- Author: Zac Unger
- Contact: Julie Van Scoy
On June 3, 2004, a small trickle of water started to flow through a levee on the Jones Tract, a patch of farmland west of Stockton that sits below sea level. Of California's 27 million acres of irrigated croplands, the tract's 12,000 acres weren't exactly at the forefront of anyone's mind. But within a few hours the rivulet had become a deluge, opening a 350-foot-long gash in the wall that was built to hold back the waters of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. The land quickly became a lake, submerging asparagus fields, corn silos, and dozens of homes beneath 60 million gallons of water. Repairing the break required six months of constant pumping and cost approximately $100 million; farmers throughout the Central Valley, who depend...
- Author: Trina Wood
Jeffrey Mount, a UC Davis geology professor and the Roy J. Shlemon Chair in Applied Geosciences, was included in “The Sacramento 100” — Sacramento News and Review’s 2010 round-up of the most influential, important and interesting people in Sacramento.
He was joined by an eclectic group of “interesting” characters, so whether being named on the list makes him notorious or famous is up to interpretation.
Jeff Mount
In any case, Mount was aptly described as “the man who knows everything about rivers in a region that owes its existence and continued survival to its...