Quick Take
The Pajaro River flood protection project broke ground in Watsonville on Wednesday morning. Construction is expected to officially start in 2025. The groundbreaking marks the culmination of a nearly 70-year struggle to rebuild the Pajaro River levee.
The culmination of a nearly 70-years struggle to rebuild and repair the Pajaro River levee was marked in Watsonville on Wednesday morning by state, federal and local officials including U.S. Reps. Jimmy Panetta and Zoe Lofgren, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and state Sen. John Laird.
The project is aimed at protecting the area from the type of flooding that displaced families during storms in 2023.
“We’re turning the page from decades of fighting for a project, which will now just be a handful of years of constructing a project to a new safe and secure Pajaro Valley,” said District 2 Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend.
Last year, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, which Friend chairs, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement that greenlit the construction of a new Pajaro River levee. In addition, state and federal officials worked together to gather funding for the nearly $600 million project.
By this time next year, the entire project — 10 miles long — will be under construction, said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Col. James Handura. The project won’t start officially until contractors receive a federal contract award that gives them permission to be on the land, which can take a few months, he said.
Exactly when construction starts is still a moving target, it could be in early 2025 or next summer, said Handura. The whole project will take around six years to complete, working on repairs in sections, or reaches. Working on one reach can take up to two years, depending on the area.
“This is a significant moment for this region,” said Rivas, whose 29th District covers much of the Pajaro Valley. “For this community, so many hard-working residents and families in this region, it’s their resiliency, their relentless action that made this possible.”
Rivas’ Assembly Bill 876 allowed the project to bypass the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act requirements that would’ve delayed the project by a few years.
The impacts the community experienced due to the failure of the levees and the waterway system is unacceptable, said Rivas. Hundreds of families have been displaced because of the floods and there needs to be more investment in critical resources and infrastructure for these vulnerable communities, he said.
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