County officials show off road repairs — some complete, some held up by a lack of federal funding

Santa Cruz County has come a long way since an atmospheric river deluge in early 2023 wiped out roads, flooded neighborhoods and displaced thousands of people — but by no means is it finished with recovery. That’s even after the county spent the year following the storms completing 122 repair projects that cost about $80 million.

“It’s just an insane amount of work, and there’s still another 100 projects to build worth another $60 to $70 million,” said county Public Works Director Matt Machado. “And we have another winter coming.”

Santa Cruz County officials took media on a tour of some of the county’s rural mountain roads Monday morning, highlighting some successful fixes after the devastating 2023 storms, some of the major work that still needs to happen and the many hurdles that must be cleared before they can begin. Officials say that money, particularly lagging federal  reimbursements, is often the main culprit for slow progress on some major projects.

Road conditions were at the forefront of local election campaigns this fall, a hot topic in both the District 2 and District 5 county supervisor races as well as city council races. A civil grand jury report earlier this year said that 63% of county roads are in poor to failed condition while roadwork budgets are inadequate.

Officials first pointed to Glenwood Drive off of Highway 17, north of Scotts Valley, which saw 85 feet of roadway entirely slip out due to a wall failure alongside the road in December 2022. The road, rendered impassable by the damage, is an important route for residents in the area. Before Highway 17 existed, Glenwood Drive was the main highway.

“When 17 goes out, this becomes the primary alternative route,” said Steve Wiesner, assistant director of county public works, adding that it also served as a lifeline for residents of Mountain Charlie Road until its temporary fix was completed in October. “This was the primary access in and out of Scotts Valley from the Summit, so it’s a very important road to keep alive.”

Wiesner said that a nearly 100-year-old retaining structure fell into the creek below the roadway, which “totally destroyed” the road. Crews took on a huge amount of work to complete the approximately $1.6 million project, digging 20 to 30 feet down, removing almost the entire existing portion of the road, and repouring concrete with new culverts, erosion control and a new crib wall — a wall that appears like interlocking boxes filled with coarse material to allow better drainage and prevent erosion.

“It was a nearly 300-foot-long repair that we did, just in 2023, as an emergency project,” said Wiesner.

While the current condition of Glenwood Drive makes it difficult to imagine such extensive damage, other locations are still in precarious positions. 

Major repairs on a section of Stetson Road, a narrow, winding road that branches off Soquel San Jose Road west of Soquel Demonstration State Forest, are still in the pipeline. Wiesner said the county is going to ask contractors to bid on the project by January or February, with the hope to begin construction in the early summer.

The section of Stetson Road saw its crib wall fall apart, causing a chunk of the already narrow road to collapse. Part of that road remains entirely closed. 

“This is definitely one of our higher-priority sites for sure,” said Wiesner, explaining that there are residents in the area who could be stranded should their alternate routes — Skyland Road and an undamaged stretch of Stetson that connects to Soquel San Jose Road — be unavailable.

“If [one of the roads] did blow in the winter, we would have to do something, and we’d have to look at which one we could open more quickly,” said Machado. “We wouldn’t just leave people trapped, but it would be an emergency response of unknown magnitude.”

County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said the county has serious difficulty taking more proactive measures due to funding, as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursements have been sluggish at best. He added that the county also nervously awaits any changes the incoming Trump administration might make to federal reimbursements for damage from natural disasters.

“We don’t know what kind of partner FEMA is going to be. It keeps running out of money, and I have no idea what that’s going to be like in the next administration,” he said. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened in the past to withhold federal aid for disasters in California, including during widespread wildfires in 2020. 

Machado added that regardless of who is in office, going through FEMA is an onerous process.

“Their workloads are so immense,” he said. Machado added that FEMA requires a long review process and projects are often grouped together. That means if there’s an issue with just one small part of one of the projects, it stalls the entire package of funding. “It’s very complicated, and it feels to us that it’s by design.”

One example of financial issues preventing a project from being completed in the time frame the county would like is Redwood Lodge Road, nestled in the mountains between Soquel San Jose Road and Highway 17. A culvert there failed in 2017, which triggered the dirt road’s descent into complete disrepair. The county installed a temporary bridge across the ravine where Soquel Creek runs a few years later to give residents in the remote area access to emergency services. That temporary bridge washed out in 2023, too, leaving nothing but a canyon where the road used to be.

Wiesner said that funding for repairs to Redwood Lodge Road is covered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), rather than FEMA, because it is a connector between two highways, Highway 17 and Soquel San Jose Road. Still, negotiating with FHWA was difficult given the scope of the work involved in building a bridge and a new culvert, rather than just replacing what had been damaged. At this point, the project will cost about $7 million to $9 million, said Wiesner. While the county has federal approval to do the work, and its federal partners have committed 80% of the funding, it is still looking for ways to cover the remaining 20%.

“The county cannot afford to do this right now,” he said. “Obviously, for connectivity and emergency services purposes, this thing does need to get repaired, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.”

Despite these issues, officials pointed to a major washout along Main Street north of Soquel Village that cut off about 500 people in March 2023 as an example of how quickly the county can move when it has adequate funding. That nearly $4.7 million emergency project, funded by FHWA public-assistance funding, included installing a new box culvert and fish passage for Bates Creek, which runs underneath the road.

Wiesner said that because of the steelhead trout population that travels the channel, the county had to collaborate with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and others. 

It managed to complete this project in less than a year, and had a temporary fix to address the initial washout within 24 hours. Wiesner said this shows how quickly the county can work with ample funding.

“When we have the funding in place, you can see we can do really good work and we can respond quickly. Just the sheer number of projects we did really speak to our ability,” said Wiesner. “When we have money, we can do good work. When we don’t, things sit.”

Given the languid pace of federal reimbursements, Machado shared a hope for this winter: “We’re praying for no rain.” His prayer differs greatly from the outlook of weather forecasters, however, who warn that heavy rain is likely to hit the region starting as soon as Tuesday night and into the weekend.

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