Pajaro River Levee Project Breaks Ground As Winter Flood Concerns Loom

Over a year and a half after the Pajaro River levee burst, inundating nearly 300 homes in Monterey County with chocolate milk-colored water, flood agencies broke ground on Wednesday on a massive levee project to protect the river valley from future storms.

“We’re turning the page from decades of fighting for a project [to] now just a handful of years of constructing a project for a new safe and secure Pajaro Valley,” Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend said.

The nearly 14-mile levee project, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, is expected to be finished early next decade.

It will improve flood risk in Watsonville, Pajaro and surrounding agricultural areas. The agencies will construct and enhance levees along the lower Pajaro River and its tributaries. However, the agencies won’t begin on the groundwork in the area for several winters, and residents fear another flood could interrupt their lives.

Pajaro is a community of around 3,000 people who work primarily in the Central Coast’s agricultural sector. The levee wasn’t adequately designed for the small storms that dump rain on the region, and storms have been made worse by human-caused climate change.

“This should’ve happened long ago,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Salinas) said at a Wednesday press conference to launch the project. “The Pajaro Valley is a community that never gives up. You all here know how to work hard, but more importantly, know you know how to work together.

“We got the job done together, and that’s a testament to this community.”

Years before the 2023 flood, the Corps had officially rated the levee along the Pajaro River a “moderate” risk of flooding. The truth is that for decades, officials knew it needed repair. The Corps determined that the town wasn’t worth protecting because property values were too low, according to levee records and interviews with several officials.

Almost 300 homes were damaged or destroyed, including Denia Escutia’s family home. Escutia, 19, delayed attending college because her family couldn’t find a home outside of Pajaro, so they moved across the street from the house the Pajaro River claimed as its own.

“We have another house, and I fear we’ll have to leave this one, too,” she said.

According to flood officials, the project, which will cost about $600 million, is fully funded by federal and state agencies.

“Pajaro was a special case, and that’s why we stepped up for them,” state Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) said. “Let’s pray again that this project gets online before it’s really needed.”

The Corps’ plan will prepare the most populated areas for a 1-in-100-year flood, yet some experts believe that is only half the needed protection. Rivas said that when the new levee is complete, it will be better “suited to meet the challenges of severe storms that we have seen more frequently due to climate change.”

Work will start along Corralitos Creek on the northeastern edge of Watsonville. Flood officials said it’s the most at-risk area along the river.

“This segment doesn’t have any levees right now,” said Mark Strudley, executive director of the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency. “It is unprotected. It flooded four times and overtopped its banks four times in 2023.”

The area that crumbled in March 2023, about 3 miles east of Pajaro, is still in the design phase. Officials want to set the new levee back 100 feet from where it is today to give the river room to expand during storms.

Under pressure from lawmakers, the local flood agency quickly rebuilt the 400 feet of levee that ruptured after the flood. This summer, the portion of the levee was reconstructed again. It has the same amount of flood protection as the failed levee, meaning Pajaro will remain vulnerable every rainy season until the new levee is built.

“Downstream will still remain relatively unprotected until we improve those levees as well, but it’s a huge step for us,” Strudley said. “We are going to be working our hardest to make sure it doesn’t flood or break. But at the end of the day, it’s still an undersized, vulnerable system.”

The reality that the makeshift levee could fail again worries Nancy Faulstich, director of the nonprofit group Regeneración — Pájaro Valley Climate Action.

“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Faulstich said. “We all know there are vulnerabilities here, and with the acceleration of climate change, all bets are off.”