A retired wharf supervisor claims the Santa Cruz Wharf collapse could have been prevented with a proposed widening plan that was stalled by lawsuits and environmental restrictions.
Most of the debris has been picked up from the Santa Cruz Wharf collapse on December 23rd, and the question now is what happens to the historic structure going forward? But there is at least one man in town who says it never had to happen. People in Santa Cruz were shocked when a 150-foot section at the end of the wharf fell into the ocean after being hit by 30-foot waves. But it didn't shock Jon Bombaci.
'I had been telling the city leadership for years that this was going to happen,' Bombaci said. Bombaci worked for decades on the wharf, serving his last 11 years as wharf supervisor before retiring in 2021. He said old steel fasteners had been loosening and the structure had been slowly breaking apart for years, losing its 'sheer,' which is its ability to withstand the force of the water coming from the sides. 'There has to be structural integrity there or everything starts to move independently,' he said. 'My immediate thought was this is just a tragic unforced error. Because we had a plan in place back in 2013 to prevent exactly this.' Bombaci said they had a proposal ready to go—with funding—that would have widened the pier, adding a pedestrian walkway on each side. He is convinced that would have strengthened the structure, preventing Monday's collapse, but it never happened. CEQA lawsuits from a small group of residents stalled the project, and when the California Coastal Commission gave tentative approval, it restricted construction to only stormy winter months to protect nesting seagulls. 'And then also, just for normal maintenance, they implemented a 300-foot buffer around any nesting seagull. So, if you look at the wharf, it takes five seagull nests to basically knock out the entire wharf,' Bombaci said. 'The irony is, if you lose the structure, the birds lose their nesting area. So, everybody lost.' So what's next? The wharf remains closed for now but there is a question whether it will be repaired at al
Santa Cruz Wharf Collapse Environmental Regulations Construction Delays Historic Structure
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