Prepping for El Ni?o

san lorenzo river in santa cruz today making sure everything is okay and marine life wasn’t affected by yesterday’s emergency breach of the river. crews had to deal with a sandbar that had gotten too high… and was sending water onto city streets. the sandbar has been sealed off. a lot of people were concerned about fish getting stuck. one fish did, but the biologists were able to safely move it back out to the ocean. a local lawmaker is voicing concerns about our rivers ahead of what may be a wet winter. assembly member luis alejo says the central coast’s waterways need to be prepared in case an el nino does happen. news channel 5’s mariana hicks joins us in the newsroom to explain why he says we’re not prepared. you know the saying — those who cannot rember the past are condemned to repeat it. that’s the concern assembly member luis alejo has, as he talks with governor jerry brown about the management of our water ways. this year marks two decades since a winter storm devastated our area… alejo wants to prevent that with some proactive measures. *trt: 1:30outcue:a lot of work up there:*@00-15 flood concerns @17-24 mariana @122-128 anthony in 1995 — flooding throughout monterey and santa cruz counties damaged more than 15-hundred homes and 100 businesses.just three years later — our area was hit with a series of el nino winter storms which closed roads and caused landslides.today — mariana hicks”the river levels are pretty low right now but according to a lot of scientists’ predictions, that could change in the winter time.”assemblyman luis alejo//district 30″now that scientists have confirmed that they expect is a godzilla el nino storm this coming winter, it is incombent upon us to prepare our communities to deal with that.”alejo has been in talks with the governor’s office — pushing to expedite permits for maintenance on local rivers…particularly the salinas and pajaro rivers. about a dozen miles of the salinas river in south monterey county were cleaned last year.. but it’s not enough.he says now is the time to do more.assemblyman luis alejo//district 30″many that have not been maintained or cleared in many many years. so if we know that rains are coming and our rivers aren’t being cleaned, we can tell what’s going to happen. it’s going to be a repeat of what we saw in 1995 when the salinas river flooded, the pajaro river flooded causing millions and millions of dollars in damage.”anthony landecho rembers the 1995 flood… he says the water reached the stairs to his uncle’s house off riverside drive. since then, the banks of the pajaro river have been shored up.. and his family has also taken steps to keep their house safe.anthony landecho//watsonville resident “we put a pump under the house so if the water comes up too high it will automatically turn on. we don’t worry too much, they’ve done a lot of work up there.”