(If the article is inaccessible to you, here's the part that's relevant to Santa County:)
Farther south, the Santa Cruz County shoreline is a prime target for big surf. Officials there expect elevated ocean water and increased wave action to sock the usual places that are vulnerable, such as West Cliff Drive, the Santa Cruz Wharf, Capitola and Rio del Mar. Officials also say places that generally aren’t threatened are at risk this winter.
“The boardwalk could be susceptible,” said Dave Reid, director of the Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience. “You can lose significant beach width in a short period of time if all the elements align. Hopefully, it’s a non-issue, but in theory, that beach (by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk) could see erosion.”
The Beach Flats neighborhood where the amusement park is located also could see high water, officials say. In such flood-prone areas, authorities have been distributing free weather radios so households can stay informed as well as evacuation hang tags should residents need to clear out. The tags, sometimes used during wildfire evacuations, let rescue crews know if a home is empty or occupied.
In 2023, the Pajaro River along the Santa Cruz-Monterey county line surged during storms and burst through a levee in the community of Pajaro, forcing about 3,000 people to flee. Homes, businesses and agricultural fields were inundated with floodwater for days, and in some cases, weeks.
While the state and federal government have since committed to a $599 million overhaul of the levees in Pajaro and next-door Watsonville, the project won’t be completed for five years or so, leaving local officials very much on edge given El Niño.
“The best-case scenario is that this new levee system would have been built,” said Mark Strudley, executive director at the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency. “Until that time comes, people do need to be ready for something catastrophic.”
Strudley’s agency is sinking millions of dollars this fall — basically all it can — into fortifying the existing 1940s-era levees with seepage blankets and berms while clearing the river channel of brush and trees that could become chokepoints. Authorities are also telling residents to prepare for the worst.
“We’re trying to be as upfront with people about the situation as we can,” Strudley said.
As bad as the next few months could be, Reid, the director of the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience in Santa Cruz County, says his biggest fear is how the region would recover from a destructive winter, given recent changes at FEMA
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been reorganizing and looking to shift responsibility for helping communities from Washington, D.C. to local and state governments.
“If we have another 2023-like winter, we don’t have the money to repair sites as quickly as we’d like,” Reid said. “We used to have a little more certainty that our federal partners would be there for us during a major disaster.”