Thank you for joining us. It’s my pleasure to be here to announce that we have successfully secured funding to begin repairing the Santa Maria levees and protect our community from the threat of a levee failure.

Last month Congress passed legislation that included federal funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to determine what repairs need to done in order to strengthen the levees.  This is great news for the citizens of the Santa Maria Valley. 

Of course, there are several people to thank. I’ll start with Senator Feinstein.  She has been a champion for flood protection funding not only in our area, but throughout the state.

I also want to thank Colonel Magness and the Army Corps of Engineers. Even though the Colonel has been on the job for only a few months, he’s heard the concerns of our community saying we need to fix our levees. And I want to thank our local elected officials – Supervisor Centeno, Mayor Lavagnino and Mayor Alvarez.

You recognized that our levees were a disaster in the making.  You traveled back to D.C. several times to make sure that this message was heard. My hat is off to you and your staffs for the work you have done so far and for working with me and Senator Feinstein to secure this funding.

We all know these levees are absolutely critical to our safety. But unfortunately the levees are deteriorating and are in need of immediate repair. And with winter rains, the threat of a levee breach will be very high.  A breach will cause substantial damage to the citizens and businesses in Santa Maria and Guadalupe. 

Without this funding the Army Corps would not have been able to start making long lasting repairs to the levees, leaving thousands of people at risk. That’s why we pushed and pushed this issue. Now we can cut through all of the red tape and get to work repairing the levees and make sure that when a storm comes we are going to be ready.

We’ll be moving forward from here. This is just the beginning of what we need to do.We have an opportunity now to do something positive for our community. By starting this process of fixing the levees today, we’re responsibly preventing a potentially devastating disaster by providing critical protection from future flooding to our community.

And so I’m standing here today to say that we will not stop working to repair the levees until the whole job is done. The initial repair process will start soon, and we’ll continue our efforts to stabilize the levees by securing additional federal funding to make permanent repairs.

So again I want to thank all of you for being here.  I want to congratulate my colleagues for the hard work and dedication to this urgent issue.

Pictured above: (center) Congresswoman Capps meets with Central Coast firefighters to discuss emergency preparedness.