Assembly Standing Committee on Agriculture

All right. So, good afternoon, everybody. Sorry for the delay in starting the hearing. And before we begin, I want to address some logistical items. Any member of the public is certainly welcome to submit written comments to the committee through email at Agri Committee at Assembly CA Gov. The email address can also be found on our website. In order to facilitate the goal of hearing as much from the public this afternoon, we won't permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs, otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of this hearing. So please be aware that violations of any rules may subject you to removal or other enforcement processes by the State Assembly. And so with that, I want to welcome everybody here this afternoon. I first want to thank Assembly Member Rodriguez and his staff, along with our Assembly Agriculture, our Committee Staff, for all their work to help organize this hearing. I'd like to thank our Assembly colleagues for making the time to be here this afternoon. And a big thank you to our panelists who have agreed to participate either in person here today or virtually as we did in November 2020, in what was actually my first committee hearing as Chair of Assembly Agriculture. At that time is we held an informational hearing regarding the impacts sustained by California agriculture due to unprecedented wildfires. The purpose for our hearing this afternoon is to have a discussion to learn about the impacts once again sustained by California agriculture, only this time not due to unprecedented wildfire, but rather unprecedented winter storms. As we know, California's agricultural sector is more than $50 billion in size. It employs hundreds of thousands across our state. As policymakers, we have a responsibility that extends far beyond our state's borders. Billions of people around the world rely on California agriculture for their vegetables, for nuts, for citrus, leafy greens, and certainly much more. And in the era of climate change, it is incumbent on us as state legislators here in California to keep California a world leader in agricultural production. Unfortunately, we know that this will not be the last round of natural some disasters to hit our state. I look forward to hearing more about funding needs for our critical human-made and natural infrastructure so that we can be ready to withstand the more intense storms of the future. I'm also excited to hear about what short and long-term solutions we may be able to look towards or that we should consider for our farmers, ranchers, our farm workers, and certainly all of the rural parts of our state as quickly as we possibly can. Again, thank you. Look forward to hearing from our panelists. And with that, I'd like to pass it to Chair Rodriguez for his opening remarks.

Good afternoon and thank everybody. I'm Assembly Member Rodriguez, chair of the Assembly Committee on Emergency Management. First, let me thank my dear friend and colleague, Speaker Designee Robert Rivas, for convening this oversight hearing and for his commitment to emergency preparedness in California. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit the displaced residents from the Pajaro River Valley. It was clear from our visit that farmworkers weren't receiving the assistance they needed to recover. Mr. Rivas and I have shared a commitment to help meet the needs of every individual and family that lost their homework or other necessities. For example, we introduced AB 513, which establishes the California Individual Assistance Act, and we are working closely with the administration on 125,000,000 contingency fund to help families and communities impacted by the flooding. We also have a keen interest in ensuring the overall agricultural sector of our economy, has everything they needed to quickly recover from the unprecedented series of atmospheric rivers, and are able to adapt to extreme changes in our climate. For all these reasons and many more, I'm looking forward to hearing from today's witnesses and how we can help California quickly recover. Thank you once again for joining us here today.

And thank you, Mr. Chair. I also like to pass it on to Vice Chair Mathis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For those of you that don't know me, I'm some of them are Devin Mathis from the Tulari Kings and part of Fresno area of the San Joaquin Valley. Been on this committee gosh, what are we, 9-10 years now? Anyway, I'm looking forward to this in hearing truly from everybody within our agriculture sector on what as a state, we need to do better, what we need to prioritize, especially on the recovery aspect. I know for many of us back home, the impacts of these storms are not yet over. There is flooding that is still going to take place, that's moving very slowly and is very impactful. As we look at some of these maps, we can see areas that may seem dry today, but in a month or two they might be completely underwater. And it's not just areas on a map, though. These are family homesteads, these are immigrant housing areas. These are farms and ranches, some that have been around for over 100 years. The impacts that these storms have had on our state are devastating. The impacts that they have had on the culture of this state being the top agricultural producing state, not just in the country, but in the entire world, these impacts are significant. As mentioned by Chair Rivas, we have 408 commodity crops that we grow in this state, some that you can't grow anywhere else in the world. It is imperative upon us in the Legislature to get this figured out, to prioritize the proper funding and the proper execution of that funding to ensure that recovery happens in a timely manner and that we also head off some of the potential flooding that could happen this summer as well. That we're able to make these communities whole and keep agricultural going and get it back on its feet too often. It said one in four jobs is related to AG, but when you start multiplying that out between the spouses and the 2.5 kids, it becomes impactful very quickly. If you look at, just, say, Tilleri County, you go from 40,000 jobs to multiplying it out, you got 120,000 people. That's a large city just gone and devastated. What does that do to us statewide? So as the panelists come up, keep in mind, let us know what we need to do, where we need to act. We do have budget committees coming up. We do have the Governor's May Revise. There's some good things that were said, but it's very important that we hear from you exactly what we need to do and how we need to do it. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Mathis. And at this time I'll open up to other members of the Committee for comments. Assemblywoman Soria.

Thank you, Chairman Rivas and Chairman Rodriguez for convening this Joint Hearing on what is a very critical issue and an issue that also impacted my district significantly. Within the first few months that I came into office, I saw especially a small community Planada completely evacuated and impacted. This is a big portion of the workforce in Merced County, many undocumented farm workers. So I'm excited today to hear that. We're going to hear from individuals not only to talk about the issues of its workforce, but the impacts that it has had in the AG community. I had an opportunity about a month and a half ago, or a month ago to do an aerial tour of Merced County with the sheriff there. And I saw the impact beyond the creek in terms of the breaches that happened in Bear Creek and the creeks throughout Merced County, which flooded a lot of the agricultural fields in that area that were essentially in the queue to be harvested later this year. So that means a lot of job losses. And so I am excited to hear from the AG community what are some of the things that we can do in the short term but also to plan for the future and mitigate some of the challenges that we saw with the winter storms this year. And be prepared also in the short term for some of the snowmelt that will have a significant impact on a number of places, especially the area that I represent and I know in the South Valley as well. So I want to thank folks for putting this together. I'm looking forward to hearing from the panelists both on, obviously the AG, but also I think it's important to note that the workforce also has become an issue. And I know that there's a lot of folks that are still hurting even though this happened a couple of months ago in my community that have lost jobs. And so I do want to thank both chairmen for the work that they've been doing to provide to ensure that there's immediate relief for folks for those that lost jobs, but also wanting to hear what else we can do to prepare. Thank you.

Any other members? Okay. With that, we will jump right into panel number one, which will provide a statewide overview of the winter storm impacts. And this first panel includes Ryan Buras, the Deputy Director for Recovery Operations, Office of Emergency Services, who I believe is here in person. So if you guys would like to please come up to this front table. We also have Undersecretary Christine Birdsong of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. We have Laura Hollender, Executive Advisor of the Flood Management and Dam Safety, Department of the Water Resources and then a dear friend and former colleague, Mr. Jim Houston, administrator of the California Farm Bureau Federation. Thank you all for joining us. And Mr. Buras, you'd like to begin, please?

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Rodriguez, Chair Reeves and members of the day to talk about the 2023 winter storms. My name is Ryan Buras. I'm the deputy Director of Recovery Operations for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Our mission of Cal OES is to protect lives and property, build capabilities, and support our communities to be a more resilient California. Cal OES principal responsibilities include in the coordination of the state's disaster response, emergency planning and preparedness, and disaster recovery and mitigation and homeland security activities. My testimony today will cover the overall impacts of the winter storms on our state. In speaking to both committees prior to this hearing, we understand there is significant interest and impacts on agriculture workers and undocumented survivors and various state programs being undertaken designed to support these survivors. Since Cal OES is not leading these efforts, I won't be providing an update on those particular programs. But we are happy to facilitate additional conversations with the state entities working diligently to provide impacted services that they require. Over the last six months, our state has been thrashed by a series of atmospheric rivers 31 to date. A total of 52 counties have proclaimed a state of emergency over the months from December through March. And the Governor Newsom has received a federal declaration for these events from President Biden. The impacts of these storms have been significant. At the height of the incident this past January, about 55,856 people were under evacuation orders. 26 shelters were open in 13 counties. Approximately 531,600 households were without power statewide. Overall, our county partners have reported more than 2100 homes impacted, including the 131 that were destroyed as of May. Counties reported more than $1.9 billion in damage to public infrastructure. Cal OES has worked diligently with state partners to share information and leverage resources to execute and coordinate a response to this long-running, dynamic and evolving disaster. Cal OES fire and rescue preposition resources in as many as 26 counties throughout the state to ensure timely deployment if the need arose. 203 rescues were executed by these prepositioned resources. In addition to our prepositioned resources, the Advanced Planning Unit within Cal OES made a significant impact in our planning and response efforts throughout the storms and into current snowmelt trends. Moreover, by embedding our Emergency Services Coordinators and local Emergency Operations Centers, Cal OES has the ability to receive real time information and needs, creating a direct line of communication between the state and the local levels. This type of community engagement promotes the spread of the latest specific understanding through spring snowmelt modeling and related flood response planning tools. Cal OES is committed to protecting those Californians with access and functional needs who are often most vulnerable to disasters. Understanding the risk to vulnerable populations these storms presented, cales immediately established the Priority Populations Task Force. The purpose of this task force was to coordinate all state resources in support of the most vulnerable Californians in response to the recent winter storm disaster. Members of this task force embedded themselves with all lines of effort, including other task forces, working groups and emergency support functions, to ensure resources were reaching those populations most in need. Undocumented residents and those with language barriers were a key focus by this task force during the response efforts, especially after specific areas of the state, such as the towns of Planata and also Pajaro, suffered significant flooding requiring mass evacuations. The callous of private sector and NGO coordination worked diligently with the CBOs in both regions to support targeted support to those survivors. These efforts include in the town of Planata, working with CBOs to coordinate donation, distribution, debris, cleanup sites, and support for those affected students bringing CBOs from out of state to provide resources to residents and such in cleanup kits. And information on mode remediation and coordinated with CBOs to go door to door with FEMA and state officials helping individuals navigate the FEMA application in the appeal process. In Pajaro, our office provided similar support as previously listed. We also worked with CBOs to establish a large resource center out of the Pajaro Middle School where residents could receive resources information, including legal and feeding support. We also coordinated with CBOs to accompany FEMA and state officials going door to door to provide multilingual and multicultural information. The Listos California program is also run out of COEs and was a very active to meet the needs of the survivors in these areas. Specifically Listos California worked closely with CBOs to provide wraparound services in Watsonville linking families to services handing out food, blankets and other items. Provide translation services at the fairgrounds in Santa Cruz. Provide sandbags services in Pajaro and surrounding areas and work with the Community Action Board of the Santa Cruz Area to provide a hotline in Native languages regarding storm alerts and resources for survivors of the February, March and winter storms. More than 25.5 million in federal assistance have been approved to date. That includes 9.5 million in grants to individuals and households for temporary housing assistance and 14.5 million in SBA loans for homeowners, renters and businesses. As we work to recover from these devastating storms, Cal OES will continue to be at the front, helping us to bring back our communities and especially when they need us the most. California is nationally recognized model for emergency management. New challenges have definitely taken have not taken away our resiliency or the state's ability to continue as an example for the nation. Thank you for your time and I'm available for any questions you may have.

