Napa Project Photos

Contact Information

 For more information on the
Napa River-Napa Creek Project,
please contact us at the following:

Phone:
916-557-5100

Email:
napariver@usace.army.mil

Mailing Address:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
Sacramento District
Napa River Flood Protection Project
1325 J Street, Room 1513
Sacramento, CA 95814

Napa River-Napa Creek Flood Protection Project

The Napa River Flood Protection Project is located in the city and county of Napa, California. The Napa River drainage basin, comprising 426 square miles, is just north of San Pablo Bay, a part of the San Francisco Bay System, and approximately 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, California.

The Project is implemented along approximately 6.9 miles of the Napa River. Flood management features include channel modifications, a dry bypass channel, levees and floodwalls, bridge relocations, pump stations, utility relocations, building demolition, maintenance roads, and recreation trails. The plan also includes approximately two-thirds of a mile of channel modifications for Napa Creek.

The major flood management feature is channel modification of the Napa River. A geomorphically-based channel design balances 100-year flood protection goals for the City of Napa with the desire to maintain or enhance the river's natural processes and features, including the restoration of floodplain-main channel interaction and riparian and tidal marsh habitats. Because the project goes through the heart of the City of Napa, aesthetics are an important consideration of the project. Floodwalls, vertical walls, bridges and pump station structure will all have a visual impact on the visitors and citizens of Napa. For this reason all of these structures have been considered for appropriate aesthetic treatments and costs to be shared by the Federal and non-Federal sponsor are included in the cost estimate.

Napa Flood History

Almost all of the land adjacent to the Napa River through the City of Napa is subject to flooding. Numerous damaging floods have been recorded since 1862 on the Napa River. Seven major floods occurred between 1862 and 1900.

The 15 most recent serious floods occurred in 1942, 1943, 1955, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1973, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1995, 1997 and 2005. The February 1986 flood was estimated to have been a 35-year event. The flood resulted in three people dead, 27 injured, 5,000 evacuations, 250 homes destroyed, and another 2,500 residences damaged county wide, totaling $100 million in damages.