SANTA CRUZ COUNTY >> The various atmospheric rivers Santa Cruz County has experienced over the years, especially the 2023 winter storms, have had a devastating impact on the county’s roadways.

The county has prioritized millions of dollars in funding for repairs and hosted a tour with media outlets Monday to highlight four of them. These consisted of three projects in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a recently completed project at Bates Creek along Main Street in Soquel.

Glenwood Drive

Located just outside Scotts Valley, Glenwood Drive experienced a sinkhole in 2023 that took out a large chunk of the road, leaving it closed to motorists. Steve Wiesner, the county’s assistant director of public works, said it is a very important thoroughfare for those who live in the mountains.

“Before (Highway) 17 was built, this was the main highway,” he said. “It parallels Highway 17 for a large distance, nearly from Summit down into the city of Scotts Valley. When 17 goes out, this becomes the primary alternative route.”

Wiesner said a number of factors led to the road damage, including rising creek levels, unconsolidated soils with not a lot of bedrock, the steepness of the terrain and an average of 50 to 60 inches of rainfall each year.

“It’s like a mini rainforest,” he said.This led to a hard closure of Glenwood Drive in January 2023, as public works crews worked to remove debris, install a creek bypass and a permanent concrete crib wall with new culverts, road features and erosion control. The total cost of the project was $1.6 million with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance program.

Just across the completed crib wall is another crib wall that failed in 2017 and the county is still awaiting funding for, but Wiesner said that is typical. Matt Machado, the county’s director of community development and infrastructure, said the county worked on 122 projects last year, totaling about $80 million.

“There’s still another hundred projects to build, worth about another $60 million more to go that we haven’t been able to touch yet,” he said. “And we have another winter coming.”

Stetson Road

One high-priority site for the county is Stetson Road. Located on the summit between Soquel San Jose Road and Skyland Road, the road has been closed since last year’s storms due to a fallen crib wall. Wiesner said the county will be going out to bid in January or February with the intention to start construction in early summer. He said a major concern is residents having alternate access in and out.

“All summer long, they worry about fire,” he said. “All winter long, they worry about storms.”

Jason Hoppin, Santa Cruz County’s public information officer, said the county is often constrained by the lack of access to funding.

“There’s just so much damage everywhere that recurs every winter, that it’s just impossible for us to keep up,” he said. “Then you add in the uncertainties of climate change, this increasing pace of storms and intensity of storms, the amount of water we get in single rain events and, of course, the political question we have in front of us.”

The political question Hoppin was referring to was what kind of partners FEMA will be under the new Donald Trump administration. He did say that county Supervisor Zach Friend recently went to Washington, D.C., to secure funding and did get a commitment for the Main Street project in Soquel, which was a later stop on the tour.

Redwood Lodge Road

Another high-priority project is a bridge from Redwood Lodge Road above Laurel Creek. Wiesner said there used to be a 10-foot diameter culvert that failed in 2017, causing transportation issues for the area.

“This is a connector between Highway 17 and Soquel San Jose Road, two of our biggest volume roads that come down off of Summit,” he said. “It provides connectivity for emergency services and anybody who lives back here.”

A gate was installed in 2017 to prevent vehicular access as the county worked to find an alternative to the culvert. A temporary bridge was installed a few years later to provide access to other repair sites, as county staff worked with the Federal Highway Administration to get a permanent bridge installed.

“We had to do all kinds of technical studies to show them this is not a good idea to put a culvert system back here,” said Wiesner. “We’ve watched this thing fail over the decades, and what it really needs to be is a bridge.”

However, the temporary bridge was destroyed in the 2023 storms, leaving Redwood Lodge without any kind of connector. Wiesner said the Federal Highway Administration allowed the county to submit the 2017 project as an emergency for 2023, but the county ran into money issues. He estimates that a span would cost between $7 million and $9 million.

“This is a very expensive project,” he said. “The county could not afford to do this. Right now, we have not identified our local match to do this repair, even though we do have federal partners that have come forward and committed 80% of the funding.”

Wiesner said getting the local match was important to allow for local and emergency access.

Main Street

Not all projects are waiting in the wings. The final stop on the tour was Main Street in Soquel along Bates Creek where a new box culvert with wing walls was installed. This portion of road was destroyed in March 2023 when heavy debris flow down Bates Creek caused a culvert to wash out and take out a portion of the roadway, leading to a road closure. With funding through the Federal Highway Administration’s Public Assistance program, crews worked to remove debris and install an emergency culvert that also allowed fish to pass through.

“We have steelhead that run up this creek and spawn above this channel,” said Wiesner. “When we went to do this emergency project, we had to work very closely with the National Marine Fisheries Services, NOAA, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and so forth. There was a lot of eyes on this project.”

Wiesner said materials were put in place to mimic a natural stream.

The project was one of the last emergency repairs completed before the 2024 winter storms. It cost approximately $4.6 million.

Wiesner highlighted the importance of funding partners.

“When we have the funding in place, you can see we do good work when we can respond quickly,” he said. “When we don’t have the funding, you saw some sites that sit the way they do, and you can see that our population becomes more vulnerable and the system itself does too.”