Greetings, Lookout friends. Tuesday, Dec. 23, is starting to unfold, and windy, rainy weather is on the way for Santa Cruz County – there’s a wind advisory in effect from 4 p.m. Tuesday until 4 a.m. Wednesday, with gusts up to 50 mph possible in higher elevations, and a flood watch from 10 a.m. Tuesday running into Friday night.
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A year ago Tuesday saw the end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf collapse into the bay amid massive swells that also wreaked havoc in the harbor, and that’s the focus of the latest installments of our Newsmaker 2025 series. Max Chun catches up with the Santa Cruz city worker who was on the part of the wharf that went into the ocean, while Hillary Ojeda has the story of how the harbor and the tight-knit community of those who live aboard their boats are recovering and planning for such events in the future. We’ve also got a look at a comic from local artist Laurel Bushman, who imagined the wharf collapse from the perspective of a pair of sea lions.
Tania Ortiz profiles Richard Charter, the environmental consultant who helped California coastal communities block offshore oil drilling decades ago and who’s again been tabbed by Santa Cruz County officials to fight a renewed drilling push by the Trump administration. “You’re not going to work for 25 years,” Charter told her, “and then not accomplish what you set out to do.”
Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s governing board convened a special meeting Monday to give members of the public who weren’t able to comment on proposed layoffs at a stormy Dec. 11 session the chance to voice their opinions, Hillary Ojeda reports – with trustees voting 4-2 to again approve about half the cuts, of 81 positions for staff with teaching credentials.
Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section is the forum for a pair of water policy experts, with Letitia Grenier and Jeff Mount of the Public Policy Institute of California arguing that in the face of federal budget cuts and a major shift in the federal-state relationship, California needs to step up to fund and maintain the technical expertise needed to manage the water systems so crucial for agriculture, drinking water and flood prevention.
The Tuesday headlines also include an update on the continuing search for a Felton woman missing for more than a month – onward.
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Newsmakers 2025: A year after wharf collapse, the worker who fell into the ocean is back to business as usual
A year ago, City of Santa Cruz Development Manager Norm Daly plunged into stormy waters when the section of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf he was standing on collapsed. Now, he’s back on the job like nothing ever happened, working to bring the end of the wharf back to life. Max Chun catches up with Daly.
➤ A pelagic perspective on the day waves swept away the end of the Santa Cruz Wharf
Newsmakers 2025: A year after damaging storm, Santa Cruz Harbor community is recovering and focused on resilience
A year after a historic storm caused an estimated $16 million in damage to Santa Cruz Harbor infrastructure and destroyed more than 15 boats, harbor officials say recovery is underway and planning is increasingly focused on long-term resilience as extreme weather becomes more frequent. While emergency repairs have stabilized damaged docks, residents and port officials alike say the storm has reshaped daily life and underscored the vulnerability and close-knit nature of the harbor community. More here from Hillary Ojeda.
DAILY DIGEST
There’s more coming from Lookout this Tuesday, not least of which is another forkful of Santa Cruz County food & drink news in the form of Lily Belli on Food, one of the many free newsletters and breaking news alerts you’d be well served to sign up for here. You can also get breaking news notifications, in addition to all our award-winning local coverage, games and more on the Lookout Santa Cruz app, available for download from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. And we’re blasting it all out on social media, where you can stay current by following Lookout on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads and/or Bluesky.
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Be safe out there as the latest storm blows in, and thank you for reading.
Will McCahill