Executive Summary

This report examines the physical and socio-economic complexities involved with planning for flooding in regions with complex jurisdictional challenges. In particular, the report focuses on the Pájaro Valley (Valley) in California to assist in post-flood recovery and reconstruction following the 2023 Winter Storms and levee breaches.

To do so, this report studies the history of the Pájaro Valley’s waterways, flood risks, and flood events. To find this information, several archives were visited, including: the Bancroft, at UC-Berkeley; McCone Map Archives, at UC-Berkeley; and the Borina Archive, at the Pájaro Valley Historical Association in Watsonville. The State of California’s archive was also consulted. From these sources, geospatial data, photographs, maps, and stories were then collected and cross-analyzed to construct an historical ecology of floods and flood risks in the Valley. From this, the report details four key historical era in the Pájaro Valley’s flood histories, each defined by distinct socio-political attitudes towards flood risks and infrastructure projects. These periods are covered as timelines of flood events, high-level summaries of their major mitigation events, spatial historical studies, and detailed descriptions of the chronological events within the time period.

Given the auspicious timing of this study, the goal of this report is to better inform recovery and reconstruction efforts following the 2023 Winter Storms. The findings of the historical ecology study are analyzed, here, to better inform the natural, social, and political processes which may have contributed to the widespread flooding experienced in the Valley in 2023, with the hope of mitigating future flood risks. The report also pays particular attention to the jurisdictional challenges and complexities experienced in this region, especially as they impact its unincorporated areas (areas lacking citydom).