This year’s historic storms have hit communities of color like Pajaro, Calif., especially hard. It’s a recurring problem that could’ve been avoided entirely.
This year’s historic storms have hit communities of color like Pajaro, Calif., especially hard. It’s a recurring problem that could’ve been avoided entirely.
Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times investigative reporter Susanne Rust
More reading:
Residents left in flooded California farm town feel ‘abandoned’ as levees fail
Spring storm sets sights on Southern California with strong wind, heavy rain
How a long history of racism and neglect set the stage for Pajaro flooding
Gustavo: For months, atmospheric storms have battered California with rain, snow and flooding. They’re unleashing devastation upon communities with surging rivers, landslides and evacuations. It’s even left one town in California’s Central Coast, Pajaro, completely inundated.
Levees were supposed to take care of these problems, but aging infrastructure and the effects of climate change have forced thousands to flee their homes.
Andres Garcia, evacuee: We had so many years of, uh, drought and they could have, uh, fixed the levee way back and they didn't.
Gustavo: And for decades, the repeated breaches, floods, deaths and pleas to fix the levees were ignored by the federal and state government. Will they finally take action?
I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to “The Times: Essential News From the L.A. Times.” It's Wednesday, March 22, 2023. Today, the latest on the devastating floods in Pajaro, and why its farmers and communities of color are paying the price. Susanne Rust is an L.A. Times investigative reporter who specializes in environmental issues.
Susanne, welcome to The Times.
Susanne: Hey, thanks for having.
Gustavo: So if you're not from the Central Coast, most Californians have probably never heard of Pajaro before the floods. So where is Pajaro situated in comparison to Silicon Valley, the Bay Area and all that?
Susanne: So it's a small town and it's south of Silicon Valley. And you take Highway 17 over the mountains, which gets you to Santa Cruz, and then you go south and suddenly you are in a really agricultural area. It's very flat. You have the Salinas River come through, the Pajaro River.
And there are farm fields everywhere, and as you go down the coast, you go through this very, very flat area of these farm towns, they're ag towns.
Susanne: It's kind of considered like the Siberia of, of Monterey County. Very few services, very small, very old. It's been around for more than a hundred years. So when I first went there, it was March 10, it was hard to really get a good feel of it because it's flooded. You can't get into it. You cross a bridge over the Pajaro River into Pajaro from Watsonville. The entire town is flooded. I mean, there are 2, 3, 4 feet of water.
Susanne: You know, going up to the windows and cars, going up the front steps of houses and businesses. So it was difficult to sort of navigate around, but you got a sense that it was small, you know, probably not as well cared for as, as some other towns up and down the coast.
Gustavo: What stories did you hear from residents about the recent flooding?
Susanne: Oh, heartbreaking things. So when I got there, the flooding had happened in the middle of the night. So the way into town from Watsonville had been closed off. There were sheriff's patrol cars, Humvees, like, high-water trucks, private security guards and what I was hearing were people who had evacuated the night before or who lived nearby wanted to get back into town.
Ruth Ruiz: It's really hard ‘cause we all have kids, you know, like, we can't get clothing for them. I'm still wearing the same clothes I am, I had from Saturday.
Susanne: Uh, they had pets there. They might have had relatives there. They wanted to make sure their houses were OK. And they couldn't get in. Nobody was letting them in. And the reasons for that, uh, you know, nobody knew what was in the water, uh, could be dangerous, but it was really sad to see. I, uh, I talked to a man, he wouldn't give me his name, but I heard him arguing with the Monterey County sheriff about getting into town. His grandmother had apparently not evacuated, was in her home. He was worried about her. He wanted to get to her. It was stories like that.
Gustavo: Susanne, how did the flooding actually happen?
Susanne: So the Pajaro's river basin is huge. And so what happened is, as you know, we've had a lot of rain this winter. And so all of the soil and the tributaries that usually feed this river were swollen. So the river got extremely high, and as it came down, it met up with this levee system, which has rodent holes in it, has, you know, stressed soils.
And it's unclear right now, I heard from a Monterey County official that what happened is the river just got so high, it overtopped the levee. But I've heard from others that in fact what was starting to happen was the water was seeping through the levee, through these rodent holes, wormholes, plant holes, just cricks and the cracks in the levee.
