Levee repair on the Sacramento River used to mean stripping the bank and burying it under rock, and the 750 trees anchored in the water this year say a lot about how the river is managed now.
Dutra, the Bay Area marine construction firm, has wrapped its 2026 season on a project called Sac River Contract 3, placing 180,000 tons of graded stone along the Sacramento River levee in Sacramento to shore up flood protection. Alongside the rock, crews installed roughly 750 trees in the water to improve fish habitat.
The trees matter because bare riprap offers juvenile salmon nothing to hide behind, while submerged wood slows the current, traps food and gives young fish cover from predators on their way to the ocean. Pairing the two is what regulators expect on a river that carries endangered winter-run Chinook and anchored a salmon season that reopened this year after three closures.
Dutra plans to return in 2027 to place about 220,000 additional tons of graded stone, 20,000 tons of soil and another 1,200 trees, roughly doubling this year’s effort.
The timing lines up with the heavy winter forecasters keep promising, since the stone goes in during the low-water months so it is in place before the river rises, and the same storms that test the levees will also push the first fall-run salmon upstream past the new wood…