When momentum meets politics: How Pajaro River levee funding is struggling for priority in Trump’s Washington

Since the catastrophic breach of the Pajaro River levee in March 2023, the long-overdue project to replace it has been all momentum. Intergovernmental deals were inked, a rare combination of state and federal dollars flowed in, and design began for the 15 miles of new flood walls to protect the surrounding farmworker community and agricultural land. 

And later this summer, or early fall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to break ground on its first of five phases, 70 years after the 1955 breach, when the community first discovered the existing levee wouldn’t fully protect them. 

However, the project’s construction is funded only through this initial phase, and future funding has recently met unexpected political hurdles in Washington, D.C. Congressional staffers and regional flood managers say they have no doubts about the project’s viability, but whether the $600 million project will avoid delays has now come into question. 

The obstacles first cropped up in March, when, against the excitement around Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency operations and President Donald Trump’s flood of executive orders that were quickly reshaping bureaucracy, our elected officials inside the Capitol were debating how to fund the federal government until October. 

The Republican-led Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing what’s known as a continuing resolution, a short-term budget measure that largely maintains status quo spending. Mixed into that equation was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) construction budget and a Biden-era request specifically for Pajaro levee construction.

Yet, the request was skipped over. 

Biden sought $38.5 million to round out the federal financing for the second of the levee’s five construction phases, known as “reaches.” When the project breaks ground later this year, it will work its way down the watershed, beginning with Reach 6, the most northern section that runs along Salsipuedes Creek. Reach 5 — the second phase of construction — follows the creek from East Lake Avenue south to where it meets the Pajaro River. Subsequent phases will follow the river southwest, finishing after Reach 2, where the Pajaro meets Highway 1. 

Some members of Congress have blamed politics, though one congressional staffer who agreed to speak on background said the USACE funding structure made it vulnerable to partisan finagling. In 2024, the corps’ construction budget sat at more than $3.3 billion, nearly half of which was one-time funding from Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That one-time funding couldn’t be carried over, leaving Congress to approve a USACE 2025 construction budget of only $1.9 billion. 

Because Congress used the continuing resolution mechanism — essentially an emergency measure as opposed to the methodical appropriations process — to fund the USACE’s construction budget, discretion on how that construction money would trickle down to projects was instead left to the Trump administration.

Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Central Coast Reps. Jimmy Panetta and Zoe Lofgren wrote a letter asking that Biden’s $38.5 million request for the Pajaro River levee be met. But when the USACE published its work plan for the rest of 2025, the levee was zeroed out, as well as the three other major California infrastructure projects seeking funding. In fact, blue states suffered the brunt of the cuts. 

“The community of Pajaro suffered immensely when flooding in early 2023 occurred and to see President Trump play politics with their livelihoods is sickening,” Lofgren said at the time. Panetta called the decision “thoughtless.” 

Then, last month, when Trump released his 2026 presidential budget request — always seen as a starting point — the USACE’s budget was further slashed, to just over $1.5 billion, and the Pajaro levee’s phase-two construction funding was again overlooked, along with a handful of other projects in the state. 

The move drew sharp rebukes in a letter to the administration from 12 House Democrats in California.

“The Administration’s decision to omit the Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project from the Army Corps’ work plan not only ignores the bipartisan support behind this project, but also puts lives, homes and livelihoods in the Pajaro Valley at continued risk,” Panetta wrote. 

Lofgren, Schiff and Padilla all responded by including earmarks in their 2026 budget asks, a process through which members of Congress can request funding for certain community projects that weren’t included in the president’s budget. The Pajaro River levee-specific requests made by Schiff ($188 million), Padilla ($187 million) and Lofgren ($226.4 million), marked the largest single asks among the dozens of earmarks sought by the three legislators. 

Whether the earmarks are actually approved in full is ultimately a difficult-to-predict political question that likely won’t be answered until Oct. 1 the earliest — and that’s if Congress is uncharacteristically timely in passing the federal budget. 

So, what does this mean, exactly for the project’s timeline? Mark Strudley, executive director of the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, as well as congressional staffers who spoke on background, said if all goes well, the project could still continue on its expected timeline, as the second construction phase isn’t expected to begin until summer 2027. 

And while the fight to secure federal financing in 2026 is ongoing, Strudley said the funding doesn’t become an urgent issue until next fall, when Congress is expected to approve 2027 funding.

Still, Strudley emphasized the importance of momentum in a federal infrastructure project like this one. He said there is a sense that when a project doesn’t receive repeated federal funding year after year, it could give some decision-makers pause before agreeing to fund a project after a few gap years. 

Year-to-year funding is important, he said, because “it shows consistency and interest in the project.”

“This creates uncertainty, but despite the uncertainty around current and future federal investment, it’s important to recognize that this project has everything this administration wants, except, perhaps, that it is in the state of California,” Strudley said. 

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