Nevertheless, it burst open. The water just kept coming and the river just kept coming. And so the breach got bigger and bigger. Uh, by the time the National Guard got there to try to start to fill it, it was about 400 feet wide.
Gustavo: Were residents warned beforehand about how bad the flooding could get?
Susanne: So the residents along this river have known that the levee was not in great shape.
Susanne: So everybody was sort of aware that something could happen, but it wasn't until about 11:30 Friday night, that a text went out warning everybody that the levee was likely to breach.
And then at midnight an evacuation order came out. And so it was the middle of the night. And I spoke to a flood control manager, and he said at 12 o'clock when the levee breached, they sent out the text and the water took about two or three hours before it got to town, but you know, it slowly moved along the landscape toward town and by 3 in the morning, the town was starting to get inundated.
Gustavo: So this levee system that's supposed to protect Pajaro and the region, how is it supposed to work?
Susanne: The levees themselves are these earthen walls that go along the side of the river and they're higher than the river. And what they're supposed to do is keep the water in if the water gets high. And most of the time, like many California rivers, the river is dry.
And the past 12 years or so, it's been really, really, really dry. But the idea is these levees go along and they're supposed to just keep the water flowing down the Pajaro River and not into town. So that's what they're designed to do.
Gustavo: How old are these levees? When were they built?
Susanne: So the levees were built in 1949. So they're pretty old. And by the 1960s, it was clear to anybody who paid any attention, including the Army Corps of Engineers, that these levees were not sufficient to hold back water from these towns. They were initially designed to prevent water from a storm that had a 1% chance of happening every year.
And what they discovered was, in fact, these, uh, levees could probably only hold back a storm that was predicted to happen once every 10, 12 years, something like that. And so by the 1960s, they knew there was a concern.
Gustavo: Coming up after the break, how the government ignored warnings about the weakening levees in Pajaro and how this problem isn’t just limited to there.
Gustavo: Suzanne, so you mentioned that government officials knew that these levees were worsening for decades, gosh, going back to the 1960s. So why haven't they been fixed already?
Susanne: A couple days after the breach, I called the, uh, district manager for the Army Corps of Engineers who oversees this project, and I said to him, “Hey, how's this project going?” And “it looks like you guys had known that it wasn't satisfactory. Why hasn't anything been done?” And he told me the way the Army Corps of Engineers has worked until very recently is they do a cost benefit analysis.
Gustavo: That sounds like straight up racism.
Susanne: Well, so, uh, if you start looking around the state, and if you start looking around the country, you find that these benefit cost ratios are done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers everywhere and the communities that happen to sit on most levee systems are economically disadvantaged communities, and so it is those communities that are bearing the brunt of this.
Gustavo: How much would it even cost to fix these problems in the levee? So if, if there's this cost benefit analysis, how much was the ultimate price?
Susanne: It's about $400 million.
Gustavo: And these levees are all across California and of course across the United States.
Susanne: I don't know what the full number is in California, but I can tell you that the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Valley, in Northern California, there are 13,000 miles of levees, right? And they protect homes and businesses and highways and farms and Pajaro is just the beginning.
These are all, for the most part, pretty old levees. I mean, many of them were made in the 1880s, 1890s. And so, again, we're just seeing the beginning and with all of this snow in the mountains this year, they're talking about some of the biggest flooding we've seen since ‘95, maybe since like 1862, when the entire Central Valley was underwater. You know, I think people are really worried whether the levee system is gonna hold up.
And one of the things we learned about the levee system is these things are earthen walls, They're dirt and sand, and things like drought weaken these levee systems, right?
Gustavo: We're supposed to be in the midst of the worst drought in 1,200 years, and forecasters actually said that it wasn't supposed to rain much in California in 2023. Obviously we can’t predict every single natural disaster that’s gonna happen, but climate change is happening. Are low-income communities going to face the brunt of the damage?
Susanne: It's a big concern. That is absolutely correct. Uh, if you begin looking around, it is economically disadvantaged communities that live in these floodplains near these rivers often, um, in coastal areas that, as you pointed out, are eroding. And it's emergency responders, officials, anybody who sort of begins to look around is realizing that the infrastructure in California was not built for these extremes.
Gustavo: Coming up after the break. What's next for communities like Pajaro?
