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Article: Battling the Inland Sea: Floods, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley.(Review)
- Article from:
- Environment
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Robert Kelly; University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1998; xxvii + 395 pp., $16.95 paper (ISBN 0-520-21428-5)
Under natural conditions, the Sacramento River and its tributaries would annually create a huge "inland sea" covering hundreds of square miles of some of the best farmland in the United States. Ever since the mid-19th century, there has been a constant struggle to prevent, or at least to contain, this epic flooding. And as the devastating floods of 1997 showed, a good solution has yet to be found. In this book, Robert Kelly traces the history of these efforts from the 1850s to 1966, with primary emphasis on the first 60 years, a period when ...