Crews still repairing damages from 2017 storm in Monterey County

Crews are still repairing damages caused by the powerful storms that hit the Central Coast early last year.

Those storms left roads and bridges destroyed, piling on millions of dollars in damages. It also left hundreds of people stranded in the Big Sur area.

On Wednesday, the Monterey County Resource Management Agency released a report on the progress being made in those repair projects.

“In total, estimated damage is $62 million to Monterey County. It entails about 111 projects,” said Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo.

These projects are happening all over Monterey County. So far, at least 29 have been completed. Another 15 are underway. 18 projects totaling $14 million are pending based on the availability of resources.

“Because the way these projects work, the county has to front a lot of this money. So we’ve fronted $41 million. A portion of that is going to be our local share,” said Alejo.

Federal agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency will foot additional costs through a reimbursement program. Right now, the feds will cover 47 repair projects totaling about $23 million.

A lot of this work involves repairing damaged road sections and culverts, replacing road signs and removing dirt and wood debris stockpiles.

There is a priority list so more urgent projects will get done first. But Monterey County’s budget shortfalls this year is making things slow.

“Not having a robust budget as we’d want to, we have limited funds which limits us in terms of being able to get the most urgent projects in the pipeline. But like we said, it’s a slow process,” said Alejo.

He also says it is probably going to take two to three years before all the projects are finally completed.