Wednesday August 27, 2025
KCRA 3 —
In the Sacramento and San Joaquin regions, more than a thousand miles of levees protect farms and communities, but these aging structures are vulnerable to floods and earthquakes.
When there is a lot of water coming down the rivers, a system of weirs can take pressure off the levees by moving water into bypasses.
The Army Corps of Engineers, along with state and local partners, is now working to nearly double the size of the Sacramento weir in West Sacramento to improve flood management in the region.
KCRA 3 got a look at the project located about four miles upstream from the Tower Bridge on River Road.
It involves widening the existing weir, which was built in 1916, by more than 1,500 feet to efficiently release water from both the Sacramento and American rivers when necessary.
“That creates a unique phenomena at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers where the water actually reverses course and starts to flow up the Sacramento River right up here, so we’re constructing a passive weir structure which will then convey that water out into the Yolo Bypass,” explained Greg Treible from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The new section of the weir will automatically allow water to pour over when river levels reach a certain height.
The work is expected to wrap up at some point next year.
The current weir is 109 years old and has 48 gates that must be opened manually by operators who knock out blocks of wood to control the flow.
This section was last opened in 2017 and will remain in use, but the new section will be used first.