If we could hold questions until the conclusion of all the speakers. And so next invite Undersecretary Ms. Birdsong.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Rodriguez, Chair Reevis and members of the Committees on Agriculture and Emergency Management. I want to thank you for holding this very timely hearing. As you know, as everyone in this room knows, we are just coming out of a period of very intense floods in the state of California. Just months before that, of course, we were working our way through a very intense drought in the State of California and where we sit today, we have our eyes on what's going on in Tulari, the big melt as everybody's calling it. And then because it's California, we are also keeping the eye out for wildfires. So I want to really express our deep appreciation for this opportunity to talk about agriculture's challenges through all of these multiple and very different disasters. I might add, although the economic losses to agriculture are already significant and are likely to grow, we are more sobered, of course, by the human impacts of these disasters. It's not just people losing their homes, it's people losing their jobs and it's the loss of life. So we are again most grateful to our first responders who are out there working tirelessly to protect property and our people, keeping them safe and ensuring that we are kept healthy. What we do at CDFA is nowhere near as heroic as our first responders do, but it's vital all the same. So I'm going to talk about what CDFA does relevant to emergency services and the actions that CDFA has taken in response to these recent flood events. We are the lead agency for the management and oversight of California emergency support function food and agriculture at the state level. This function addresses emergencies involving food contamination, plant and animal agriculture and animals and livestock. That's including household pets who are in need during natural disasters. Pet and livestock resource coordination is addressed by the California Animal Emergency Response System. We call that CARES. Which is in CDFA's Animal Health Branch. During our recent flood events, CDFA activated the Department Operations Center and had a continuous presence at the state operations center to help with situational awareness around agriculture. We maintained communication channels with AG, trade and business organizations around the clock so that we had the most current information which we could then feed into the state operations center. We also shared information with the county emergency services so they could better respond to the needs of farmers and ranchers with best practices information and to help them tailor their response to the unique challenges for agriculture in an emergency. For example, we provided additional staff to the ounty Emergency Operations Center to help manage AG and animal related issues like moving dairy cattle. With continued food safety oversight, cares and field staff identified volunteer livestock haulers. Volunteer livestock haulers to move animals quickly as the flood waters were advancing. Really, I want to say that it's our producer community neighbors helping neighbors who were the heroes during these emergencies. Dr. Stuart Hall, who is a Dairy Manager at Curtimade Dairy, was personally involved with three different dairy evacuations, including his own. Almost all cow evacuations were done by private haulers who risked their trucks and their trailers driving through floodwaters. They worked impossible hours in dangerous conditions to rescue cows as quickly as possible. We are talking moving 1000 to 4000 heads of cattle, 15 at a time. This was a truly herculean undertaking. Dairy service trucks were going out to empty dairies on their own initiative to fix milking equipment and prepare barns for cattle. And our large equipment operators like Tom Barcelos, who's a Tipton who has a Tipton dairy, which was safe during the storms, went out on his own. He mobilized all of his large equipment excavators backhoes to pull debris from the Tule River, fix levees, keep routes open to get cattle out. He didn't have to help, but he went above and beyond without any expectation of compensation, as did many others throughout the Central Valley and the Central Coast. In addition to saving animal lives, food safety is a top priority in any disaster affecting agriculture. Building on our foundational role and emergency function, CDFA's food safety teams have been diligent and proactive in providing outreach, education, audits and inspections in light of this year's floods. Under normal circumstances, inspections are conducted on farm once per growing season. But because of the floods and possible contamination of fields as a result of so much water, our Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement staff shifted their attention and monitoring efforts towards regions impacted by the floods to maintain food safety. During inspections, staff focused on whether any produce was exposed to floodwater and how it was handled. As well as looking at infrastructure like infield processing equipment, wells and irrigation lines. Staff also collected information about planting delays, replanting and harvesting. It's also important to note the ongoing efforts we are undertaking for food safety research. The Center for Produce Safety really took advantage of the information and experience that a disaster of this scale can't provide. They funded a rapid response project this spring, taking advantage of what is hopefully a rather rare opportunity to study flooding and pathogens. The full report will be provided at the CPS symposium later next month if you're interested. Turning to our fairgrounds, I think everyone in this room knows, but I'm going to say it anyways, that our fairgrounds are more than a place to admire award winning livestock. Our fairgrounds play a very important role in the state's disaster response, including these recent floods. CDFA communicated with our fairground management across the state during the flood events to make sure that they were ready and available and open for business for any emergency needs. We had twelve different fairgrounds across the state that were activated to serve as evacuee and animal shelters, OES distribution centers and locations for FEMA evacuation resource trailers. Fairgrounds have always played an important role in the state's disaster efforts, but with increasing climate extremes, their use for these purposes are becoming more frequent for longer durations and serving more people and animals throughout the state. Another important role that CDFA serves during disasters is outreach and engagement for our stakeholders. Back in February, CDFA Western Growers, UC Davis and others jointly hosted an educational webinar for industry on best practices during flood offense for crop protection. Also in February, CDFA personnel shared food safety information at a booth at our World AG Expo and also during a food safety seminar along with USDA, FDA, our Leafy Green staff and Western Growers. As disaster impacts become more apparent or became more apparent, CDFA and USDA jointly held a webinar for farmers and ranchers and AG trade associations to provide information on USDA disaster assistance programs, eligibility, type of losses that are covered, how to sign up for them, et cetera. And just a few weeks ago, CDFA participated in a disaster assistance workshop that was held by the Kings County Farm Bureau and Lamore. In terms of outreach, again, this is really an important thing that we do at CDFA is keeping in touch with all of our stakeholders. We use a variety of communication channels to share that critical information with as many of our stakeholders as possible. And I think as you mentioned, we've got over 400 specialty crops, so that is a lot of people that we try to stay close with. We collaborated with agencies and organizations to produce flood advisories and provide information to livestock producers. We also use social media platforms to amplify and spread messaging. For example, we posted information on CDFA's Animal Health Branch social media platform to educate Californians on how to take care of household pets and livestock impacted by floods. In an effort to elevate the important guidance and fact sheets and flood resources and handouts. All alerts were posted on our CDFA Cares website during the flood response as well. Another important part of emergency response is definitely the recovery phase. CDFA is one of the primary state agencies in the recovery support function economic recovery. The key objective of this function is to help communities recover and rebuild post disaster. We are coordinating with our county Agricultural Commissioners, Farm Bureaus and UC Cooperative Extension offices to obtain loss figures that are then provided to Cal OES Individual Assistance Program. This information is really important because it is also shared. It's also used to seek a USDA Agricultural disaster designation, which then opens up low interest loans for impacted commodity growers. In particular, we are participating in Cal OES's advanced planning to identify impacts and risks associated with Tulare Basin flooding. We have provided an impact analysis related to crops and animal agriculture, feed issues, transportation and delivery systems within the area, fertilizer firms, fuel and fairgrounds. And we are also coleading with Cal OES, the AG and Economic Task Force to identify and provide economic resources for AG businesses and farm workers who are not eligible for traditional state and federal disaster assistance programs. In closing, we'd just like to say that our close coordination with our many partners at the state and local levels have really helped us at CDFA to maintain a strong regionalized response to the flood events of this past year. These partnerships will continue to be important as we prepare for flooding in coming months. And because like I said, we're in California, those wildfires that I'm sure we will be dealing with as well. We are at CDFA prepared to help our farmers, our ranchers, our dairies, our nurseries and all the people in California through any and all challenges that the future holds. That concludes my remarks. I'm happy to take questions.

