LOOKOUT PM: Do you know the Westside? Big news for Pajaro River project

By Mark Conley

Source: Lookout Santa Cruz

Happy Wednesday evening, folks.

There were a couple of nice honors bestowed upon influential South County women today. We previously featured Ann as one of our 21 for 21 as we launched Lookout in the late fall of 2020 for being one of the true small business warriors during COVID.

And Erica was one of the key experts featured during our COVID 2021 event held as the coronavirus began its rage in January of 2021.

Now to all the other good stuff from today ...

What makes the Westside the Westside?

New Leaf Community Markets' Westside location

Welcome to Lookout guides: Today, we launched our Area Guides with the mother of all Santa Cruz neighborhoods: The Westside. We’ll publish a new one at least monthly, each one intended to capture what makes each community in Santa Cruz County unique. Westsider Liza Monroy captures her ‘hoods uniqueness here.

Pajaro River project receives long-promised flood of money — $67 million in federal funds

Finally: The funding will be used in the first phase of construction for the project in both Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, adding onto the previous $4.6 million in funding toward the preconstruction, engineering and design phases of the project. More from Grace Stetson & Hillary Ojeda here.

➤ ‘We’re 60 years behind the curve’: Pajaro River levee project on its way to combatting future disasters

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UCSC grad Reyna Grande retells tale of ‘invasion of Mexico,’ talks our ‘collective amnesia’

Q&A: Celebrated writer Reyna Grande triumphantly returns to her alma mater with a new novel set during the Mexican-American War. She talks about its roots, her teachers along the way and how Santa Cruz changed her life. Wallace Baine with the chat here.

California task force: Reparations for direct descendants of enslaved people only

Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer is a member of the California reparations task force

Task at hand: California’s first-in-the-nation task force to identify reparations for African Americans voted Tuesday to limit eligibility to those who can trace their lineage. More from the LA Times here.

DNA confirms expected: It was a great white shark that killed bodyboarder in Morro Bay

Large great white: Investigators determined that a shark bit Thomas Butterfield on multiple parts of his body, according to a San Luis Obispo County coroner’s report released March 16. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife would later confirm through DNA samples that it was an approximately 16-foot great white shark. More from the Times here.

➤ ‘We’ve lost Tom’: Fatal shark attack in Morro Bay devastates family and alarms the surf community

Executive Assistant at UC Santa Cruz
Engineer - Associate or Assistant I/II at Soquel Creek Water District
Mechanic I at Santa Cruz Metro
Youth Programs Educator at UC Santa Cruz
Associate Director for Equity in Mental Health at UC Santa Cruz

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ICYMI: Ready for a second booster? You’ll have to wait just a little while

Mardiros Ebrahamian, 82, gets a booster shot Moderna vaccine for COVID-19

Coming soon: On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines for people ages 50 and older, as well as for immunocompromised individuals. Hours later, the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) followed suit, allowing the rollout to officially begin. Max Chun with the details.

➤ Check out and bookmark our COVID Dashboard

Coming in April, the debuts of Community Voices and the Santa Cruz Puzzle Center

Inside Lookout: As we’ve come out of the pandemic, Lookout CEO and Founder Ken Doctor highlights the bursting vitality of the county, and that there’s lots planned for the spring. Ken lays it all out here.