Pajaro River Watershed focus of state-funded visioning workshop series

This article was written by BenitoLink intern Meghan Lee. Lea este artículo en español aquí.

With a history of flooding, drought and disruptions to the water supply, the future of the Pajaro River Watershed is of concern to a number of groups in the region.

To address current and future issues involving the watershed, which encompasses 198 miles of river that winds through San Benito County and three other counties, a series of workshops has been underway this year as part of the Pajaro River Watershed Resilience Program.

Hosted by the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency, the workshops are aimed at gathering community input on climate hazards and developing a plan to enhance the watershed’s resilience.

An initial workshop was held in March, which focused on the vision for the watershed. A second, virtual workshop was held in June to look at climate vulnerabilities.

A third workshop is set for Aug. 19 at 1 p.m. at the Civic Plaza Community Room in Watsonville, to identify initial adaptation strategies. The final workshop is scheduled for Oct. 23, when adaptation strategies will be prioritized.

The workshops are part of an initiative funded by the California Department of Water Resources known as the Watershed Resilience Program. The program awarded grants to five watershed areas in California to test out new methods of managing local water resources. The initiative’s goal is to help areas plan for a more resilient water supply.

The Pajaro River Watershed was one of the areas to receive a $2 million grant through the program. 

The Pajaro River Watershed Resilience Program consists of multiple advisory groups, including cities, county water districts, Indigenous tribes, land trusts and Pajaro Valley Water Management. 

Marcus Mendiola is the Water Conservation and Outreach Specialist for Pajaro Valley Water Management. He said that in the past, California cities and counties have managed their water resources at a local level, instead of as part of a large and complex watershed.

That kind of approach can present challenges, he said.

“Water doesn’t care where the city line is, or where the county line is,” Mendiola said. “So this watershed, being in four different counties, mostly in San Benito County, but also Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz and a little bit of Monterey, when it floods, all of the sudden you see this interconnectivity.”

Extreme weather in the past few years is part of the reason for the push to plan on a watershed level, he said. For instance, rainfall in 2023 caused a Pajaro River levee to fail, flooding the community of Pajaro and causing hundreds of people to evacuate. 

At the March 20 workshop, participants and presenters spoke about the 2023 levee breach, as well as persistent wildfires, the threat of drought and other looming environmental hazards.

Over the course of three hours, the workshop consisted of presentations and exercises to help the participants think critically about the challenges facing the watershed. 

One exercise involved participants writing notes about different features and challenges on posters representing the watershed’s various resource systems. There was also a poster representing the watershed’s timeline to which participants were encouraged to add notable events. 

The workshop also emphasized contextualizing the watershed’s current situation. 

Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods, the tribal chair of Indian Canyon Nation, attended the March workshop. A member of the Costanoan Ohlone-Mutsun Chumash tribe, Sayers-Roods’ ancestors cultivated the watershed thousands of years before Europeans colonized the area. She said having the indigenous community involved in ecological and infrastructural projects like the Pajaro Valley Watershed Resilience Program is vital because they can provide a much wider knowledge of the ecological history of the area. 

“By having that root connection, we have place-based knowledge that is so very integral to forward momentum in having insight to strategize sustainable futures of these spaces that we call home,” she said. 

Jeff Cattaneo attended the workshop on behalf of the San Benito County Water District and said the district is mainly focused on water quality, supply and resiliency, and the program can better help organize projects. 

“The majority of the work we’ve been doing for the last 55, 60 years is in that area,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do that, but we want to make sure we coordinate all the rest of the activities along with it so that we can get the most out of anything that we’re doing.”

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