Pajaro River Levee project at risk after Trump claws back some funding

President Donald Trump has taken millions of dollars already allocated to blue states—and reallocated the funding to red states—impacting a wide array of ongoing critical infrastructure projects, including the Pajaro River Flood Management Project.

In a press conference Thursday,  U.S. Democratic Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff—both members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works—joined the Washington state Senate delegation in calling out Trump’s decision to zero out critical funding for Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) construction projects.

Overall, the Army Corps’ plans would steer roughly $258 million more in construction funding to red states while ripping away roughly $437 million in construction funding for blue states,

According to Padilla, Trump’s plans would cut  $126 million meant for California, as well as $500 million for the Howard Hanson Dam in Washington state.

Also losing funding are the American River Common Features Levee Improvement Project, the Lower San Joaquin River Project and the West Sacramento Project.

Pajaro River Flood Management Agency (PRFMA) Director Mark Strudley said that construction is still expected to start this fall on Reach 6, which runs along Corralitos Creek from Green Valley Road to East Lake Avenue. That portion of the project is funded by $156 million already allocated to the project.

“None of that is changing,” he said. It wouldn’t do anything to us right now. What it does is set the stage potentially for the idea that maybe there aren’t going to be any construction allocations moving forward.” 

PRFMA was also counting on—and what Trump zeroed out—was $38.5 million in funding for the Pajaro River Levee project provided by Congress to the ACOE under Republicans’ yearlong continuing resolution for fiscal year 2025. 

That money would have gone to fund construction for Reach 5, which stretches from East Lake Avenue to Salsipuedes Creek.

While the overall project can tentatively move forward this year, that could change if Trump takes the money again in the next fiscal year.

“I don’t know if this is a one-year thing, or if the Trump Administration is going to continue to un-fund budgets for blue states,” Strudley said. “If that happens,  then the project stalls in terms of construction. That would mean Reach 5 wouldn’t get constructed.”

In a press release, Padilla said that the projects were created to protect some of the most at-risk areas in the nation, including Sacramento County, which the Corps considers the most at-risk region for catastrophic flooding in the United States.

“When anyone takes the oath of office, even Donald Trump as President of the United States, you become the president for all Americans—not just for red states or for blue states, but for every state and every community equally,” Padilla said. “Yet, since the minute Donald Trump returned to office, he’s set out to politicize the office he holds, now trying to take hundreds of millions of dollars in flood prevention funding away from the states that happened to not vote for him and redirect them to projects in states that supported his election. It’s absolutely wrong.”

Schiff said that the decision would put the nation on a dangerous path where anything can be slashed for bipartisan reasons.

“Natural disasters don’t discriminate based on whether a state is red or blue, and the administration and Congress shouldn’t either when it comes to protecting communities from natural disasters,” he said “You’re not a half president. You’re not president for only half of the country, not if you do the job right. These baseless attacks threaten millions of people from both parties whose lives are endangered by floods,”

The ironic part of the funding loss, Strudley said, is that the Pajaro River Levee project has all the cost-savings elements of what Trump says he wants.

“If you ignore the fact that it’s in California in a blue state, and protecting disadvantaged communities, it’s got all the things the Trump administration would want,” he said. “They’re cutting funding from a project that is doing creative things to cut costs and doing creative things to remove administrative burdens like the CEQA exemption bill did for us.”