The tiny town of Hamilton City sits in the direct path of the mighty Sacramento River, muddy and swollen by this week’s storms.
But a new $125 million levee system — the product of the community’s 35-year-long fight to make something big from something broken — is protecting its 1,900 farmworkers and their families.
This week, as a levee failure drowned the town of Pajaro, Hamilton City’s river also overflowed. But then it gently spread across a landscaped floodplain, losing its fury. The levee held firm. The system, the first of its type in the state, offers a new paradigm for how to respond to flood risk in an era of dangerous climate change.
