Santa Cruz County approves emergency declarations; Storm damage totals in the millions
SANTA CRUZ -- Santa Cruz County supervisors approved two local emergency declarations Tuesday for the winter storms that have battered the county in December and January.
According to county officials, the storms have wrought upwards of $21 million in road damage, nearly $7 million in park damage and upwards of $1.2 million to the San Lorenzo Valley Water District's water distribution infrastructure.
Those figures are also likely less than the total amount of damage, according to Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience Director Dave Reid, because they are only current through Jan. 7 and do not include damage estimates from individual cities.
"We've received over 23 inches of rain in the last 10 days," Reid said Tuesday before the county Board of Supervisors. "In 2017, at that same rain gauge, we had over 50 inches of rain in six weeks. So this is unprecedented but not unfamiliar territory. And we're not out of the woods."
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The emergency declarations will help the county qualify for federal disaster relief aid after President Joe Biden approved a federal emergency declaration on Monday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency last week due to the parade of atmospheric rivers that have hit Northern California over the last two weeks.
Several local governments, including Monterey County and San Francisco, have also approved local emergency declarations in an effort to receive federal aid funds.
In Santa Cruz County, the heavy rain and high winds have led to significant flooding of the San Lorenzo River, Aptos Creek, Salsipuedes Creek and, for the first time in more than 40 years, the Soquel Creek.
The storms have also caused major landslides, downed trees and power lines and an extreme tidal swell that flooded coastal areas of the county and damaged both the Capitola Wharf and the SS Palo Alto, better known as the "cement ship," that sits at the end of Seacliff State Beach's pier.
Most recently, the storm that hit the county on Sunday and Monday forced the evacuation of nearly 30,000 residents living near the Pajaro River flood basin, which was under a flash flood warning by the National Weather Service at the time.
The county announced Wednesday that it would begin repairing and reinforcing the Pajaro River levee system, adding temporary support and structure to the levee in an area that is roughly one mile from the confluence of the river and Salsipuedes Creek.
The levee section to be repaired is showing signs of seepage, according to the county, and will eventually be replaced. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already approved the replacement project.
"We were still digging our way out of the repairs from the 2017 storms, I think we were about two-thirds of the way through that," Supervisor Manu Koenig said, referencing similar storms in February of that year. "And now to get hit with this again, any opportunity we can we need to look for making our infrastructure more resilient."
