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Recent Examples of floodwayCall it resilience, call it infrastructure, call it economic development—just build it before the next 8-year-old goes to sleep in a floodway.—Daniel Lehewych, MSNBC Newsweek, 5 Sep. 2025 In Georgetown, two RV parks along the San Gabriel River that were all but wiped off the map are directly in the floodway, where water moves most forcefully during storms.—Bayliss Wagner, Austin American Statesman, 1 Aug. 2025 In 2020, the county passed two ordinances to tighten rules on building in high-risk areas and prevent development in floodways.—Laura Sullivan, NPR, 9 July 2025 Camp Mystic has two sites, both of which overlap with either the floodway or areas the federal government has determined have a 1% or 0.2% annual chance of flooding.—Renée Rigdon, CNN Money, 7 July 2025 See All Example Sentences for floodway
In 2017, soaking storms led to flooding that caused $100 million in damage in downtown San Jose and the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people when the spillway at Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest dam, in Butte County, partially collapsed under torrents of water.
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Paul Rogers,
Mercury News,
15 Jan. 2026
More than 180,000 people evacuated from Yuba-Sutter and beyond when the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway nearly failed in 2017.