When the final 150 toes of Santa Cruz’s iconic wharf plummeted into the ocean Monday, metropolis leaders had been nonetheless grappling with injury it had sustained two years earlier throughout back-to-back winter storms.
With the development gear now on the backside of the ocean, some native residents are asking why town waited till the winter — when storms are frequent and the ocean is rougher — to start out a $4 million undertaking to restore the favored pier.
The sophisticated reply is that the repairs had been hamstrung by a typical California drawback: stress between defending the surroundings and sustaining key infrastructure, a battle that has performed out alongside the coast for years. Strict allowing necessities and prolonged litigation by environmental activists have stalled efforts to fortify the pier that would have helped it stand up to the storm, present and former metropolis officers say.
On the heart of the delays: seagulls.
It was for the advantage of the western gull, generally often called the seagull, that town of Santa Cruz delayed probably the most important a part of the restore work, putting in new timber piles — the columns that maintain up the wharf — till September, as a result of gulls and one other chicken, the pigeon guillemot, make their nests within the wharf’s picket beams.
The protections for the birds are imposed by the state Coastal Fee, from which town should receive a allow earlier than it will probably do repairs. Most main building — together with changing the piles — should happen between September and March to keep away from the nesting season.
“Our work window is a very narrow six months over the winter time when we tend to have storms and big waves,” mentioned Tony Elliott, director of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the wharf. “The wharf is a 110-year-old structure, and it requires a lot of work. … It takes more than six months out of the year to maintain it effectively.”
Neither the western gull nor the pigeon guillemot are endangered species, but the Coastal Fee says federal and state legal guidelines defend their nesting areas.
On the metropolis’s request, the fee in February loosened some restrictions to permit piles to be put in throughout nesting season below sure situations — solely after 10 a.m., for a most of 4 hours a day, as long as employees steered 300 toes away from any nests.
“Practically, it didn’t change the dynamics,” Elliott mentioned.
Birds apart, town additionally took a number of months to discover a firm to steer the restore work. Santa Cruz had funding for the undertaking and engineering plans drafted by June, nevertheless it didn’t select a contractor for the undertaking till mid-August, only a few weeks earlier than the allow allowed building to start.
Fee spokesman Joshua Smith mentioned the fee has labored with Santa Cruz for years “to allow for wharf maintenance while also ensuring that sensitive species are protected.” The fee has granted emergency permits to permit town to conduct repairs even throughout the nesting season, like one issued in July to permit the broken Dolphin Restaurant to be faraway from the wharf.
However Jon Bombaci, who managed the wharf for many years and retired in 2021, mentioned that years of Coastal Fee restrictions have compounded stress on the wharf.
“There needs to be a reassessment of the policies that direct the Coastal Commission’s permitting process,” he mentioned. “Their time restrictions were antithetical to getting repairs done.”
The Coastal Fee didn’t reply to questions on whether or not the allowing necessities led to the delays.
Bombaci additionally identified the irony of the allow restrictions.
“These birds are nesting in a manmade structure,” he mentioned. “If you don’t do the repairs in a timely manner, you’re going to lose the whole thing anyways.”
Santa Cruz officers additionally say prolonged litigation has delayed a grasp plan first envisioned in 2014 that would have helped to buffer the pier from robust swells.
The plan referred to as for brand new pedestrian walkways and retail areas supposed to get extra vacationers out to the wharf and improve parking and rental revenues, which was anticipated to assist operations and upkeep in the long run.
By specializing in additions to the wharf, somewhat than merely retrofitting it, town may faucet extra federal funds. Grant cash was extra out there when it got here to including public walkways and bike enhancements, and fewer out there for easy restore initiatives, metropolis officers mentioned. The additions, together with a walkway on the wharf’s western edge, had been engineered to supply extra buffering to the pier’s essential construction and defend it as additional repairs had been accomplished.
However the grasp plan confronted opposition from Don’t Morph the Wharf, a gaggle that sought to protect the wharf’s historic aesthetic. It additionally took subject with the proposed Western Walkway, which they fearful can be unsafe for pedestrians. Beneath strain, metropolis officers delayed approving the grasp plan.
In 2020, the council lastly signed off. Quickly after, Don’t Morph the Wharf sued town below the California Environmental High quality Act, a regulation that was initially written to make sure initiatives take into account their affect on the surroundings however has since been weaponized by quite a few teams to impede new growth. Activists have used CEQA lawsuits to problem the whole lot from pupil housing at UC Berkeley to electrical grid expansions.
This yr, town handed a model of the grasp plan with out the controversial Western Walkway. Metropolis officers lament that, throughout the time the case took to maneuver by means of the courts, town missed out on tens of millions of {dollars} in grants.
Metropolis Supervisor Matt Huffaker mentioned it will probably’t be identified whether or not the expanded pier would have stood up in opposition to the record-breaking swells Monday or final winter’s storms.
“But we would have been in a stronger position had we been able to move forward with some of those projects in a more timely manner,” he mentioned.
Now, Santa Cruz officers face a troublesome selection: Ought to town rebuild the wharf, whilst local weather change threatens to convey stronger storms?
Gary Griggs, a professor at U.C. Santa Cruz and professional on coastal geology, sees the choice to rebuild as considerably of a Sisyphean activity.
“We can put in more pilings and put in more deckings every year,” Griggs mentioned. “But there’s absolutely nothing we can do over the long term to hold back the Pacific Ocean.”
