Protect water facility from future floods

Much of the attention from this year's Pajaro River flooding is how it is endangering vital infrastructure such as sewer lines and the area's wastewater treatment facility.

And these threats are a major reason why government officials are proceeding cautiously in giving evacuated Pajaro residents a date for when they can return to their homes.

Among many issues, Watsonville's Wastewater Facility came close to a disaster as last week's flooding moved down the floodplain. The treatment plant is located in the floodplain, at a 90-degree bend downstream from the Pajaro breach, so the city of Watsonville and plant managers were putting out sandbags and nervously monitoring the water flow.

Because if the plant was flooded, it would be down for months. The Watsonville plant serves more than 60,000 residents and provides 4,000 acrefeet of recycled water to the agricultural community. Santa Cruz and Monterey County officials say the potential damage from flooding could cost more than $300 million and result in a public health crisis. If the flooding had reached (or in the future, does reach) it and renders the plant inoperable, it could mean releasing millions of gallons of untreated sewage to the floodplain, the river and ultimately into Monterey Bay.

Thankfully, as of this writing, the plant made it through this round of flooding (and officials say the 1995 Pajaro River flooding actually came closer than this one), as crews were able to temporarily fix breaches in the levee system with rip rap. A full rebuild of the levee system won't begin until 2025.

Still, Monterey County is having to deal with a damaged main sewer line in Pajaro and is using more than a dozen trucks to transport wastewater to the treatment plant in Watsonville. The line runs from a pump station in Pajaro and serves Pajaro, Las Lomas, Fruitland Avenue and Bay Farms, and treats wastewater at the Watsonville facility. The repair contractor reportedly hopes to have the high-pressure sewer main back online by today.

But water and sewage remain major issues in the Pajaro area. Kelsey Scanlon, Monterey County emergency services planner, said at a Monday online news conference that “damages to critical infrastructure ... make (Pajaro) uninhabitable at this point in time.” Officials say they don't know how much sewage might have spilled in the area. Monterey County workers also have been working to clean Pajaro's sanitary system, including sewer lines and manholes. Sewage and water service are on pause, and the entire town remains under evacuation orders.

Pajaro is currently without a drinking water supply because a well may have been contaminated due to flooding. Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, whose district includes Pajaro and all of North Monterey County, said at the press briefing that tapwater in Pajaro won't be available until the sewage system failure is addressed: “One thing we don't want to happen is a sewer system collapsing,” Church says.

The damaged sewer pipeline is located under Highway 1 in an area scoured by Pajaro River floodwaters that also closed the highway at the county line as water eroded the levee under the bridge.

In a meeting with the Sentinel Editorial Board last week, Ryan Smith, Wastewater Division Manager, and Jackie McCloud, Environmental Sustainability Manager for the city of Watsonville, noted that efforts are ongoing to secure funding to protect the treatment plant. The most urgent need is to replace the electrical “backbone' of the plant to raise it above the 100-year flood plain. Design work on this is underway and the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, a Joint Powers Authority made up of five member agencies from the two counties, is waiting for a match from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to augment state funding for the $17 million project.

While there is a lot of jockeying going on to expedite FEMA funding for storm and flood damages in the two counties, protecting the wastewater facility from flood damages should be at the top of the list. Let's hope pledges by the federal government mean this aid will come as quickly as possible.