portions of the state. just minutes ago we were seeing this video of a levy that failed overnight in monterey county. that has forced evacuations, washed out roads and bridges. this week s atmospheric river, the tenth to hit the state dropped more than a foot of rain in some areas. at least two people have died in the most recent storm and more rain is on the way for some hard-hit areas. several feet of snow is blanketing the sierra, nevada mountains. they worry melting snow could cause more flooding. california national guard in high water vehicles are staged throughout the state. mike lareo is in vallaero. reporter: we re in the heart of the flood zone and we have all of this flooding in the downtown area because from that video you just saw, the levy is about 3 miles behind us and as soon as that levy had a breach around midnight local time, jim, all of that water had nowhere to go but here except for low lying areas. you can see there s a little bit of a dry spot in our
native communities, corporations, local governments who say the project would be an economic boon and help the u.s. wean off of foreign oil. the economics that a project like this would bring into the region, mainly to the north slope borough in the form of taxes to help provide and maintain first world conditions. reporter: meantime, the arctic is warming four times faster than anywhere else on the planet due to climate change. we cannot keep drilling for fossil fuel if we want to affect climate change. reporter: next week they will address it. con know could he phillips says it will create good jobs and it s had extensive public input. jim. thanks, rene. coming up, from attempted stabbings to all out brawls,
side concerned about the environmental impacts. at this point the only way that this project can be stopped is reporter: on tiktok and instagram calls for president biden to stop willow project, an urge against call that s gone viral to block a controversial alaska oil drilling project. reporter: it s spurring more than 1 million letters to the white house and more than 3 million petitions. in order to stop willow people need to know about willow. reporter: 20-year-old from the university of berkeley. it will not just impact alaska, this country, it will impact the world. with the amount of carbon emissions that it will emit, we will see an increase in frequency and intensity. con know could he phillips would be located in northwest alaska on the national petroleum reserve. federal land roughly the size of indiana.