22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY march 23-29, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com But while the partial funding and momentum for the project was a welcome development, it doesn’t appear the project—as proposed and approved—would have prevented the breach that occurred March 11 (it’s a known unknown). But, Strudley says, it would have prevented flooding in the Pajaro community, if not the agricultural fields further east. The project is divided in sections, and only three of them are along the Pajaro River; the rest are along Corralitos Creek in Watsonville. The easternmost section along the Pajaro River, where the levee is planned to be reconstructed with a 100-foot setback from its current alignment, stops about 1.8 miles west of where the levee breached March 11. From there, Strudley says, there is planned to be what is called a “tieback” levee running north-south across San Juan Road and the railroad tracks. Strudley is not a fan of that aspect of the current plan—he thinks the Army Corps is underestimating the cost of grading to get the road and tracks over the levee (or perhaps, building floodgates), and he’s in favor of abolishing that north-south piece and instead shoring up the levee along the river further east, just past where the levee breached. And in light of recent events, he says, he intends to push harder for that change to be made—which was part of the proposed plan until 2015—and for the project to be expedited and fully funded as soon as possible. But the problem, he says, goes back to the benefit-cost ratio: the Army Corps doesn’t put the same value on farmland, or necessarily take into account the livelihoods it facilitates. Former District 2 county supervisor John Phillips, whose district included Pajaro, was deeply involved in the levee project until his retirement in 2022. He recalls being part of a meeting at some point with a general with the Army Corps when he and others advocated for what Strudley is now pushing for: moving the levee restoration further east. “He said, ‘If you keep pushing to extend the project further upriver, we’ll kill it.’ So we didn’t have a choice,” Phillips says. The need for a more protective levee system in the Pajaro Valley became apparent in 1955, just six years after the Army Corps built the existing levee system. In that storm, flooding in Watsonville along Corralitos Creek— where the Army Corps still hasn’t built levees—submerged 29 city blocks up to a depth of two feet. And the flood that caused the most damage, in 1995, was nowhere in the neighborhood of a 100-year event. According to the Army Corps, recent hydrologic analysis indicates it was only a 15.4year event, meaning there’s a 6.5-percent chance, on any given year, for floodwaters to exceed the system’s protective capacity. Those are harrowing odds over time, but under the federal funding guidelines dating back to 1983, the benefit-to-cost ratio put the project well out of reach of getting funded, regardless of lobbying by local officials—at least until recently. Even then, local officials didn’t get what they hoped for—getting a project done was too important to jeopardize, so they went along with it. Though there is now a sense of renewed hope for the eastward extension Strudley is advocating for, but even if it gets greenlit, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon: The first phases of the project will be along Corralitos Creek, where a levee will be built with a 50- to 225-foot setback. Strudley says rebuilding the levee on the Pajaro River to the east of the town—which would have a 100-foot setback from its current alignment—won’t start until 2027, at the earliest. But that the project has even come this far is a major break from the past. For that, Strudley gives much credit to local and state politicians including State Sen. John Laird, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend and Phillips— and most of all, Panetta. “You can’t have just a casual congressional delegation working on a project,” Strudley says. “Lucky for us, Jimmy Panetta has been that person.” As of January, Pajaro is no longer in Panetta’s district—it’s now in Lofgren’s. Panetta says that’s irrelevant to him— he’s been fighting for the Army Corps project for years and will continue doing so, even if it’s no longer in his constituency (he toured the levee and Pajaro community on March 17). “You can’t put a price on lives in Pajaro,” Panetta says. “You’ve got to do everything you can to fight for your priorities.” Panetta credits the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law in November 2021. It is through that legislation the federal portion of the project is partially funded. And there’s at least one more round of funding to come from that law that could potentially close the shortfall. And like Strudley, he’s still advocating for the levee restoration to be extended further upriver. “The push and pressure have to be constant,” Panetta says. At the federal level, two major dominos fell in the last two-plus years in terms of how the project was valued, and ultimately, secured funding. The first was a Jan. 5, 2021 memorandum from R.D. James, then assistant secretary of the Army’s civil works division. The purpose of the memo, he wrote, is so the Army Corps’ “decision framework considers, in a comprehensive manner, the total benefits of project alternatives, including equal consideration of economic, environmental and social categories.” The second was the Biden administration’s 2022 “Justice40” initiative, which, among other things, called for Army Corps projects to deliver 40 percent of their overall benefits to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.” Pajaro fits that description, but it came too late to prevent this winter’s flood. Fortunately, state-hired contractors were able to plug the levee breach March 14, and work continues around the clock to raise the height of the repair work. Friend, who lives in Aptos and is chair of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, says there is no single issue he’s worked on more since taking office a decade ago. “My focus has been: How do you break out of a 60-year feasibility process?” Friend says. He adds that Pajaro’s situation is not unique across the country, where projects have long languished in low-income communities. “There needs to be a systemic change.” That change is starting to happen, and the need for it will become even more pronounced in the coming decades as climate change exacerbates flooding events. Monterey County has thousands of residents that live along its rivers and creeks, and no amount of infrastructure can protect them in every case. But as disasters continue to increase in intensity in the years to come, it’s incumbent on local officials to make planning decisions accordingly, and to fight as hard as they can for the communities that need their help most. The Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project, as approved in 2019, is broken into several sections, and the Army Corps is currently designing the project in “reaches” 5 and 6 along Corralitos Creek, where the agency has never built a levee. The recent levee breach occurred 1.8 miles east of “reach 4.” Its north-south line is a “tieback” levee that will protect Pajaro, but not farmland. Local officials are lobbying to extend the levee further upriver. The Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project “You can’t put a price on lives in Pajaro.” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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