The Central Valley Flood Protection Plan aims to enhance flood protection, recommending $25-$30 billion in investments over 30 years to safeguard public well-being from catastrophic flooding.
After Hurricane Katrina, the US Army Corps of Engineers evaluated the state’s levee system, finding much of it to be substandard. So in 2007, the State Legislature directed the Department of Water Resources and the Central Valley Flood Protection Board to prepare a new flood protection plan.
In 2012, the Board adopted the first Central Valley Flood Protection Plan (CVFPP), which is a system-wide flood management approach to reduce the risk of flooding for about one million people and $70 billion in infrastructure, homes and businesses. The ultimate goal of the CVFPP is to increase flood protection to 200-year protection (1 chance in 200 of flooding in any year) to urban areas, and to reduce flood risks to small communities and rural agricultural lands.
The 2022 Central Valley Flood Protection Plan update focused on climate resilience, performance tracking, and alignment with other state efforts, and recommends priority actions to address flood risk in the face of climate change. The Plan calls for investments in flood management that will cost $25 billion to $30 billion over the next 30 years. While that represents a significant investment, doing so may avoid the astronomical cost of catastrophic flooding in the Central Valley that could result in damages as high as $1 trillion, as well as an incalculable toll on lives and public well-being.
The 2022 Central Valley Flood Protection Plan includes the 2022 State Plan of Flood Control (SPFC) Descriptive Document Update, 2022 Flood System Status Report (FSSR) Update, and the 2022 CVFPP Conservation Strategy Update.
Central_Valley_Flood_Protection_Plan_Update_2022_ADOPTEDThis page was updated on August 17, 2024.
