Sinkhole risk in Butte County, CA: No soluble rock mapped

No soluble rock mapped

No soluble bedrock mapped.

On soluble rock: under 1%
At or near the surface: under 1%
Buried under cover: 0%

The next step for one property

No soluble bedrock is mapped here, so natural sinkholes are unlikely. Collapses from broken pipes or old mines are a separate risk.

That works out to roughly 7 of Butte County's 1,637 square miles on soluble rock, 7 of them with the rock at or near the surface. With about 208,334 residents (127 per square mile), homes are spread across towns and farmland, and a mapped unit may or may not reach the developed parts. The figures come from 571 map points about 1.7 miles apart, so a pocket smaller than that can be missed or overstated.

Counties around Butte County

The nearest county rated sinkhole country is Emery County, UT, about 583 miles east. 4 of the 6 closest counties land in the same band, so this is a regional pattern rather than a local quirk.

Yuba County, CA 31 mi southeast · 0% at surface
Glenn County, CA 43 mi west · 0% at surface
Sutter County, CA 44 mi south · 0% at surface
Tehama County, CA 46 mi northwest · 1% at surface
Plumas County, CA 47 mi northeast · 0% at surface
Colusa County, CA 48 mi southwest · 0% at surface

What Butte County is built on

The largest mapped soluble unit here is the Permian marine sedimentary rocks, unit 2 (Northwestern Sierra Nevada) (phyllite), Paleozoic or Mesozoic in age, covering about under 1% of the county.

Against the rest of California

Butte County ranks 23 of 58 in California for soluble rock at the surface, and sits above 52% of US counties on that measure.