We're going to hold questions again until we wrap up. And next, I'd like to invite Laura Hollender, executive advisor of flood management and Dam safety with the Department of Water Resources.

Thank you. Good afternoon again. Thank you. I would like to echo of the thanks for this hearing today. My name is Laura Hollender. I'm an Executive Policy Advisor for the Department of Water Resources. I did have a few slides if they could be brought up.

Thank you for being here this afternoon. And we'll turn to our last member of the panel, Mr. Jim Houston, California Farm Bureau.

Thank you. Mr. Rivas and Assembly Members appreciate the time. This is the non-state portion of the panel. So just wanted to clear sometimes the bureau in our name gets people confused. But we're non-state. We're actually, as many of you know, a nonprofit organization representing all of agriculture here in California. We have over 28,000 members about I think that's about 23,000 farms as members. And that's about a third of all the farms here in the state. I think it's important to remember that number. Well, that's going to change when the new census of agriculture comes out, hopefully next year. But we roughly have around 66,000 or so farms in this state. That's a lot of farms, actually, right? And those farms run the gamut, right? And so often folks talk about big AG or big farms. And don't get me wrong, there are big farms. I don't actually believe in big AG, but there are big farms out there. But there's a tremendous amount of small farms. And the overwhelming majority of farms out there are small and family owned, and Farm Bureau in particular, skews small. So if you look at the state as a whole, about 80% of those farms are classified as small farms, and about 82% of our membership are small farms. And that gives us a lot of perspective on how different things impact different people. And I think to Mr. Rivas's point early on, this is personal to our people, and I know it's personal to you. I reflect on 22 years ago, we were sitting in a conference room in Salinas with the farmers of the Salinas River Channel Coalition, and they were showing us pictures of flooding that had happened in like 96, I think, or something, and the farmland that had gone away. And I mean, God bless them, they wanted to put car bodies on the side of the river. And that's probably not going to happen in 2002, California. But the idea of trying to find ways to shore up our rivers and our levees in a state that it makes it really hard to do. We just have to admit it. We know if we're being intellectually honest, it's really hard to build in the state. That's why the Governor took bold action. And I know you all are all committed to trying to find action that we can take. And so it's just very much appreciated. And so, for what it's worth, I was hoping to share a couple of stories of individuals that suffered. I tried to do one in my own words, and I was like, nah, there's a professional who wrote it. So if you wouldn't mind me just reading real quick, you may have already heard it. It's from the Guardian that did an article, and my eyes are not what they used to be. So it says the water came in fast. The water came in a crash. Oh, jeez, this is hard to read up here. Okay, here we go. The water came in a crash, tearing through planted rows of cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower before crashing into the tractors and farm equipment. Within hours, much of Maria Inez Catalan's 41 acre, 17 hectare organic farm in Hollister, California, had disappeared under several feet of water. She had escaped just in time as the floodwaters gurgled into her trailer home. Now, three months after a series of storm, Catalan and her family are still counting their losses. Their dog ... didn't make it, nor did the bees that Catalan had been lending for two years. The farm's entire spring harvest, including the peas, beans, and beets that she sells to James Beard Award restaurants in San Francisco and sends to food pantries across central California, was destroyed as well. Everything went to waste, everything was spoiled, she said. And that's in Hollister, California. I spoke this morning with a dairy farmer, Joey Arosa. Karen knows really well in Pixley, right? You probably know Joey. And I asked him, I said, we're going to come to this hearing and they're going to hear all sorts of figures. You're going to hear $290,000,000 losses in Kings County. You're going to hear Norm Groot's going to come up here, god bless him, he's going to tell you about the losses in Monterey County. We've got statewide losses, but what's it like for a person on the ground when this happens? I mean, to us, it's so foreign. I tell this story. I went out and the garbage cans were floating outside my street because the wastewater, the sewer line had backed up or whatever that started to pack up. And, I mean, okay, it was a foot of water. And I went and I moved the garbage cans, and I felt like a hero. These people, they have real problems. I was actually literally talking to Joey and I was like, what do you do? You know, Tom's got equipment. Do you like, hey, let's call Tom Barcelos and get his earth, mover over here. And he said, you operate on instinct. He said, the first thing is deciding when to go. Some stuff, if you're on the other side of the levee and it crashes through, you just got to get out. But a lot for a lot of folks and folks in Tilleria right now, there's two and a half million acre-feet of snow sitting above Pine Flat Reservoir. Pine Flat can hold a million acre feet, right? And in 30 days, it's going to fill up and start spilling over. We already know, everybody knows, right? Tulare lakes the size of Lake Tahoe. Not as deep, thankfully, but as wide. And so folks are trying to figure out when to move and when the flood events happening, when to move, because as Maria points out, and as Joey's got cows, and we talked about and God bless them when I was a CDFA, we work on that. And fairgrounds are essential because people love their animals. Obviously, they're very attached to them and so they don't want to move them. Moving a cow is really hard. They like where they're at. They need to be milked. They have a special diet that's fed for them. They're used to the equipment, they're used to the grounds. Moving is traumatic. They're someplace different. They're not being fed the right stuff. And so even when they come back, oftentimes the cow is not the same. And so moving your cows is a big deal. Moving your animals is a big deal. So the first decision is when to move. And if you have to yeah, you're relying on he said you just rely on instinct. He says this is one of the things that I guess maybe we should think about it. Maybe you do. But it's sort of new to me. It's like, well, whatever a levee breaks, there's another side of the levee, right? And it's the people on the other side that are saying, oh, crud, I got to go help my neighbors. He said, I can draw you. Go point to every levee break and draw you a mile radius. And I can guarantee you everybody in that mile radius was trying to help. And I think that's really meaningful. A, I wish they wouldn't have to go through it, but if they are going through it, we should find ways to help them and also to try and make them whole in addition to preventing these things from happening in the future. And so when we look at sort of the when we look at sort of the broad range of impacts we did, I mean, there's going to be significant impacts to AG production in California after three years of significant impacts to drought.

We were following land because of drought. And then the deluge came. And so, obviously, efforts to increase infrastructure, right, repair levees. The governor took bold action on his executive order to encourage groundwater recharge, which is something that even when we were going through sigma discussions at CDFA, we were working on trying to get groundwater as a beneficial use so folks could sink it in the ground. It took a flood to do it, but God bless them that it happened. There's bills out there, SB 264 by Senator Niello, which makes disaster loss carryover. It extends the sunset on disaster loss carryover. So as you're trying to compensate because at the end of the day, there is no good mechanism for people to recover their losses, right? And so it's a bit of bits and pieces. I would say also, since I was on the subject of bills, soria had mentioned employees that are impacted by this because absolutely. So not only does each piece of fruit that comes off a field represents a job there, but somebody's got to ship it right to a processing plant or package it, and somebody's got to handle it there. And then somebody's got to handle it in the value added chain, and somebody's got to handle it at the grocery store. And so there's a tremendous amount of jobs that are lost and oftentimes forgotten when these things happen. And unfortunately, undocumented individuals are not eligible for unemployment insurance. And so I know Senator Durazo has a bill to try and set up a fund to make those folks whole. And that's something that we're interested in and we have supported in the past because those folks, Maria Catalan, it's bad for everybody, but if you've got a large enough farm, you probably have insurance, but if you have a 41-acre organic farm, you probably don't. And when this thing happens, it's devastating. It's life crushing. And so you have to have a mechanism to not just sort of eke it out, if that makes sense. We need to be willing to give farmers direct relief, not having to go through intermediaries. But like did you suffer losses? Yes. Are you a farmer? Yes. Here you go. We have to be responsible about it, don't get me wrong, but oftentimes I've talked to you all about this before. It's like this natural. I'm working on this theory of government, and it's like every step we take I know it's unintentional, but it's like every step we take, if we don't think about it, the natural probable course of events is probably to make large entities bigger and small ones lose out. I mean, it just seems like that's the challenge that we all face. I met with Secretary Yana Garcia and I, you know, told her she's the hardest job in government, you know, because this is what you've got to do. You got to try and figure out how to regulate folks while keeping balance and equity. It's really, really impossible to do, but we're going to all try, and we have to. So anyway, so as I reported before, you're going to hear losses. There's 290,000,000 in Kings County with a variety of crops. There's close to a billion dollars in Monterey County. But we need is action. We need willingness to put in practical solutions to also, for what it's worth, I was thinking about the emergency thing, and then I'll wrap up is I understand having emergencies for you declare an emergency and you can waive certain rules.

It's an exigent situation. I get it. I don't understand why you have to declare an emergency to provide relief money. Right? I mean, we should just have the ability to say, here's a group of people that have suffered. We should make them whole and maybe emergency declaration helps speed that up. But I don't think we should look at that exclusively as the remedy, I guess, if that makes sense. In no way. I mean, I'm very, very obviously appreciative of the Governor's efforts. What I mean I'm trying to say is I don't think it prevents the Legislature from doing something on its own to try and create programming to assist these people. So I probably talked longer than I should, so I apologize. But I do think it's really important for you to hear what it's like on the ground and how important it is that we make decisions now so that 20 years from now folks are talking about the work that we did to prevent this from happening. So thank you very much, appreciate it.

