Salinas River flooding concerns flood parts off Highway 68 and forces school closures

SALINAS, CALIF (KION-TV)-  The Salinas River is still dangerous. It has been overtaking some fields and roads near Highway 68 Friday after causing problems in South County.

According to Director of Communications Marcos Cabrera, this forced the Salinas Union High School District to cancel classes.

“From our perspective, if we had teachers come in, say, today and then, you know, midday, the river crested and driving to the peninsula became untenable,” Cabrera said. “We didn't want to have to put our staff members in that kind of a predicament.”

Salinas also made adjustments -- shutting down the city's wastewater treatment facility until next week. City Manager Steve Carrigan explained how this came about.

“We reached out to our top 10 to 12 top industrial dischargers, and we asked them to cease operations for a few days so that we wouldn't continue to put industrial wastewater into this, the situation that we're in,” Carrigan said. “They were fantastic. They agreed to it. They're in the process right now of shutting down. It takes 4 to 6 hours to shut their operations down.”

Seeing something like this isn’t something new to someone like Marcos Cabrera. He also witnessed the floods in 1995 when he was a reporter for The Californian.

“For residents and for myself, who have those memories from, you know, almost 30 years ago, can give us a better sense of what that experience might be like,” Cabrera said. “And we also, you know, I mentioned this in a tweet that I sent out that was a touchstone moment for this community.

What is the difference between then and now? The ability to prepare.

“You know, you can borrow from that lived experience and, you know, with the information that I have now and just go into it knowing, hey, you know, we're going to get through this and, you know, we're going to we're going to in the aftermath that we're going to be able to better support one another and be there for each other,” Cabrera said.

As for the Wastewater Treatment Center, The City says the water there comes straight from the field and isn't sewage water.