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California is sinking at a historic rate.

That includes the flood levees intended to protect hundreds of miles of the Central Valley from rushing mountain waters. Some of those flood levees have sunk more than 6 feet in areas near the San Joaquin River.

If California gets hit this winter by a strong El Niño with heavy snow and rain, those sinking levees are more likely to fail and send floodwaters racing across farms, highways and neighborhoods, as reported in this PBS NewsHour piece produced by Monica Lam at KQED:

YouTube video

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Nathan Halverson (he/him) is an Emmy Award-winning producer for Reveal, covering business and finance with a current emphasis on the global food system. Before joining Reveal, Halverson worked on projects for FRONTLINE, the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and PBS NewsHour. He was the principal reporter on Reveal's story about the Chinese government’s involvement in the takeover of America’s largest pork company, Smithfield Foods Inc. He was awarded a 2014 McGraw Fellowship by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Minnesota. He has won a New York Times Chairman’s Award and has received reporting honors from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, California Newspaper Publishers Association, San Francisco Peninsula Press Club and Associated Press News Executives Council. Halverson is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.