SAN DIEGO (AP) — More storms, rising seas and huge waves are taking their toll on California’s iconic piers that have dotted the Pacific coast since the Gold Rush, posing the biggest threat yet to the beach landmarks that have become a quintessential part of the landscape.
At least a half dozen public piers are closed after being damaged repeatedly by storms with multiple atmospheric rivers hitting the state over the past year. Repair costs have climbed into the millions of dollars.
Among those shuttered is the pier in Capitola built in 1857 that predates the northern California town and is a popular spot to watch passing whales and dolphins. Another damaged by storms in San Diego, the Ocean Beach pier, offers a bird’s eye view of surfers carving waves below.
More damage is possible this year with El Nino, which is expected to bring additional storms to California caused by the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide. Back-to-back atmospheric rivers began drenching California this week, causing flooded roads, toppled trees and traffic accidents. The second “Pineapple Express” — called that because the plume of moisture stretches back across the Pacific to near Hawaii — was forecast to arrive as early as Saturday night and unleash a more powerful storm.
City engineers are looking at redesigning piers to withstand bigger surf with a rise in sea levels. Others face relocation or removal.
“We are very much in a changed environment,” said Mike Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And we’re not going to be able to rebuild back in the same places and in the same ways that we did before. We’re going to have to think more clearly about how we design and where we put these.”
Most piers have undergone major repairs after enduring everything from to fires to erosion. But officials say they are now being damaged at an unprecedented rate.
Waves rising to heights topping 20-feet (6-meters) in late December pummeled the 855-foot-long Capitola Wharf in Santa Cruz County, only months after Pineapple Express-fueled storms in January 2023 collapsed a large section. The Capitola Wharf is a pier by nautical standards since it runs perpendicular to the shore, versus a traditional wharf running parallel.
San Diego’s Ocean Beach pier, a nearly 2,000-foot concrete structure built in 1966, has been repeatedly battered since 2019. The pier was still undergoing repairs after beatings from high surf that closed it twice last year when a monster swell in January wiped away a piling.
The city is exploring replacing the structure after spending more than $1.7 million in fixes over the past five years. It has secured $8.4 million in state funds for a new one. Among the three proposed designs is one with interconnected pathways, giving it a different look.
California’s state park service demolished the 93-year-old pier at Seaside State Beach near Aptos in Santa Cruz County after a January 2023 storm surge smashed it in half.
Communities are grappling with whether they can afford to keep their piers, which will need taller and stronger pilings that could make their historic look more industrial, Beck said.
But those are tough conversations for many who consider the piers almost sacred.
“It’s sometimes a little bit of a funny thing here in California, the way that we love our piers,” he said.
For generations, the structures have provided families, fishers, tourists and others a peaceful place to experience the ocean without getting wet.
In Ventura, west of Los Angeles, the Visitors & Convention Bureau waxes poetic about the pier built in 1872 that it calls the city’s centerpiece.
