Nevada’s ‘big dig’ completed in bid to keep floodwater at bay
Frank Gehrke, right, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, conducts the third manual snow survey of the season at Phillips Station, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, near Echo Summit, Calif. The state's electronic snow monitors say the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at 185 percent of normal. At left is Armando Quintero chairman of the California Water Commission. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
FALLON — Workers have completed a canal they call Nevada’s “big dig” that they hope will help keep floodwaters from damaging homes.
Floodwaters from the Carson River will now flow underneath U.S. Highway 50 to the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge.
The canal runs 17 miles and had taken six weeks to build. It was built in preparation of the Sierra Nevada snowmelt.
A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official says he expects the canal will be able to handle the snowmelt.
The “big dig” is one of several projects that have been implemented in the Lahontan Valley in response to the record snowpack piled in the Sierra Nevada.
Another project was an emergency weir on the V-Line Canal below Lahontan that diverts water into low-lying desert areas.
