Following a lawsuit filed by hundreds of Pajaro Valley residents and business owners, farmers and agricultural landowners and tenants have filed two lawsuits against local, regional and state agencies they claim are liable for damages connected to the 2023 Pajaro levee breach and subsequent flooding.
One suit is filed by about a dozen business entities (and roughly 50 people who are trustees); another by Willoughby Farms. Each case, filed on March 4 in Monterey County Superior Court, names a long list of defendants: the counties of Monterey and Santa Cruz; the Monterey County Water Resources Agency; Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District; Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency; State of California; and Caltrans. (The Willoughby Farms suit also names the City of Watsonville and others.)
The Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner's Office reported that winter storms in 2022-23 resulted in $600 million worth of damage to the agricultural sector.
The lawsuits claim the agencies failed to adequately manage the flow into the Pajaro River basin, and failed to adequately maintain the infrastructure that would relieve flooding conditions.
Specifically they claim that channel maintenance—removal of excess vegetation and debris from the levees—fell short of protecting the levee.
"Defendants, over a period of years, allowed the project to fall into a state of disrepair," the group lawsuit states.
Beyond the levees along the Pajaro River, they also raise claims about other infrastructure design: "Highway 1 was designed, constructed, maintained, owned and operated with drainage capacity inadequate to accommodate floodwaters which the State of California and Caltrans knew or should have known would be released in the event of flooding." (Specifically, plaintiffs raise concerns related to "ponding" in fields just off Highway 1.)
None of the agencies named in the suits have yet responded to these two new lawsuits.
The suits do not specify an amount of damages the plaintiffs are seeking.
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