Southport Levee Improvement Project Earns Envision Platinum for Sustainable Infrastructure

The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) announced today that the West Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency received the Envision® Platinum Award for the City of West Sacramento’s Southport Levee Improvement Project (SLIP). This is West Sacramento’s first Envision award and the nineteenth Envision-verified project in California.

West Sacramento is seasonally surrounded by water and protected from flooding by the city’s levee system. This $180 million project, financed and constructed by the West Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency (WSAFCA), is the Agency’s largest capital improvement to date. Levee improvements along this 5.6-mile section include a combination of renovating the existing levee structure and the construction of a new setback levee.

Flood risk-reduction measures address deficiencies of through-seepage, under-seepage, slope stability and geometry, erosion, and encroachments and noncompliant vegetation. WSAFCA’s goal is to achieve a minimum 200-year level of levee performance for the entire West Sacramento levee system. The project brings the levee into compliance with Federal and State levee design criteria, as well as providing opportunities for ecosystem restoration and public recreation. The project is relatively unique for an urban area in that it returns several hundred acres of land to riparian and oak savanna habitat.

This multi-benefit flood risk reduction and ecosystem restoration project was constructed as part of the federal West Sacramento Project, a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), WSAFCA, and the Central Valley Flood Protection Board acting through the Department of Water Resources (DWR) Division of Flood Management. The City and WSAFCA worked in close collaboration with HDR, GEI Consultants, WSP, MBK Engineers, ICF International, SCS Engineers, AECOM, cbec and Blackburn Consulting to deliver this award-winning sustainable project.

LEARN MORE