Recovery planning in the Pajaro community in north Monterey County has entered a new long-term phase, more than four months after the Pajaro River levee was breached during heavy rain, flooding the area and causing widespread property and infrastructure damage.

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors recently heard an update on the transition to long-term recovery from Kelsey Scanlon, director of the county’s Department of Emergency Management.

The department created dedicated contacts for the community as part of a task force that will begin seeking input on the best way to rebuild the largely residential and agricultural unincorporated community south of Watsonville, including ways to use $20 million earmarked by state lawmakers for Pajaro.

The task force will consist of six subcommittees — agricultural and economic recovery, health and social services, housing and community development, infrastructure recovery, natural and cultural resources, and public safety recovery.

Each subcommittee will have representatives from county staff and two to three yet to be named community members.

The director of the task force will be Vicente Lara from the county Health Department. The community liaison will be Daniel Gonzalez, who can be reached at 831-796-1909.

Laying down a timeline

The task force team is being assembled through August and will then create a planning committee by December, according to a timeline Lara presented to the Board of Supervisors last month. The team will perform community engagement through April and submit a draft recovery plan by May. Monthly reports will be given to the Board of Supervisors throughout the process.

“A year seems like a long time from now,” said Supervisor Chris Lopez.

Lara agreed but said the team would need to balance the need for thorough community engagement with the desire to make improvements quickly.

“One of our main goals for this project is to make sure that we have solid relationships with the stakeholders of Pajaro,” Lara said. “And so we really want to make sure that we’re moving the plan forward, but also giving us enough time to build those relationships with those stakeholders, because we know that once that document is drafted, we need to have a solid group of community in Pajaro that’s going to move that plan forward,” he said.

Part of the planning process will include deciding how to use $20 million that the state Legislature earmarked for recovery in Pajaro as part of Assembly Bill 102, the state Budget Act of 2023.

According to the legislation, the funding can be used for several purposes, including vehicle replacement, rental assistance, and other direct assistance, regardless of citizenship status.

The county must demonstrate that the use of the funds is not available from any other source, including federal assistance programs, which are otherwise helping offset the roughly $94 million in damage to housing, $30 million to commercial structures, and $600 million in agricultural losses attributed to the storm and flooding.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Aug. 4 signed an executive order to speed up debris removal and expedite levee repairs in Pajaro.

Still time to apply for assistance

As part of the shift away from short-term recovery, the disaster assistance recovery center at Pajaro Middle School stopped operations in late July. However, a deadline to apply for assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Small Business Administration was extended to Sept. 1. Applications are available online.

Emergency repairs to the breach areas of the levee are taking place throughout this month, according to a Monterey County spokesperson.

Long-term repairs on the levee will be made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Design work is scheduled to be completed by spring and construction is scheduled to begin in late summer 2024, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The first phase of the work will be to the north of Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County.