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California’s Push for Natural Infrastructure Ahead of a Super El Niño
By Drooid · · How we work
The Looming Super El Niño and California’s Water Challenge
Share Meteorologists forecast a historically strong El Niño this coming winter, assigning a 95 % chance of extreme precipitation after a 2025 marked by prolonged drought and a weak snowpack. The state sits on a climatic boundary where drought and deluge alternate, and climate change is amplifying those swings. American Rivers argues that the water system built over the last century assumes a future hydrology similar to the past—an assumption now increasingly untenable.
Limits of Century-Old Built Infrastructure
More than 8,000 dams block California’s rivers, many of which are aging or obsolete, while thousands of miles of levees separate rivers from their historic floodplains. Decades of dam, levee and aqueduct construction have treated rivers as separate from the communities they serve. American Rivers notes that this legacy infrastructure can no longer reliably protect against both severe floods and prolonged droughts, especially as snowpack declines and storms become more extreme.
Proven Benefits of Living River Restoration
American Rivers points to several projects that demonstrate how natural infrastructure can buffer water extremes. The deconstruction of Copco 2 on the Klamath River, tribal removal of four hydroelectric dams on the same river—the largest dam-removal effort in U.S. history—and the restoration of Ackerson Meadow in the Tuolumne River watershed have each revived flood-storage capacity, groundwater recharge, and habitat. In the Central Valley, the Yolo Bypass restoration has shown how reconnecting a river to its floodplain reduces flood risk while expanding habitat. These examples illustrate that healthy rivers can lower fire risk, secure water supplies, improve water quality, and support ecosystems.
Toward a Watershed-Scale Strategy
American Rivers calls for a shift from isolated projects to managing rivers as connected systems that span forests, meadows, floodplains, groundwater basins and downstream communities. The organization urges California to embed watershed-scale river restoration in state water planning, directing public investment toward sites where natural processes can deliver measurable benefits. By treating healthy rivers as essential infrastructure rather than optional amenities, the state can build a water system more resilient to the next drought and the next flood.