On Guy West Bridge just off of the Sacramento State campus, Mark Berry, president of the Save the American River Association (SARA), spoke about the levee fortification project along the American River Parkway.
From the bridge, one side of the levee appeared bare, with small plantings, while the other had mature trees. The area next to the Sac State campus, designated Contract 2, site 2-3, was fortified in 2023 and revegetated in 2024.
“The utilization of the parkway is kind of immense,” Berry said. “It gets eight million visitors a year, almost as many as Yellowstone and Yosemite combined. And it generates 360, maybe 70 million dollars a year toward the economy.”
The American River Parkway spans about 29 miles from Nimbus Dam to the confluence with the Sacramento River and is designated a Wild and Scenic River by California and the federal government.
“Because it took a big bend here, the flow, the feet per second flow was really high and it bent around here. You had a lot of erosive effects,” Berry said.
Feet per second flow refers to one cubic foot passing by a given point in one second. High feet per second flow created the erosion where the river bends sharply in front of the Sac State campus.
Greg Treible is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) American River Common Features program manager. Treible said in a statement that work at site 2-3 incorporated bioengineering approaches as a central design.
“While construction did require removal of some existing vegetation, much of that vegetation was located on an actively eroding and unstable riverbank that was being incrementally lost during high-flow events,” Treible said.
The project re-graded the levee to a stable slope and added more than 15 acres of new riparian habitat, Treible said. He said the project used more natural, vegetation-based processes instead of traditional hard armoring.
Hard armoring can involve layering rocks, known as riprap, to prevent water erosion. Natural solutions can utilize vegetation, such as the trees planted by the USACE.
“These plantings are intended to become self-sustaining over time, supported initially through establishment measures typical for riparian restoration, including regular irrigation,” Treible said. “Long-term maintenance responsibilities are coordinated with our project partners to ensure the site continues to perform as intended into the future.”
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Berry said that because the river next to the Sac State campus has a bend, the narrow channel caused faster water velocity along the bank. The Campus Commons side would get deposition and the Sac State side would erode, so the USACE widened the channel to correct this.
“SARA has never been opposed to flood control or trying to mitigate risk, our view is that the Corps of Engineers or any flood control agency shouldn’t just pick a standard design off their shelf and apply it to this river,” Berry said.
The Center for Biological Diversity, SARA and American River Trees filed a lawsuit and were granted a temporary restraining order stopping the USACE project in Contract 3B near Howe and Watt Avenues.
“During the process, the Army Corps of Engineers promised 17 times to look at engineering with nature approaches to the design, and the judge also found that they never did that in their alternative analysis,” Berry said.
Pete Spaulding is the coordinator for American River Trees, a community group that formed in 2023 when USACE, the state and the Sacramento Flood Control Agency planned to start work on the parkway.
“A lot of people think the project is all about strengthening the levees, and that’s not really the case,” Spaulding said. “It’s more about protecting the natural riverbank from erosion.”
Spaulding said the groups filed the lawsuit in summer 2025 after the project was approved under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and by the Central Valley Flood Protection Board under the California Environmental Quality Act.
“We got into September and there was still no word back from the Corp,” Spaulding said. “Finally around September, we heard that they were going to let contracts for the vegetation clearing, and at that point, we requested an injunction.”
The injunction would prevent any ground-disturbing activity until the lawsuit was addressed. Spaulding said the judge granted the injunction because the Corps didn’t answer questions about examining alternatives.
“We have the federal lawsuit against the Army Corp of Engineers and the National Parks Service for violations of NEPA and the federal Wild and Scenic River Act,” Spaulding said. “And we have a separate lawsuit in state court against the Central Valley Flood Protection Board for violations of the California Wild and Scenic River Act.”
Spaulding said the judge will consider this and make a ruling after June 10, 2026.
Michelle Stevens is a professor in the environmental studies department at Sac State. While noting how dangerous the Sac State area of the parkway is because of the bend, Stevens said the USACE should look into natural solutions, including planting native vegetation such as white root, creeping wildrye and mugwort.
“They don’t understand that vegetation holds the bank and also helps prevent floods. They’re very quick to do these highly engineered, old school concrete, riprap, boundaries, and in that, we lose our important riparian habitat and we have so little left,” Stevens said.
Stevens said the parkway supports a range of species, including the western pond turtle, whose nesting habitat would be disturbed by the project. Visitors to the parkway may also see salmonids, white and green sturgeon, steelhead, bald eagles, peregrine falcon, and hawks, she said.
“We don’t want to fight with the Corp, we don’t want to fight with the Central Valley Flood Protection Board,” Berry said. “We just want to make sure they do the best they possibly can for flood protection and environmental protection. And we think they can.”
