{"id":1354,"date":"2023-04-03T12:28:35","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T16:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2023-04-03T12:28:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T16:28:54","slug":"as-california-floods-a-farmworker-town-feels-forgotten-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/education\/as-california-floods-a-farmworker-town-feels-forgotten-again\/","title":{"rendered":"As California floods, a farmworker town is forgotten \u2014 again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PAJARO, Calif. \u2014 It was happening again. A broken levee, a frantic flight from fast-approaching floodwaters. The prospect of losing everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nearly 28 years to the day since the first time the Huezo family and hundreds of their neighbors were forced from their homes, the rain-soaked Pajaro River was swallowing this small farming community once more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI want to cry, but a tree has to be strong while its branches break, and I am the tree,\u201d Antonio Huezo, 72, said as he surveyed the damage. \u201cWe have worked more than 40 years to achieve all this, and in 24 hours or less everything we made over a lifetime is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Huezo family is among thousands across the state who are reckoning with the toll of a brutal run of winter weather. But longtime residents, local officials and activists say a history of disinvestment and marginalization has left Pajaro and the 3,000 people who live here especially vulnerable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last month\u2019s flooding, they say, shows how entire towns can fall through the cracks of local, state and federal systems meant to prevent disasters and assist recoveries. In the weeks since the flood, Pajaro has become an example of the ways in which the country is ill-prepared to address climate-change-fueled devastation in its most at-risk communities.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe way it\u2019s playing out is exactly as predicted,\u201d said Nancy Faulstich, the founder of Regeneraci\u00f3n, a local climate-justice advocacy group. \u201cThe people with the fewest resources who are on the margins of society are going to experience these unnatural disasters. What\u2019s clear is we are not prepared as a society for these shocks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Authorities knew the levees in Pajaro <\/b>could fail again, but an improvement project has <\/b>languished for years. In mid-March, the river burst through a hole in the embankment and plunged nearly every corner of the unincorporated town underwater, the worst disaster since the flooding of 1995.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Residents are furious that more was not done to protect them from a predictable crisis. Officials in Monterey County, home to Pajaro, acknowledge that local leaders have not prioritized the town, but they insist the paradigm is shifting and they\u2019ve called for more state and federal support.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHistorically, these communities have not received the attention of all the levels of government that they deserve,\u201d said Luis Alejo, the chair of Monterey County\u2019s Board of Supervisors. \u201cOnly recently are we changing and redirecting resources to communities that never had them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Huezos were finally permitted to return to their pale yellow home at the end of a block off Pajaro\u2019s main road late last week. In the town, houses were caked in noxious mud and debris. Mold was sprouting from ceilings. Contaminated water had streamed into the Huezo home\u2019s first floor, destroying all it touched. Outside, it wrecked their truck, carried trash bins far into the lettuce fields behind their home and toppled a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Maria Huezo, 72, Antonio\u2019s wife, who has lived in Pajaro with her husband for more than four decades, the devastating flood was more evidence of something she has long believed: \u201cWe\u2019re always forgotten here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more from Reis Thebault<\/a><\/span> of The Washington Post<\/em>:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2023\/04\/01\/california-floods-pajaro-migrant-farmworkers\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PAJARO, Calif. \u2014 It was happening again. A broken levee, a frantic flight from fast-approaching floodwaters. The prospect of losing everything. Nearly 28 years to the day since the first time the Huezo family and hundreds of their neighbors were forced from their homes, the rain-soaked Pajaro River was swallowing this small farming community once…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1356,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions\/1356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}