And thank you, Mr. Houston. I really appreciate and before I open it up, I really appreciate how you opened about what happens on the ground and appreciate you sharing the story from my hometown of Maria. I actually spent time with her and so I went to the farm and it was a disaster. Farm equipment that had been destroyed, scattered all over the property. She shared with me, it was clear her AG operation, which was her livelihood. She has a fascinating story. An immigrant farm worker that turned farmer, an organic farm, organic operation and her livelihood was destroyed, completely gone. Her lived in a dilapidated trailer. It was destroyed and unlivable. And she'd shared with me in the panic and the rush of the middle of the night, all the flooding that occurred. She was evacuated to shelter and realized she didn't even have shoes on. Nothing.

It was devastating. Similar stories when I spent time with Assemblywoman Soria we were in LaNada and that community was upset, upset at the lack of support. We met with residents that were suffering from respiratory infections because of the contamination in their homes and the lack of supports they've received. And it's tragic. We expect more from a state like ours here in California boasting the fourth largest economy in the world. And so certainly we have work to do. We have certainly work to do. And that's why I appreciate Chair Rodriguez and the time we spent together in Pajaro. And we as well realized and saw the devastation there and just the vulnerability of many residents and agricultural workers and certainly the impacts that have been experienced by our local AG industry there, namely the empowered strawberries. Just the economic loss is staggering. But also the community impacts, the widespread impacts to our region and all agriculture regions for that matter. But with that, I'd like to open it up to the panel or to my colleagues. Should you have any questions, comments for members of the panel? Assmblywoman Soria.

I have a couple of questions. Obviously, we've seen the devastation that has occurred. I'm just wondering what are some of the lessons learned and what are some of the policy changes that you guys are looking at proposing that we can work together on to make sure that we mitigate this. We know right that now we're going to have more commonly these winter storms because of climate change. And so if we recognize that, I think that we have to have some common sense solutions to a lot of the issues. I have a bill, AB 830, which is a very small component for Merced County to work with some of the water managers to take some of those floodwaters and recharge the groundwater, common sense approaches that I think we need to think more. I'm wondering what are some of the things one of the big issues that happened in Merced County and what resulted in flood was breaches in the creek because of the failure of our state to give permits to clean creeks under this assumption that we're going to disturb the environment. And guess what? The flooding essentially called for now? People to come all hands on deck and clean up all the debris without thinking about the environment at the time. So it's counterproductive. And so I think that we have to have these tough conversations and figure out what we're going to do quicker, rather sooner rather than later to ensure that the Planadas and the Pajaros we could have prevented some of this stuff. And that's what's really upsetting to me because now I have people that are challenged with they can't fix their houses because the flooding happened, folks that are renters, that have been displaced and it's like, what are we going to do? Where is the plan from the state? And I have a small little piece of legislation that helps address maybe a little bit of what Merced County experienced, but I think we have to have a greater plan to mitigate some of these issues that we've experienced. The other frustrating point, and I'll let you answer that if you guys have any comments to that. But the other thing that I was frustrated is how long it took us to be able to use empty farm worker housing that was right next to the community so that people could move into a safe place during the flood. And the fact that we had to navigate hoop after hoop after hoop when there was 40 open homes was really frustrating for these folks that were farm workers in that same community. But because they weren't seasonal, they didn't qualify and we couldn't move them. And so it's like how do we make it easier so that when we do have these types of emergencies and I'm grateful that we were finally able to work with the agencies to get this ready. But like for the Office of Emergency Services, have we thought about how we maybe do better coordination? Yes, we opened up the fairgrounds, but did we think about what are the other alternatives? Like that housing should have been up and ready to run immediately for these families to move in. And so I'm still a little bit frustrated because I'm hearing still every single day Esmeralda, we need more help. We need to make sure that we're planning for the infrastructure, building up some of the levees. Another community fireball in my area has a $60 million tag on expense on building their infrastructure to lift up the levee because they're concerned that their 8000 resident community, which is predominantly farm worker, if the San Joaquin River overflows, they're going to be completely underwater. So it's going to cost us more after they're flooded to clean up the mess than I think, doing the prevention. So I'm thinking, what is the plan? Do we have a plan to address? And have we've learned some lessons from this flooding that we're going to see in the budget or that we can maybe point to the budget and say, hey, these are some of the things that we're fixing? I'm curious to hear directly from you guys.

I think this mostly revolves me. Christy, I'll let you speak if you choose. Or DWR, that was a lot there. I wouldn't say necessarily it's lessons learned, but I do think there are some things that we put in place here that we need to continue and even grow a little bigger just with the resources that we currently have. One was the advanced planning unit. I remember it was the first week of January, right, when everything was breaking. We put the advanced planning unit in. They actually brought myself from recovery to lead that event. And it was pretty remarkable to see DWR and CDFA and all the entities around the table, not only planning for what we thinking was going to happen, but pre positioning on the worst case scenario. The reason we were able to rescue over 200 people, the reason we were able to prevent some things and put sandbags in the Bahara River. Yes, the levee broke, but it could have broke in January, February without the work that we were doing around that area. Right. So those are things that we put in place, and those are things that we just need to continue to happen because I told a colleague of mine, climate change is here and we don't know what next year is going to be. We don't know when it's going to stow. It fire season. Used to be a season, now it's not. They had a big fire just yesterday in Riverside. Right. So we need to continue to do those things. Under OES, we do have the mitigation program for the state that we work closely with FEMA on. One thing we are doing. We're working with the communities on their local hazard mitigation plan. It's so critical that we work with those communities, provide them technical assistance to help them prepare for tomorrow. And I go to community after community, speak to CIO after CIO. We can't plan for tomorrow based off what we know now. We need to plan for what potentially could happen. We need to really take those blinders off and say, if every levee or every dam breaks, what are we going to do? Because that's where we are today. That's the way we need to be thinking. That's the way we need to be mitigating to ensure infrastructure is done. And we need to be assisting them, which we are on their localized mitigation plans. We have a statehouse mitigation plan that's up for renewal right now that we're working on to include all of those measures that are in place. And also, I think one good thing from this flood is FEMA does have a flood mitigation. Grant FMA Flood Mitigation Assistance it's difficult in the past to get locals to ask for that grant because we've been in a drought for a decade. Like, what is a flood right outside of ORVO Dam? It's been a long time. Well, now I'm hoping we can work with the local communities to put in more grants to mitigate these types of things to improve the infrastructure. And I will say just on the migrant housing, even though that's not under my purview, that's on the BCH and them, I will say once it was brought up, I'm glad that it was a good end into the story. And in the future, we'll make sure, do everything we can in our power to identify those sooner and to house people quicker.

Yeah. Another question that

I was just going to add. I think the other thing you need to look at is streambed alteration agreements. And it's very, very like, I mean, I'm just be honest, like Fish and Game, it's impossible to have streambed alteration agreement. So Fish and Game needs to loosen up and be reasonable about stream bed alteration agreements, I'll believe it or not. Thank you.

Now, I think you bring a great point and that's why I'm doing AB 830 and I hope that you guys really take a serious look at it. It started as a pilot project, but I believe that it has demonstrated that it works. And I believe that in the future it could prevent and mitigate some of the flooding that could have and help meet our sustainable groundwater management goals that we have put in place. So it's a win win. So we do have to start really thinking outside the box and being just practical in how we make decisions. Because again, the environment was completely disrupted. Five years for a permit under Wildlife or, I don't know, Fish and Game. Yeah, that to me is really terrible. And I wasn't here five years ago. I'm grateful that I'm here because I'm going to be closely looking at what is happening and the delays, because I don't want this to happen on my watch again. So with that, I just want to make one last plug for one other community because the city manager from the City of Firebaugh. Bengaegos has been alerted since last year and people thought he was crazy that there was going to be a megaflood. The megaflood didn't happen in Fireball yet, but it happened upstream in the northern part of my district. He's been saying it's going to take $60 million to lift the levee to mitigate flooding for 8000 farm workers that live in that community, that sustain the agriculture economy of the west side of my district. Is anyone looking at that? Who's evaluating the flood infrastructure? I know that there's dollars in this budget, but who's in charge and who's looking at that? I'm putting it out there. So you guys know he's been talking about it. It's been covered on NPR, it's been covered in the New York Times. He's been talking about it since last year and I don't think anyone was paying attention.

I'll just respond briefly. Laura Hollender again, we do have in the Central Valley the Central Valley flood protection plan. And a lot of those levies are state plan of flood control levees, I think in the ones around Fireball are. And so we're constantly evaluating what needs to be done and trying to get funding for those. And Fireball is definitely on our radar. And during this emergency we're monitoring constantly the conditions of the levees there and do have prepositioned materials if anything were to occur. And we have been placing rock in areas in the San Joaquin where we have seen some trouble spots start to emerge to shore up those levees.

Great. Thank you. Just last point, just want to say thank you. I know that I asked obviously the questions because I'm a little frustrated, but I know that the level of response was also kind of unprecedented in terms of the Governor showing up quickly down in Merced County and making some quick calls in the executive orders and so very appreciative of that because that did speed up stuff. But I think, again, we really have to ensure that we're planning a little bit better for the unforeseen, I think.

