The Floods, the Farms, and the River That Roared Back
WiredThis story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On the surface, the Salinas River, which courses through the agricultural heart of California’s Central Coast, seems more like an ex-river. In Paso Robles, California, an old Spanish outpost that has since become a wine-growing mecca, the mostly dry riverbed cuts through an unprepossessing stretch of land surrounded by heaps of garbage and makeshift structures built by the city’s growing unhoused population. And yet a closer look reveals signs of flood—scoured river stones, logs rolled smooth, and clamshell fossils embedded in limestone from the uplands of the Temblor and Coast ranges. The Salinas River is still an important waterway, central to California’s history and critical to the state’s $50 billion agricultural industry.
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‘Probable inundation’: Salinas River communities brace for flooding, crop losses
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