Assembly bill amended to speed up Pajaro River levee upgrades before next winter’s storms

PAJARO, Calif. (KION-TV)- UPDATE ON AUGUST 29, 2023 AT 3:30 PM- Assembly Bill 876 was amended Tuesday in an effort to expedite Pajaro levee flood control upgrades, said California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.

This comes after Governor Gavin Newsom's recent executive order to complete essential repairs before next winter's storms, and the $20 million in state funds to help rebuild the community of Pajaro.

“The catastrophic March levee break and flooding in Pajaro, and the emotional and economic devastation suffered by the people there, will never be forgotten,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis of Morro Bay. “AB 876 is a thoughtful and urgent response, enabling us to quickly repair the Pajaro levee system. I’m proud to stand with Speaker Rivas to right the wrongs of historic government indifference and to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.”

For more on Assembly Bill 876, click here.

Timeline for repairs on the Pajaro River levee breach

For the first time since the breach, we’re getting a look at the work being done on the Pajaro River levee.

“This year three emergency repair projects will begin on the Pajaro River. It will be a series of construction projects to provide a stronger, more resilient system for this community," Lt. Timothy Shebesta with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Lt. Coronial Timothy Shebesta is with the army corps of engineers. He says this left bank rehabilitation project focuses on three critical sections of the levee system.

“The repair sites have been contracted separately… construction mobilization for site 1 began last week and site three will begin in the coming weeks," said Lt. Shebesta.

Site one is the main breech in the levee, the one that caused the town to flood. Many might ask why it’s taken so long to start the repairs? Enter Holly Costa with the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We had to wait for the water levels to go down before we could even come out and assess the extent of the damage," said Costa. "The corps process for rehabilitation, we do what’s like a mini feasibility study, what needs to be done, how much will it cost, and what do we need to do to plan the repair. Then we send that report up to headquarters and say ‘please give us money’ and so they approve it.”

And all of that can take several weeks.

“We go through inspection processes and we apply our resources, the maintenance funds we have to address maintenance needs," said Mark Strudley with the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency.

We wanted to know if yearly inspections were being performed by the county on the levee. Why did we see this massive breach?

“So we're still undergoing determination of how exactly the failure mode occurred but what I can say is that this levee since it was built in the 40s," said Strudley

“Their requirement is to inspect the length of the levee system, every year to determine where the deficiencies are, where maintenance is required," said Costa.

“It was built to far different engineering standards than what we would build a levee to now, which is why this replacement that's going on behind us is going to be stronger, and more resilient than the levees to either side of it," said Strudley.

The corps will come in and do periodic inspections and request reports from the non-federal sponsor to check on those vulnerabilities, have they been maintained have they been improved?

We’re feeling a little good about this project that we are, we’re moving forward, we’re getting it done. And we're getting it done right. It's not gonna be just a band-aid, we are rebuilding this.

Holly Costa with the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers told KION it’s under a hundred-day contract that was issued in mid-July, and that they should complete the work on the main breach of the levee by the beginning of November. We will keep you updated.