Santa Cruz Wharf collapse raises questions about lawsuits, maintenance and the Coastal Commission

Santa Cruz officials say a local group’s lawsuit and restrictions from state regulators stalled crucial repairs that might have prevented the partial collapse of the city’s historic wharf during last week’s powerful storm surge.

But members of the group Don’t Morph the Wharf, which sued in 2022 to block the city’s plans to renovate the wharf, called that characterization “inaccurate and unfair,” saying their legal challenge specifically allowed maintenance work to continue.

The dispute centers on the Wharf Master Plan, put together by the city in 2014 in the aftermath of a 2011 tsunami. It would have added a walkway to the western side of the wharf and a 40-foot “landmark” building at the edge of the 110-year-old pier.

City officials said those improvements would have strengthened the structure against powerful waves while also providing a boost to tourism. However, the plan drew fierce opposition from residents concerned about overdevelopment and environmental impacts. In January, a decade after the city unveiled its vision for a renewed wharf, the city council voted unanimously to approve a revised master plan that scrapped both the western walkway and landmark building.

Gillian Greensite, a member of Don’t Morph the Wharf, said she was surprised that city officials had pointed to the group’s lawsuit as contributing to the wharf’s collapse. 

She also disagrees that the Wharf Master Plan would have strengthened the wharf to better protect it against events like last week’s massive waves. Greensite said her group specifically asked for maintenance work to continue during the lawsuit and pointed to an engineering report showing that while the wharf was generally sound, about 5% of its pilings were so damaged they needed replacement. 

“Yes, they may have been able to start on the Wharf Master Plan if there was no lawsuit, and they may have things that the community didn’t want,” Greensite said. “In order to do any of those structures for the wharf, they would have to replace those pilings.”

However, retired wharf supervisor Jon Bombaci is confident the original master plan would have prevented the partial collapse. The proposed western walkway was “entirely necessary to dampening movement” on the structure, he said. 

Bombaci said the wharf’s main vulnerability lay in its aging deck fasteners, which had been weakened by decades of water exposure and auto traffic. “The west walkway would have provided a buffer, and it would have stabilized the wharf with the additional width in combination with the east walkway,” he said. 

An approved master plan would have also put the city in a good position to win state and federal grants. Bombaci sees the lack of such funding as the main problem with delaying the master plan. 

District 3 County Supervisor Justin Cummings, who was on the Santa Cruz City Council from 2018 through 2022, said replacing the wharf pilings is considered standard maintenance, which is not tied to the Wharf Master Plan. He said there is a substantial backlog of maintenance on the wharf, a common trend seen in public infrastructure around the county.

“We’re trying to do the best we can to keep up with it, but when you have storms, COVID and all these disaster events that end up occurring, it takes your attention away from things and you refocus on other priorities,” he said.

While Cummings said he thinks new pilings would likely have helped the wharf’s stability, it does not guarantee that the structure would have withstood the intensity of the recent swells. “This swell event was one of the biggest swells we’ve had in 30 years,” he said. “Would [new pilings] have helped? It’s unclear, but I don’t think the plan was holding up any maintenance.”

The conflict over what could have prevented the city from protecting the wharf from collapse has been further complicated by restrictions from the California Coastal Commission, which limited construction work on the wharf to winter months in order to protect nesting seabirds.

“The restrictions they put on maintenance on the wharf really put things behind because it effectively prevented us from working during the good weather months,” said Bombaci. The concerns surrounding seabird nesting left the city with a very small area of the wharf it was allowed to work on outside of the winter months. 

Mayor Fred Keeley called favoring nesting seabirds over infrastructure safety “bad prioritizing,” though he stopped short of placing blame for the collapse on any single agency or group.

“I think the work has been unreasonably stalled by litigation and by the Coastal Commission, and I’m going to hold onto that position,” he said. “This isn’t about blaming anybody, but I will say that it was not helpful that the Coastal Commission limited us to doing our work in the winter. I think that’s the wrong balance.”

Cummings, a county supervisor who now chairs the Coastal Commission, argues that the city might have avoided the kind of delays that have drawn out the wharf renovation project by working more closely with residents and regulators from the start. 

He points to a landmark building proposed for the end of the wharf. The plans angered some residents enough to spark a lawsuit and, he said, were unlikely to pass muster with state coastal regulators, who frequently reject projects that block ocean views. The city eventually removed the building from its revised master plan, but not until after years of delays and litigation.

“I feel like the Coastal Commission wasn’t going to sign off on it, and the community didn’t want it to happen, but the city pushed for it,” said Cummings. “Eventually, they finally removed the feature, and I feel like if they had just done that in the beginning, that could have prevented a lot of the lawsuit from even happening, and it could have advanced this project much more quickly.”

Now, as officials debate the future of the damaged wharf, the question of how to balance environmental protection with infrastructure needs has taken on new urgency. Cummings said he plans to meet with city leaders to discuss a potential compromise that would allow for more flexible construction schedules if critical repairs are needed during seabird nesting season.

“When we have species utilizing a man-made feature to nest on, we have to find that balance,” Cummings said. “Do we not disturb these birds nesting in a man-made structure, or do we do the critical work to maintain that infrastructure so that, in the future, those birds will still be able to nest there?”

For Bombaci, that debate is coming too late, considering the section of wharf where seabirds built their nests was washed away in the partial collapse: “The irony here is that a lot of what they were trying to protect is gone now.”

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