Gustavo: Susanne, what obstacles are Pajaro residents encountering right now? Are they able to request aid or what's happening?
Susanne: For residents in Pajaro, things are really difficult right now. They cannot get back to their homes. They cannot go into town, right? It's cordoned off at this point. And it is unclear when they will be able to go home. Officials I spoke to said it could be months. And again, this is a community that is largely migrant farm workers.
Heriberto Garcia: El niños ahorita ya hay gente que ya no tiene que pagar y sacar que tenían. Ya no tienen el dinero para pagar este en los hoteles. Ya no tienen comida. Y los niños por del baño lo bañados. Y en los carros
Gustavo tracks translation above and below: That was Heriberto Garcia who said how the biggest problem right now for folks is that people don’t have money, and that kids are especially suffering.
Jessica: Pues, la comunidad demente se está apoyando porque
Gustavo tracks translation above and below: Now here’s two women talking about how, although people are helping each other, it’s hard because there’s now no work for anyone.
Jessica: Hay mucha gente que tiene ropa usada y limpia. Es la que les estado otorgando, porque también a nosotros, con nosotros también, no, no tenemos aportar con mucho.
Pues si, lo que no más, nos los esfuerzos, podemos acostar. No tenemos trabajo.
Susanne: So No. 1, so many fields that they work on, it's springtime, right, are underwater. So they don't have work. If they worked in town, they can't get to work ‘cause businesses are closed. And for many of them, Pajaro was not a cheap place to live, but cheaper than anything else along the coast.
It's cheaper than Watsonville, it's cheaper than Santa Cruz. I mean, these are Bay Area prices and there are very few, if any, places that they can go that they can afford. So what relief is there for them? I mean, right now there are emergency shelters, uh, open throughout Santa Cruz County and Monterey County, where people are staying. Those are pretty much filled, but it's unclear what more aid is coming for them. It's a real problem.
Gustavo: You talked, gosh, 13,000 miles of levees in Central California alone. And of course they're all across the United States, but have there been any efforts to improve flood control by other means, in something that seems as delicate as levees?
Susanne: Yeah, there's been talk about floodplains, sort of opening up levees in areas where people don't live to sort of relieve the pressure on these levees. I read a recent op-ed about this, and it looks like the Newsom administration has actually reduced funding for this idea of opening levees to create floodplains, places for the water to go where it is not gonna threaten communities and highways. So the federal government is, again, looking at projects that the Army Corps of Engineers has sort of a say in, one of the things we're learning about the levee system is the Army Corps of Engineers does not oversee every levee in California. Um, local communities, jurisdictions, local government jurisdictions oversee these levees. So the federal government actually has a huge role in that they have money and they can help some of these levee systems, but they only oversee a small number of them. And it takes a long time for them to do anything.
So there are probably gonna be different projects that they are gonna invest in, as we move forward. But again, it's the federal government, it takes time. So even in Pajaro, they finally got all of the money secured last fall with the state and federal and even some local funding to move forward on a design phase of a new levee system.
But it wasn't gonna go into construction until probably 2025. And then at that point it was gonna take several years. So, and as you've seen this winter, we have no idea what kind of weather systems are coming our way. Then years could be forever, right?
Gustavo: Yeah, and meanwhile, more rain is forecast for California through March. Once the rains finally stop, all the snowpack is gonna start to melt, which makes way bigger rivers. So how are residents and officials in Pajaro preparing for whatever's gonna come just in this year?
Susanne: I think just crossing their fingers that it doesn't get worse. I mean, that's kind of the only preparation that can happen right now. The National Guard came in and they did fill the breach that occurred on this levee.
You know, it was about 400 feet, but they have closed it now. I think they hope no new water is gonna enter the town and that the water that does remain will continue to drain off into the ocean.
But other than that, I really think it's just crossing fingers and holding your breath.
Gustavo: Susanne, thank you so much for this conversation.
Susanne: Well, thank you for having me.
Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of “The Times: Essential News From the L.A. Times.” Special thanks to L.A. Times reporter Ruben Vives and the Associated Press for recordings of Pajaro residents.
Denise Guerra and David Toledo were the jefes on this episode. It was edited by Heba Elorbany and Mario Diaz mixed and mastered it. Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our fellow is Helen Li. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Friday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.