Great and thank you. Any other questions or comments? Vice-Chair Mathis

First, I got to say thank you, especially with OES the week. Although this hit, I remember texting Speaker Rendon, I was like, hey bro, my team will be sending you an official letter, but I'm staying home to move dirt. And I spent the whole week back home and it's been a lot. But I know having the OES teams, having those partnerships and the fires were kind of a blessing in disguise in a way because you already had coordination amongst all the elements. So I didn't see any communication hiccups my tenure in the military. Communication is kind of one of those big pet peeves we all have. And so to see everything working hand in hand in the ball moving and people into place and things happening was a good thing to see on the OES side to what assimilated. Soria was saying, though, when we were looking at the housing aspects of where to put people, we had hundreds of people evacuated out of rivers, homeless camps, others out of their homes. And you had Red Cross was able to come in and was able to do some of these things. But to get our fairground stood up was a problem. It wasn't as fast as you thought it would be by that and you had resources and then the camp was there and we were able to hold a center there, but then it would go away. And some of these funding mechanisms kind of moved around a little bit with these things. Yeah, tons of notes on this. When you look at all the different cities, it goes back. Some of these city managers have been like, hey, this is going to happen. We see this happening. To Mr. Houston's point, you mentioned the amount of water behind Pine Flat Dam in my area to Larry Lake or to give it its rights to the Tule River Yokut people, Tule Lake. It's not just Pine Flat. It's Pine Flat. It's Lake Kaia. It's lake success. There are three dams with that amount of water ready to move. Hopefully, it doesn't all melt. Hopefully, we get a little bit of snowpack this year. But that's impactful, there's still a lot of fear out there. We had a lot of people, as you all mentioned, Joey Aroso and Tom Becerra, there's several, a lot of people going with their gut, having to act immediately to get things done. My area, I mean, we had the, the Tule River Tribe got washed out, Springville got washed out. That's all the way up in the hedgewaters. Allen's Worth, an ALPA I remember making phone calls to talks mostly calling the Secretary of Transportation, send him a video and was like, bro, you got high speed rail dirt right behind me and I need to move that. We need an egress route. And then 3 hours later getting a phone call, hey, high-speed rail is talking to us. We're moving dirt, talking to Secretary Crowfoot and making sure these things were moving. The response for what we were hit with and what we were prepared for, I say, was good. It can always be a lot better. To the point about plans. Being a military guy, you can have the best plan in the world and as soon as something goes to execute, Murphy Law is going to happen every single time. So I think it's extremely important that and I know Chairman Rodriguez, we talked about this before in the past. There has to be flexibility in what we do. And that's really hard to do in policy sometimes, because the bean counters forget how the beans are grown and they like things to be very finite. And that's not how real life works. Mentioned already about what can we do to kind of cut that environmental green tape there's that talk. How do we get up there and clean up the rivers? The mention of Fish and Game.

Your points about the environmental devastation are spot on, because if you can't get a permit to clean it up, you want to talk about habitat. The habitat is destroyed in some areas because of wastewater management, plants being washed out, septic systems being washed out out. It's utterly destroyed in a biohazard in some areas. That's not helping endangered species. It's completely ruining everything. So we have to do better to figure out I know some areas, they do countywide EIRs and bank everything in for Riverlands Trust and for cleanup and these things, but we need to figure out how to do that on a statewide level. Clearly I'm only a Republican, so maybe one of my other colleagues will write the bill and I'll happily joint author. It got to be real during these times, but we had Corcoran still going on. Porterville, Springville Woodlake, huge immigrant community out there. Hanford, Lamore are on that verge. They're on the map. If you pull up the Kings County map, it shows the areas that are going to flood and families are having to prepare themselves. And it's really hard to get it in somebody's head, hey, you're not underwater today. It's not going to be next week or the week after, but in about a month during 4 July, you need to be ready. It's really hard for them to swallow that, to understand that. And I know the OES teams are doing that. I know there's town halls happening. I know the farm bureau is working. I know everybody's trying to do their best. But what we need to know again is where are those things that we can tighten up? What do you need in OES to make it work a little bit faster? What does that look like mechanically for us to take back? We're working on these policies these next couple of months from Food and AG. What do we need to help the fairgrounds stand up? I know Secretary Ross, I want to say Karen, she's been working hard on these issues for a long time, saying back from the wildfire days of hey, we need more resources. These County Fairs need to have they need to have WiFi, they need to have power, they need to have showers, they need to have the abilities to house people because this is the area we stand up during these emergencies, and yet we're still not there. And we were talking about these things my freshman year, ten years ago, and we are still not there. It's still not a budget priority. So what do you all see? Give us the mechanics because we can talk pie in the sky. We can say, oh, this would be great, but I mean, pinpoint mechanically where exactly needs to be done, where the funding needs to go, and I'm happy to joint author anything to do that?

Well, I'll jump in. Of course, CDFA only has a very small part of this, but we do have community Resilience Center grants. We will be announcing the winners of those grants imminently. It's two parts. We've got grants going to Fairgrounds kind of for the big construction projects and then grants to go to community organizations that are kind of doing their thing to build up community resiliency across the state. So that is one thing that we are doing to make the Fairgrounds more readily available. With all of the updated electrification, broadband kitchens, bathrooms for showers, plugins for RVs, all those kind of updates do cost quite a bit of money. But we've got these Community Resilience Center Grants that are going out the door and should at least make some progress in that area. Thank you for your question. I did clock what you said about the Fairgrounds not being responsive enough and I would love to connect with you or your staff to follow up and find out exactly what the problem.

It was more of the when is it going to kick over and when is like Red Cross going to get in place in those things? Because there was a lot of this, are they going here, are they going there? And it was within the first kind of like 48 hours. And I think just on that note, if the fairgrounds had the shower, the things that we're going to get from these grants, I know two of my main counties applied for those and knock on wood, hopefully we get there. The other part, too, real quick on grants is in really anything on the resources, on declaring the emergencies? And it was mentioned, do we do an emergency declaration? And then you find out you have to also do a disaster declaration to get funding going. But the technical assistance from the state down to our locals I think is extremely impactful. And I think sometimes our City Managers and our County Managers and their staff are kind of like, well, I think I got this figured out. But you really need teams to kind of go in there and kind of do the Abro, we're here, we got you, what do you need? Versus waiting for them to ask for help. We know they do come in and help them because they don't know what they don't know.

So I don't have a magic wand. Maybe stop disasters would help, which we know we won't happen here in the state or globally. I'm not going to talk about budget proposals that we have going through the budget committee right now, but I will say there are some things that were approved previously that can help prepare. California was an amazing program. It was approved for $100 million. We got $15 million for jumpstart that was allowed to give and we're still working through this. And we have already awarded several million to counties to hire a chief resiliency officer and their team to apply for grants in these communities that are most in need to compete with the larger counties. It's imperative that we work through that and work with these communities. So that was extremely good program. That was budgeted. Also, $85 million of the $100 million was allowed for communities to come up with grants through FEMA that we could pay the cost share 25%. I don't care whose wallet it is, is a lot when you're mitigating, whether it's $500,000 project or a $50 million project. It's a lot of money in these underserved communities. This was a program that allows us to fund those things, and we spent a large portion of that, but we still have some money left over the next year to get that out. Huge success. And Vice Chair, to your point, the majority of my team does not stay in Sacramento. The majority of my team are in the field. We're providing technical assistance on the front end through our emergency support coordinators and through the IST that was approved last year through the budget and also through recovery. This is a complex program, FEMA approved or not. It takes years to understand public assistance.

That's why I said thank you at the gate, because I saw your guys boots on ground within the first 24 hours.

It's imperative to be in their EOC, to feel their pain, to see what they need, to just give them some comfort, ask the right questions, right? So often you ask the wrong question and you waste a week or two or you don't get what you need, which is worse. And the EM and the Disaster Declaration, that's just as complex. Getting the EM was tremendous in the front end to provide the federal resources we needed in this state to get where they needed to be, whether it was sheltering federal assets, DOD imperative. But in the back end of that, it's hard to communicate that to our community. That, hey, that doesn't impact you individually. It doesn't impact you a community individually, other than protecting lives and property. But it's not money. It's not a resource. And that does take time. And as you know, particularly with the second storm, it's a balance. It's a balance of when we go in. It's a balance when we ask the governor, it's time to go to the president. We would love to go in the first flood, but if you do that in this state according to the current way FEMA's criteria is, we would be denied. And that's another thing that's frustrating for many of the locals. But the reality is we were able to work through that. And it's not a perfect answer. None of this is going to make someone whole, but it's a piece of that puzzle. And I'm just glad the federal partners were there along the way and still are today.

And thank you for that response. And we do have to move on. I know Chair Rodriguez has a question.

Just had a question real quick. Thanks for everybody being here and participating and give us a lot of useful information. Obviously I see California as a disaster prone state right now we're dealing with the floods and the storms, fire season just around the corner if not already here, right? And once again we have that ever earthquake that's going to happen, that major earthquake, whether it's up here or down south, it's going to happen. So seeing that we're in the forefront of disasters, we're trying to figure out how to help our families, individuals. Ryan, I know you have some experience regarding public assistance should now more than ever California start having its own program in place to provide direct assistance to these families or these individuals that have been impacted by this disaster that we're having.

So I can't comment on a bill that's going through proposed but I will say we do have CDA authority now through public assistance, right? So we are under the state to provide that assistance and even without FEMA assistance we have been finding ways to assist them through our CDA authority. For instance non-congregate shelter and we worry about how people in travel trailers and Siskiyou for the fires as you know in Plumas. We are still in Humboldt today, there's a hearing today on that as well. So can't comment on that bill proposed but I will say we are doing everything we can under our current legal authority to help those most indeed.

