was a tempest of unprecedented magnitude.

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“It conscionable ne'er stopped raining,” said Dustin Romero, a Natomas homeowner.

“We’ve ne'er experienced that rainfall successful a 24 hr play successful Sacramento before…ever,” said Jeff harris Chairman of the Sacramento Flood Control Agency.

So wherefore didn’t Sacramento spot terrible flooding?

“We’re conscionable excessively aboriginal successful the season. Reservoirs are inactive low, we had plentifulness of capacity,” said Tyler Stalker with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But it’s storming similar this that poses the biggest flood risk.

“If it were successful January into the springtime, this could beryllium the worst-case scenario,” said Stalker.

All that h2o has to spell somewhere. A Natomas pumping presumption is 1 extortion for flooding, diverting 160,000 gallons a infinitesimal distant from neighborhoods and into the Sacramento River.

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So far, $2 cardinal is being spent connected improving levees and different flood power projects.

“When you deliberation astir a catastrophic flood successful our city, the outgo would transcend billions of dollars, it would bring the metropolis to its knees,” said Harris.

But Sacramento has inactive not reached its extremity of 200-year flood protection. That impacts projects similar the caller California Northstate University infirmary astatine the Natomas arena site.

Plans of the infirmary amusement 2 wings elevated 20 feet disconnected the crushed due to the fact that each indispensable aesculapian facilities person to beryllium built supra the floodplain.

“The Natomas basin is decidedly a large flood risk,” said Harris.

That’s wherefore much extortion efforts are underway. The adjacent large task volition grow the Sacramento Weir to divert floodwater during times of precocious stream runoff. It’s each successful an effort to support Sacramento harmless erstwhile the adjacent large tempest hits.

It’s truly bully to spot that they’re doing worldly to support the levees and support this area,” said Romero.

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City officials anticipation to person 200-year flood extortion completed successful the adjacent decade.