How President Trump Can Save Lives and California’s Economy

Within minutes a dam-break at Folsom 20 miles up the American River from Sacramento would drown as many as 500 persons and severely damage California’s economy.

Highway escape routes–Interstate 5, Interstate 80 and US Route 50 would be underwater. Over 100 square miles of the City and County of Sacramento and neighboring areas would be under water.

The homes of nearly 300,000 people would be under 6 feet of water.

The local economic disaster would be 300,000 jobs and $10 billion lost income alone.

The impact on the California economy—its water supplies, commerce and agriculture, would be great.

Why?

The Folsom Dam’s protection of Sacramento from a catastrophic flood approaches less than zero against a highly probable flood in its future. Moreover, hundreds of miles of forever leaking earthen levees are worthless. In short, the Folsom Dam provides Sacramento with the worst flood protection of any metropolitan area in America.

The Folsom dam is one of the smallest federal reservoirs in California. It fills quickly requiring it to be emptied entirely 2-3 times every wet year. If it is not emptied, it will be overlapped by rain and the Sierra’s melting snow.

Sacramento has a one in 100 or greater risk of flooding every year and a one in 200 every 10 years or so. New Orleans had a claimed 250 year protection before Hurricane Katrina, but a mere hundred year flood devastated its levees and the Big Easy.

What is being done in Sacramento?

Currently, if ongoing work is completed before a big flood, the earthen edges of Folsom Dam will be raised the maximum possible seven feet. A few miles of the forever-leaking, hundreds of miles of levees will also be fortified.

All of this will provide less than a 200-year level of protection. Less than the Big Easy before Katrina and the flooding of Houston and Galveston since.

Yes, patching up Folsom Dam is somewhat better than nothing. Yet it is not enough and its level of protection is being oversold at 200 years instead of 150 or so.

The Folsom Dam will never handle the “Probable Maximum Flood” in Sacramento. That is the worst possible, reasonably expected, storm. This is greater than a 250-year flood—far worse than current happy projections.

When the Folsom dam is breached, uncontrolled water will overlap the concrete face of the dam, crumbling at its earthen sides. Storm water will flow three times as fast and carry three times as much water as a 100-year flood. Sacramento’s many lower lying communities would be quickly engulfed by the overflowing waters of the banks and levees of the American and Sacramento Rivers.

Rotting human bodies, sewage, toxic chemicals and dead wildlife will be flushed down the Sacramento and American Rivers.

Is this speculative, just hysteria?

History provides unambiguous answers best described as battling the inland sea.

The Sacramento-American River region has battled its inland sea[2] for over a century and a half–its entire recorded history and before. In 1862, Governor Leland Stanford rowed a boat to his swearing in ceremony. Ever since, the history of Sacramento has been floods–disasters and close calls.

Every ten years or so Sacramento has reported floods and close calls in 1850, 1852, 1853, 1861,1862, 1867, 1875, 1878, 1902, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1951, 1956, 1964, 1986, 1997-8.

[Heavy wet years in Sacramento in recent years have been strangely under reported in 2005-2006, 2010-2011, 2019, 2024-2025. Such underreporting contributes to dominant deceptive drought narratives mandating water conservation on the 8%– urban water users/the vast majority of voters. Residential water conservation policies are justified by relentless political propaganda on droughts, global warming, and dam busting.]

In response, the Army Corps of Engineers built bypasses diverting deluges and dams regulated releases. A dam up the American River at Auburn was planned from the 1920’s through 1998.

Year after wet year farms and rural areas have gone under water, but Sacramento escaped inundation by days, hours, minutes, and inches. Thank the bypasses…and yes, the dams up stream of the Sacramento River at Shasta and Oroville. Do not thank the Folsom Dam on the American River.

In Sacramento and the inland sea north and south, merely building higher, but still leaking, levees and dredging narrow river channels failed in the next flood.

Worse, recently, the Sacramento River and its tributaries have not been adequately dredged, silting up channels and allowing brush, trees and debris to clog channels, backing up floodwaters.

The answer to the Folsom Dam futility standing alone, has always been a larger 2.3-million-acre foot dam upstream at Auburn. This solution was recognized from the nineteen twenties, authorized by Congress in 1965, and aborted in 1998.

Instead, water worth tens of millions of dollars have been granted to a handful of white-water rafting companies and to commercial fishing advocates both successfully masquerading as environmental angels.

Under President Trump, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corp of Engineers can build a dam at Auburn. The congressional authorization of 1965 has never been rescinded.

Build it. Dam it.