Well thank you, I appreciate it.

Thank you for that. I want to thank all of our panelists, appreciate you all making the time and thank you so much for all the information. And next we'll move on to our second panel which will explore the impacts, difficulties and the solutions from these winter storms. I'd like to invite our first panelists to speak who is Mr. Peter Navarro from Navarro Farms and then he will be followed by Phil Hansen from Hansen Ranches, both of which are here in person. And then also Sarah Dozer from the Winter Sister Farm. She'll be joining us via Webex. And then finally Luz Rodriguez with Royal Oaks Farms who will also be joining us via Webex. Thank you. So Mr. Navarro, when you are ready it's all yours.

Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, Speaker-Elect Rivas and members of the Assembly Committee on Agriculture. My name is Peter Navarro and I am the owner of Navarro Farms in Watsonville, California. Our farming operation consists of Strawberry Acres and along with my brother John, we also farm raspberries and blackberries in Watsonville, California. I'm a second-generation strawberry farmer with our father starting to grow strawberries in the early 60s in the Pajaro Valley. Our father was our role model, farming from sun up to sunset in order to give us a better life. My brother and I have carried on the tradition because this is what we love to do. Despite the challenging times that we've been dealing with the winter storms, flooding and storm damage have been very devastating to many farmers statewide. Specialty crops, our workers, our operations, and our community. This has been a stark reminder of how vulnerable farming operations and communities can be under these circumstances. California Strawberry Commission has put together a short video that we would like to share with you that documents the damage and the impacts mentioned. Then after the video, if I may, I will discuss the actual affected acres and the losses incurred. So if we could see the video, please.

Sure.

Where the levee broke about a quarter mile down the road. It came through, flooded this field up here on top, and it was just a big lake. I live in this area for like 28 years, and I see this river, full water, and this field full of water. That's my first experience, like, I ever see. So it's pretty scary. And it's no affected, only plants right now. Farm workers too. A lot of families. Depends for this income. That's the only income. And with this situation, it's harder.

There's a lot of people that are dependent on strawberries. It's not just the farmer, it's the whole community. Our workforce, they live in our community. The impact will be felt throughout. It's not just the farm worker. It's also the people working at the coolers. It's people working at the grocery store. It's going to impact everybody. I'm the owner used market from 2012. We came and trying to clean as much as we can, but it's more than I expected. I don't expect that fine is damaged. It's going to be something that they're going to be puggy forever. For me, it's more than only my business. I also live in the same neighborhood, so I have for 13-14 days homeless with no work, no income. I'm sorry, friends. I'm here for many years in the community.

I feel sad, and worried, and the situation is really bad we are in need of everything for cleanliness, food in hygiene for each family that is here is Pajaro. A lot of them walked out with no shoes and no socks, and they were in pajamas. Because this happened in the middle of the night. I wanted to make sure they were receiving the essentials they needed. And we opened the doors, and from that day forward, we have been serving hundreds each day. These people are human, and how do we not take care of them any way we can? We have to. You just feel for these children living in shelters of 400. These people do need help. And our government, our state of California, they need you more than ever now. And this is about humanity, and we're desperate for them.

I've always told my guys that let's control what we can control. Let's do the best we can. It's just something that we do. I mean, it's farming. All this that has happened we must be more united, and we will not be defeated. And We'll get to work as a community in the Pajaro area, with the County's support. to move forward and move the Pajaro area forward. this is a very difficult time. But the town of Pajaro, the surrounding communities and the family strawberry farmers are resilient. We will work together to recover.

As you have just seen, the flooding not only was devastating for us strawberry growers, but also for the community of Pajaro and the Salinas Valley. For the California Strawberry Commission's recently updated April 2023 acreage acreage report approximately 1771 acres of fall-planted strawberries in the Watsonville-Salinas growing region were flooded. So far, the losses in the strawberry production have exceeded over $200 million, with a final total not yet known due to the need for the ongoing cleanup of fields and the waiting period needed to see if damaged plants are salvageable and will produce fruit this year. For my farm, fields surrounding my operations were completely underwater. As a matter of fact, my fields were adjacent to where the levee breached. I lost a few acres, but the impact did not end with a flood. Because of the flooding and cold, rainy weather that continued. Plant development has been behind more than a month, meaning a delay in getting people back to work and strawberries in the produce aisle from the Pajaro and Salinas Valley. This has hurt our small farming operations since we continue to incur expenses with no incoming revenue. But it has also hurt our employees who were unable to work and earn money or very little because there has been extraordinarily little fruit to harvest. We as farmers are resilient, but it has been so unfortunate to witness the damage and loss of revenue to our workers that they will now be challenged to financially support their families and unable at times to support local businesses. You've seen the tragic pictures of Paharo. What makes this even worse is that the flood was completely preventable had the levees been repaired after previous floods. I had the honor to show the Lieutenant Governor the damage firsthand, when she toured Pajaro in March, she saw the strawberry fields underwater, damaged businesses, and red tags homes. Many in the community wonder if they will ever fully recover. It is clear now that what has been done in the past decades is not working. And capacity flow reduction, habitat degradation, and mismanaged levee maintenance have all contributed to these extensive flooding events in both the Salinas and Pajaro rivers. And if something isn't done immediately, we may see more devastating floods occur. Again, I would like to conclude with these three items. First, we would like to express our deepest appreciation during this stressful and difficult time to thank Speaker Elect Rivas, Senator Caballero, Senator Laird and Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, Jimmy Panetta and Jimmy Panetta for all they have done to support our community and the residents of Pajaro, in addition to the first responders that assisted during the flooding. Second, we would like to ask the Committee and CDFA to continue to work with the USDA and the Farm Service Agency to help expedite storm damage payments and flexibility within the existing USDA programs to support our growers who have suffered losses. So it will help us with a recovery. Finally, we realize that you have a difficult job making tough decisions on legislation. It has been a very difficult start to the year for many of us growers and workers in farming. So please remember us. Thank you and I'm available for any questions.

And Peter really appreciate your testimony. Next we will go to Mr. Hansen with Hansen Ranches.

Yeah. My name is Phil Hansen. My brother Eric is with me. We're fifth generation farmers in Corcoran area with Tulare Lake bottom. We currently have probably about 8,000 acres underwater. The lake right now is probably between probably around 80,000 acres and anticipated to go up to 100. We could be off a little bit. The earlier comments, I'm sorry about that. We also have a little video to play, if you'd like, pull that up to show some of the impact to our direct, our farm and our permanent crops and shops. That's my brother's house right there. Those are pomegranate trees underwater, and those are pistachio. Just wanted to also say that. Well, my brother, he toured the Governor along with DWR. Carla Neimath, I think. Karen Ross. We really appreciate everybody coming down there to see. He did his press conference right in front of our shop, talked to our employees, and it was much appreciated in some of the revisions in the budget. We think a lot of our issues that we need are being addressed through that. So we appreciate that. Unfortunately, it takes disasters like this to wake us up. We've gone through drought and now floods, and we need to really develop more water infrastructure in our state. And I think that the Governor's plan is talking, addressing those things. I like some comments that I read today that he's trying to address in the budget, speeding up environmental lawsuits, the red tape that's slowing all these projects down and that in tune will reduce costs for these projects. Our areas then need a lot of levee repairs, road enhancements and levees. Major road. We have four major roads that are underwater right now to get to our property. And we're also in the dairy business too. And some of those impacts were talked about earlier, which are very important. But right now it used to be a seven and seven and a half mile drive. One way is 33 miles now because of all the road closures. So it's all that fuel. And then we've had to shuttle employees because it's hard to ask them to drive that far. So just transportation and road systems have been compromised. Our specific request is Road 88. It's the high-speed rail crossing over highway 43 that would save probably 20 miles of that whole transport. We need to finish Fourth Avenue, 6th Avenue connection to Utica Avenue. Utica Avenue could be one of the only routes in and that's going to even be longer than what we were talking about. Just to express a little bit of disappointment in PG&E's reaction to the flood, we were trying to tell them, this is coming, we need to move these panels, these transformers. And because of their late reaction, they've had to be out there with helicopters and dive teams and swamp boats. It's going to cost way more than it could have if they would have been responsive and that's probably going to go to the ratepayers. My guess, Corcoran is a disadvantaged community. A lot of the residents were encouraged to purchase flood insurance at their own expense, many of whom can't afford it. I think there'll be things for small business and the economic toll on the city through the Governor's plan and we're just job security, unemployment rate and all those are just very important to us. And just some suggestions to avoid these. And it's been talked about incentives to less red tape and those in emergency actions that we need to have both above ground more storage and below ground. A combination. These water storage projects will improve energy and flood resiliency and it's the best answer to climate change. We need to improve surface water availability, affordability less reliance on groundwater. What's causes subsidence is we've got our surface water taken away and so the only way to survive was to pump more groundwater. But again, we really appreciate the Governor's and the recent emphasis placed on the Friant Canal and the Corcoran Levee. Without those budget revisions the people of Corcoran would have had to take on the cost of raising the levy as they did in 2017. However, our needs are far greater. Investments in water structure help everyone business, their environment and our disadvantaged communities. Our hope is that water infrastructure remains top of mind for the state, as is critical in these unprecedented storms and droughts. Thank you.

and thank you for your testimony and really appreciate you sharing your experiences and appreciate you being here this afternoon. Next through WebX. We do have Sarah Dozer with Winter Sister Farm. So Sarah if you're with us, welcome and you can start when you are ready.

