From Chico News & Review – At the confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers, a winter of heavy rains could inundate about 1,200 acres of riverside woodland for the first time in 60 years. That’s by design: Here, a few miles west of Modesto, work crews removed or broke several miles of levee last spring and replanted the land with tens of thousands of native sapling trees and shrubs. The work, much of it conducted by the California Conservation Corps, comes as the state overhauls its approach toward flood control, with a growing emphasis on reconnecting floodplains to rivers so they can absorb floodwaters. Read more