More than 1,500 residents were ordered to evacuate after a levee was breached by flooding in California.
WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Authorities ordered more than 1,500 people to evacuate early Saturday from a Northern California agricultural community famous for its strawberry crop after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached by flooding from a new atmospheric river pummeling the state.
The Pajaro River separates the counties of Santa Cruz and Monterey in the area that flooded Saturday.Officials had been working along the levee in the hopes of shoring it up when it was breached early Saturday morning. Crews began working to fix the levee around daybreak Saturday as residents slept in evacuation centers.
This week’s storm marked the state’s 10th atmospheric river of the winter, storms that have brought enormous amounts of rain and snow to the state and helped lessen the drought conditions that had dragged on for three years. State reservoirs that had dipped to strikingly low levels are now well above the average for this time of year, prompting state officials to release water from dams to assist with flood control and make room for even more rain.
Emergency officials have warned people to stay off roads if they can and to carefully heed flash flood warnings. State water managers were also grappling with the best way to use the storms to help emerge from a severe drought. On Friday, Newsom signed an executive order making it easier for farmers and water agencies to use floodwater to refill underground aquifers. Groundwater provides on average about 41% of the state’s supply each year. But many of these underground basins have been overdrawn in recent years.
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