For generations of Pajaronians and people living at the southern edges of Watsonville who, for seven decades, have approached each winter wondering whether the Pajaro River levee will hold, a federal agreement signed Tuesday marks an inflection point.
With signatures from Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, who chairs the local flood management agency, and Maj. Shantel Glass from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the partnership agreement between the local, state and federal governments sets the decades-overdue replacement of the weakened Pajaro River levee on pace to break ground next summer.
“We are, today, at a defining moment in the over-75-year history of this river levee system, where we’ve been looking for some sense of hope, to transition from fear of flooding for generations,” Friend told a crowd inside Watsonville City Hall that included members of congress, state legislators, supervisors and federal and state bureaucrats.
A project to address the levee, which has been formally due for replacement since the 1970s, has evaded lawmakers and community leaders for more than half a century. That failure, due in large part to a federal funding formula designed to overlook low-income communities such as Pajaro, has been costly for residents over the years.
The levee breached in 1995 and most recently, on March 11 of this year, displacing thousands of residents and, by washing out nearby agricultural fields, disrupting the local economic engine. Separate from the broader levee replacement, the federal and state government in August began repairs to the breached sections of levee to reinforce it ahead of the approaching winter season.
Mark Strudley, executive director of the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, said, despite the years of question marks leading up to Tuesday’s signing, the agreement guarantees the project will happen.
“It’s not just hope, it’s reality. We have the agreement, we have the funding, this project that no one ever thought was ever going to get built is going to get built,” Strudley told Lookout. “It’s a little surreal, because this seems like this singular point in time that we’re signing this agreement but it’s been a long time getting here. We still have a ways to go, but this is a time to celebrate.”
By signing the agreement, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency unlocked $149 million in federal funding to complete the project design and relocate utilities along the project site. Most critically, however, is land acquisition. The new levee’s footprint is going to be larger than the one it is replacing, and it will encroach on private land along the Pajaro River. The local flood management agency will need to appraise the slices of parcels needed and negotiate a purchase price with landowners.
Tutashinda Salaam, the project’s manager from the Army Corps of Engineers, admitted the land acquisition piece will be “very thorny.”
“Everybody wants a levee, but it’s very difficult to get people to agree to give up their rights on their land, even if it’s needed,” Salaam told Lookout. “That’s probably the biggest hurdle we face right now. We’re going to need a lot of cooperation from landowners to maintain that summer 2024 timeline.”
Leading up to the agreement, the flood management agency had been lightly broaching the subject with landowners, Strudley said, but now will be able to press harder.
“Land acquisition is sensitive; it’s never an easy conversation to have with somebody to say, hey, by the way, we need to take a little bit of your land to make this happen,” Strudley said. Landowners have so far been understanding. “They’re like, it kind of sucks that I have to give you some land, but I know why we have to do this and this project needs to happen so I’m supportive.”
The construction will happen in five phases, or “reaches” in river levee lingo. The project will construct new levees in Reaches 6 through 2. In a rare move for the Army Corps of Engineers, according to Salaam, the project will begin upstream and work downstream. Construction will start at Reach 6, which stretches from Green Valley Road to Hwy 152, because it does not currently have levee flood protection. Salaam said Reach 2 extends from the railroad bridge near Pajaro Park down to Hwy 1.
Salaam emphasized that the federal government has only committed money to a fraction of the project. The total cost sits at $600 million. Strudley and Salaam said securing the rest of the money from the federal government will be easier as the early phases are completed.
“Once the Army Corps of Engineers puts $149 million on the table, they don’t just walk away from a project before it’s complete,” Strudley said.
The project is expected to take five years, Friend said. However, he acknowledges that the people of Pajaro will need to endure a few more rainy seasons before they are protected.
“We still have not just this winter to weather, but future winters to weather during construction,” Friend told the audience on Tuesday. “We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re moving toward something that we just haven’t seen here in generations.”