April 7-29, 2025 - University of California Berkeley - College of Environmental Design

Authors: Danielle Zoe Rivera and Eliza Breder

Government Partner: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at San Francisco

Funding: Lau Climate Futures Grant from UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development

This project examines the difficulties in planning for flooding in regions with complex jurisdictional challenges. In particular, the project focuses on the Pájaro Valley in California (Valley) to assist in post-flood recovery and reconstruction following the 2023 Winter Storms. To do so, the project investigated the history of the Pájaro Valley’s waterways, flood risks, and flood events. To find this information, eight archives throughout the Bay Area and California were searched providing geospatial data, photographs, maps, news articles, and stories. These data sources were then cross-analyzed to construct a Flood Risk Timeline identifying four key periods in the region’s history of flooding.

Given the auspicious timing of this study, its goal is to better inform recovery and reconstruction efforts following the 2023 Winter Storms, assisting government partners in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in San Francisco. The findings of the historical ecology study are further analyzed to increase public awareness of the natural, social, and political processes which may contribute to the widespread flooding experienced in the Valley in 2023. From this, we identified five core findings and made policy recommendations for regional leaders and our government partners. These final policy and design recommendations pay particular attention to the jurisdictional challenges and complexities experienced in this region, especially as they impact its unincorporated areas (areas lacking citydom). Our hope is that these histories will help mitigate regional flood risk.

The exhibit at UC-Berkeley highlighted our research process, our data analysis from the archives, and our findings and recommendations.

Many thanks to the following archives for making this work possible:

• Borina Archive, Pajaro Valley Historical Association

• McCone Archive, UC-Berkeley

• The Bancroft, UC-Berkeley

• California Archive, Online

• Amah Mutsun History, Online

• UC Santa Cruz, Digital Collection

• The David Bacon Photography Archive, Stanford

• News Archive, Watsonville Public Library