Thank you for having me. My name is Sarah Dozer, I'm speaking to a very, I guess different perspective of a very small farm and with different levels of impact. My farm is Winter Sister Farm. I'm in Sonoma County in Sebastopool and I farm on just about five acres. We grow mixed vegetables with a focus on winter production and so rely really heavily on our greenhouse and hoop house infrastructure. And I also sell primarily through a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture program, where members make an upfront commitment to pick up food throughout the season and they pay upfront and so that really alleviated our losses. This year we're near the Laguna de Santrosa, which means that we do expect some flooding. But this past winter was just relentless amounts of flooding. And so we lost about 6000 pounds of storage, carrots and other I mean, we grow about 80 different crops. And so I didn't calculate all of them, but on the flooding level, there was just a lot of root loss. And then in the wind storms, we lost a lot of our high tunnels, our hoop houses where we grow all our winter crops and all our delicate winter crops. Which meant that we lost a lot of our salad crops and delicate things. And we wouldn't be in business this year if not for our CSA model. So not a single one of our members asked for a refund or withdrew their income. We've had upfront income, I feel like deeply fortunate in that business model and grateful to that community. We have a lot of volunteer support and again that upfront financial cost. But if I hadn't been a CSA farm I would not be in business this year. And there's no space in the moment of all your greenhouses blowing away to do paperwork to apply for funding that seems geared toward much bigger farms and commodity crop farms. I'm here just to support funds that can move quickly and I guess generously to small farms at the time in these really dramatic moments. I know a lot of farms around me who haven't been able to get into their fields at the time they could and so their income is just severely delayed. Many farms also lost greenhouses and hoop houses and are having to find the resources to rebuild. On my scale, the actual dollar value of the hoops we lost was probably like $7,000. That isn't counting the crop loss, that's just the infrastructure. And so it didn't seem like the dollar value didn't seem to match the emotional burden of how and when to put those hoops back up. The ground was too wet, the winds were too strong to go back to be able to rebuild them in order to get those crops. But yeah, I'm just here on a very small scale, and we're like even one hoop house loss has a really big effect on our season and our income and just the funds that are out there, like the California. Underserved and small producer program that could get reinvested in and moved quicker to farmers in a really low paperwork form is, I think, what we need and is like dramatic moments.

Well, thank you Sarah. We really appreciate you joining us. And we'll move to our final panelists also will be joining us virtually which is Lucy Rodriguez with Royal Oaks Farms. Nothing? No. Okay, so with that, any questions or comments from Members of Committee for the panel? Mr. Connolly. Assembly Member.

Thank you. I really appreciate the powerful testimony by all the witnesses. Just a couple of questions starting with what is something we can do right now in California to help address the issues which you're facing as a result of the storms to anyone who wants to yeah, I think this road access issue is something that could happen right now. It would be very helpful. I think a lot of this is going to happen later with levee repairs and a lot of the damage has been done. But I would think would you agree that would be yeah. The importance of timing on the road repairs is that the lake is going to be around for upwards of two years. And so any infrastructure changes that we make now would better return on investment the earlier that they happen. We're talking about less fuel expense, less emissions, less impact to the disadvantaged communities of Corcoran and...

If I may, I think concerning the Pajaro Valley and the Salinas Valley, the rivers there, the Pajaro River and the Salinas River, since I lived there in Watsonville, I saw firsthand that if maintenance would have been done there most likely wouldn't have been a flood. I cannot emphasize that enough that we need the permit process to clean the rivers expedited. They're saying there's an El Nino coming, and if it does arrive, and if the levee systems, the river, stay in the condition they are now, we most likely will get flooded again. Pajaro, my area will be flooded, and most likely Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, we came very close. My field is right next door to the levee. And so I saw the fields right across the levee breach, and it came very close to flooding mine. So that I cannot emphasize enough not only the rivers, but the creeks that flow into the rivers. They need to be cleaned out. They haven't been done for years in our area, and that's the result. So that's what I would stress.

I'm informed that the final panelist has joined us. And so, Ms. Rodriguez, if you're available, you're more than welcome to offer your testimony.

I'd really agree with that. And you brought it up earlier about the permitting and the fish and wildlife. A lot of this is because of a lack of cleaning out rich channels and rivers and banks, and you get squirrel holes, and you can't go maintain and fix things. And if those squirrel holes, they'll break right through. So it's like being able to maintain and do that, preventative maintenance and not have to wait around for permitting is key.

I'll be translating for Luz in real time. She says her name is Luz Rodriguez. She's been living in Pajaro for 23 years. And on March 11, she witnessed or lived a nightmare. At around 12:31 a.m., in the middle of the night, middle of the early morning, firefighters and emergency services evacuated residents in her community. Ah due to the levy breach and flooding. At that moment she has four daughters and they began to gather all of their belongings, whatever they could and head out with her husband, telling her to quickly grab everything because the water was coming.

As soon as that happened, her husband went to grab her daughters. Her youngest daughters can't even walk. And at that point, the water was about a foot and a half and they tried to evacuate as soon as possible. And they probably only got about 100ft away.

She said that her daughter's they ran to her daughter's car. The car wasn't working. There was probably some issues with the engine and the daughter was telling Ms. Rodriguez that the car wasn't turning on. So Ms. Rodriguez told the daughter to just get into the car and to shelter in there while she pushed the car from the back about 5 miles or so and proceeded.

So after they reached the they reached a gas station after she finished pushing the car and it was the middle of the night again, and they were told to leave the car there and to just continue to walk by foot to get away. And the car was just left there because that area became a restricted area after in the aftermath. So the car was abandoned and they walked to a parking lot at a store, at a nearby store and then proceeded to look for some sort of shelter, whatever they could find, until they finally found one again in the middle of the night, dawn hours. And they got to a shelter and that was very overcrowded. There was so many people. Her daughters were scared and there was a lot of folks who were coughing, who were sick, it seems like. And one of her daughters, her two daughters ended up getting sick too. From the overcrowded conditions of the shelter.

She says about the next morning at around 10:00 a.m., they they were near the shelter and near the river too. They went out to to see the damage or to survey and it was really saddening, she said, to see various people coming out of the flooding wet and completely with everything completely destroyed. She said it was heartbreaking to see her community, her neighbors, her home, her workplace. She's works at Royal Oaks Farm completely underwater, drought, flooded and no longer workable. And it was a very traumatizing sight to see that when she saw it the next morning.

She says after seeing that terrible site, folks began to hand out applications on site and to advise the impacted residents to fill out applications for various different resources, various different programs to assist the victims of the flooding. And she says she's very thankful to a local nonprofit in the district in Pajaro Casa Deacosura, who constantly has been assisting and helping them throughout this terrible experience. But she does note that the resources and the assistance was inadequate was very little compared to the need.

She says that now in current days, she still has been displaced, she can't return to her home and she's staying at a hotel currently. And she said that the process for getting assistance to stay at the hotel or to pay for the hotel, she had to wait in long lines. It was a long process, a tedious process, us to finally secure those resources. And thankfully, she said that FEMA has been able to provide assistance for temporary hotel housing for paying ten days and they're currently staying, or they were staying at the Sheraton in Pajaro Valley.

She says that now it's just a waiting game to see if FEMA will continue to provide them assistance and will continue to pay for their housing while they get back on their feet. And while she's able to get to work, because she still is not able to work, she still hasn't found a different job and is taking care of the kids. And obviously she noted that without the declaration previously, she noted that without the emergency declaration, they wouldn't have been able to pay it on their own. She doesn't know what they would have done and they couldn't afford a hotel on their own. So that's currently where she is waiting to see if FEMA will continue to provide that assistance.

Okay, so she says the last thing she wanted to note on her job end is that where she was working at Royal Oaks Farms, it's completely flooded as she mentioned previously. And sadly, work has been very slow right now and she's continuing to look for jobs. But she notes that where there are jobs available, the farms or the agriculture sites where there are some jobs available, that they're only offering work to their current employees. And she hasn't been able to find a different job in the area, so she's still looking. There's no work for her, see?

She also wants to note that providing for her daughters to go to school has been very challenging. That's been another major struggle for her and her family because one daughter goes to a different school on one end of the city or the town and another daughter goes to a different school at a different end of her community. So it's been very challenging. Again, she's also been having issues with transportation, with lack of transportation because of mechanical struggles with her car, so schooling has been provided. Taking her children, her daughters to school has been continuous struggle and she feels like the problems just keep piling on.

Okay, so with that, because we are over, we have to move on to the next panel. So I want to thank our panel, really appreciate you all making the time. We are overtime. And so we have to move on to the last panel. So thank you so much.

And we will move to our final panel, which includes Norm Groot, who's the Executive Director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, who will be joining us via Webex. And then the final is Professor Nicholas Pinter, Associate Director, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, who I believe is here in person. So we will connect via webex to Norm Groot. So, Norm, thank you for joining us, and when you are ready, it is all yours.

Good afternoon. Can I do an audio check? Can you hear me okay?

We can hear you just fine, Norm.

Great, thank you. Thanks to Chair Rivas and Chair Rodriguez and the Committee Members, it's an honor to speak to you this afternoon. Apologize for not being there in person. Circumstances kept me in Monterey County today. Again. My name is Norm Groot and I'm the Executive Director of Monterey County Farm Bureau. Founded in 1917, we support farmers, ranchers, vineyards, packers and shippers in our county that produce over 4.1 billion with a B of fresh produce products every year. We are a membership-driven organization representing over 400 agricultural operations and support companies that grow, harvest and ship over 150 different commodities. Salinas Valley, the solid bowl of the world, is the very definition of intense agriculture. I speak to you today relative to the impacts of flood events here in Monterey County. We are all aware of the levee break that inundated the town of Pajaro and the surrounding fields in March. This is a devastating human tragedy, not only for those who live in the town of Pajaro, but also for those who farm in the surrounding fields. Monterey County also saw significant flooding along our Salinas River channel in both January and March. We experienced river flows of nearly 30,000 cubic feet per second during the March storms, which included releases from our reservoirs so that the storage capacity could be managed without overtopping those two dams. Levees failed or were overtopped, causing farmland topsoil to be washed away in some areas, while other areas have significant deposits of silt that covered fields to a depths up to a foot. Farm equipment such as wellhead pumps when underwater, along with irrigation systems, planted crops like strawberries, leafy greens and vegetables, are total losses due to the flooding and food safety concerns. We are estimating that flood impacts in our county agricultural operations could reach 1 billion and about 20,000 acres impacted for those three months of the storm events. What happened on the Pajaro River is a direct failure of deferred, levy, repair and maintenance, despite an approved project decades ago. This needs to be addressed by removing regulatory and funding barriers to ensure that public safety is a priority. What is quite clear on the Salinas River is the diminished capacity of the river channel to manage precipitation flows even under a ten year flood event level like what we saw this year. As a comparison, the epic floods of 1995 were caused by river flow of 90,000 cubic feet per second, three times the amount of river flow during the 2023 events. Yet we experience similar flooding patterns to 1995s. This realization of reduced flow capacity leads to the discussion of river channel maintenance for flood control protections and environmental benefits. The past two decades have seen reduced channel maintenance efforts due to restrictive permits from multiple state and federal agencies, excessive costs to landowners and farm operators for those permits, and lack of improvements to the levee system that is many decades beyond its useful life. Excessive vegetation growth, much of it nonnative, along with sediment and sandbar buildup, have caused the Salinas River channel's decreased flow capacity. While multiple agencies agree that management of non native vegetation is desirable, the reality is that permits are so restrictive and expensive to manage that few landowners and farm operators are willing to take on the task of managing the riverbed that they privately own. Salinas river is a privately owned river. Yes. They are not allowed to manage their own property for flood control protection without permits or under the threat of enforcement actions. While the intent to protect the environment is something that we all support, and in reality that environment is currently highly modified from its natural original condition, this is clearly a case of we told you so. Landowners and farm operators along the Salinas River have stated numerous times in the past decades that river channel flow capacity is not being managed to protect both public infrastructure and adjacent land, buildings and equipment. Having multiple agencies with differing objectives on a privately owned river channel causes immense complexities in both permitting and liability issues. We need help, and we need it prior to the next atmospheric river sequence that challenges the protections of our valuable farmland. We have asked all agencies with jurisdictions over the Salinas River to come together to allow for significant work in the channel. And that's seven different agencies. To remove excess vegetation that is creating densely packed dams, inhibiting fish passage. And to manage the sediment in the low-flow channel to allow for continued work in multiple years without reevaluation every five years, through new and expensive studies of the river environment. As was stated by one of the agencies to me directly, the river will flood. But that should not be taken as an excuse to not provide reasonable flood control protections that also enhances the river channel environment itself. Many are asking if flood damage to valuable farm fields and infrastructure is preferred to a negative impacted river habitat. We are damaging our economy, incurring multiple disaster declarations that require huge expenditures of public funds to manage. Our agricultural community knows what we need to do. We just need the approvals to do the work. This is not about destroying the river channel with bulldozers, but more about enhancing flood control protections while improving the environmental benefits that supports fish passage and wildlife habitat. Landowners and farm operators are willing to do this work. They just need to be allowed to do so. Thank you for your time today, and I appreciate the invitation to present our flood impacts, and I'm happy to answer any questions time permitting. Thank you.

And thank you, Norm. Always appreciate your offering that testimony. And our final panelist today is Professor Nicholas Pinter, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. So, professor, welcome.

So thank you to the Committee for the opportunity to join this conversation. Thanks to the Committee, or what's left of it at this point, I was asked to contribute some broader perspectives on flooding that occurred in California this winter and to contribute them even if they were, in some cases, uncomfortable. So don't get angry at me. Those are my guidelines. So in reporter inquiries and interviews starting last December, I've been asked repeatedly whether this year was the worst-case scenario for flooding in California, and the sobering answer is no, it was not. Nonetheless, there was a broad range of locally significant impacts, including particular along the Pajaro River and Tulare Lake, which the committee has heard a lot about already today. So, as the committee has heard, levees on the Pajaro River in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties broke in March. You should be aware that the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency has project plans well developed and already on the shelf for enhancing levees along the river, including levee setbacks that would also promote aquifer recharge along with enhanced flood control. So project staff have told me that they have specific requests from the state to expedite those improvements in the future, including execution of a subventions agreement and expedited environmental authorizations. Frankly, I don't know what a subventions agreement is, but I'm happy to connect you if you're not aware of these issues already. Other agricultural stakeholders that I reached out to echoed the goal of upgrading the Pajaro levees and others on a statewide basis and expressed similar concerns about long term maintenance of the levees themselves and of the channel. As you just heard, overall, the 2022-2023 winter was noteworthy, mostly for the duration of rain and snow. At times it felt like a 40 days and 40 nights kind of situation. If you recall, beyond traditional floodplains, flooding was concentrated in low spots in the topography, like Tulare Lake. The Tulare basin. Again, as the committee knows, Tulare Lake is a natural, seasonal lake basin, basically a bathtub with no drain. The large lake that exists in the 19th century was drained and partially engineered to make way for agriculture on that land. That system was not originally intended to provide complete protection against flooding and just want to remind everyone that the basin repeatedly refilled during wet winters, including ... and now 2023. So not dissimilarly, I have worked for many years with Midwestern US landowners who farm the so called bottoms of the floodplains, the Mississippi and other rivers that is, outside of the main stem levees. They recognize the trade offs inherent to their land. High yields during perhaps nine out of ten average years come with the occasional big water year when they cannot get a crop in the ground. So previous speaker pivoted towards wildfire hazard and I was going to pivot towards drought and talk about long term California water resources. Reporters have been asking me all winter if the rain and snow this year meant that California's drought was over once and for all. No, obviously, and maybe we'll just skip all that, including I wanted to talk about the Colorado River based on headlines in all the newspapers yesterday. Very interesting stuff. Ask questions if you'd like at the end. So I'll just move quickly towards recommendations to get us out of here on a timely basis. You're welcome. In the wake of 2022-23's very wet winter, I suggest to the committee there are at least so I'll give you three, but there are at least three actionable takeaways in emergent situations like Pajaro and Tulare Lake and elsewhere. Support local and state officials in facilitating assistance to local residents, some of whom you met this afternoon and growers. Research in my lab at UC Davis shows that California as a whole, as a state and its rural counties and communities in particular, have historically received disproportionately low post flood federal assistance, we believe because of shortfalls of manpower and expertise in those rural areas. Again, asked about details if you'd like. Second recommendation in Pajaro and Tulare Lake as well as statewide, California needs to build back better wherever possible. These kinds of solutions are typically more costly and slower than simply rebuilding in place. But flood disasters provide windows of opportunity to recover stronger than before and prevent the next flood disaster before it can occur. California has a number of such options on its plate right now, but those windows of opportunity are already beginning to close. For example, rather than simply rebuilding the Pajaro levees, rebuild them stronger and setback severely flooded communities in the Tulare basin can look to other successful examples of socalled managed retreat successfully implemented elsewhere in the US. Where similar communities have decided to rebuild out of the reach of future flooding. Finally, number three recognize that the one constant in California hydrology is how much and how quickly our water conditions change. Wet years are followed by extremely dry years and usually more than one. When we count on every drop of surface and groundwater and every acre of potentially arable land, we create brittle systems where ordinary annual variability turns into disastrous consequences quick enough.

Thank you, professor, we really appreciate that testimony. Do we have any questions, comments, more detail? Yeah, was there a handout or some information that could be yeah. That would be helpful. That'd be very helpful.

One question to you, which I wish I could have had a chance to ask others, but there is this talk of urgency, particularly on moving forward on infrastructure projects related to all items and flooding also included. Are there any in particular? I heard you mention the levees at Pajaro as potentially one of those types of projects. Any others that just stand out as sort of immediate need to get in there and do something as quickly as possible.

So you've heard me peek to speak to the Pajaro levees because I'm engaged in that project. It is exactly, I think, what you're looking for. A shovel ready project with blueprints on the shelf to implement bigger better levy.

Has undergone environmental review.

I doubt it.

Okay.

I've heard the same input. Yes.

Thank you. And so really appreciate you making the time and being here with us this afternoon. And so at this time we will move to some public comment. Anyone in the room wanting to offer any comments see none. I want to thank all the panelists for their participation this afternoon. I want to thank our colleagues who made the time to be here with us. And so with that again want to thank both the Assembly, Agriculture, the Committee, Emergency Management for their time that they spent to prepare this hearing. And we stand adjourned. Thank you.