Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...As city leaders and residents of Pacifica continue to grapple with the future of the city’s iconic but crumbling pier, Rep. Sam Liccardo called on the federal and state governments to provide funding and support to allow the city to undertake crucial repairs and coastal resiliency projects.
In front of the pier — which was closed to the public earlier this month after city workers noticed a large crack — on Monday morning, Liccardo likened Pacifica’s struggles to those of many coastal communities across the country facing the impacts of coastal erosion. He urged the federal government to invest further resources and increase flexibility to allow local leaders to tackle vital infrastructure and disaster prevention projects before damages occur.
“We need to do all that we can to protect Pacifica and our coastside,” Liccardo said. “It turns out the climate doesn’t care whether or not we believe in climate change, and if we do not act, the ocean will always win the battle over coastal erosion. We need to act.”
The damage had also caused workers to demolish last week the Chit Chat Cafe, which has been a staple of the pier since the 1970s, for fear that the whole building could fall into the waves. The city declared a state of emergency and has since started repair work; last week, workers began moving 150 large boulders on either side of the pier’s abutment to stabilize it, said Pacifica City Manager Sean Charpentier. The next step will be to stabilize the first span of the L-shaped pier.
The city had previously completed an analysis of repairs needed for the pier, which found a potential price tag near $20 million even before these new damages, but leaders blamed the lack of action on an inability to secure funding.
The Pacifica Municipal Pier, built in the 1970s as a way to transport wastewater deeper into the ocean, has since become a central part of Pacifica’s identity, with a vibrant culture of fishermen and crabbers working on the pier daily. For Pacifica resident Bae Cadotte and her son, that meant going to the pier each morning, getting coffee and bait at the Chit Chat Cafe, then heading out to go fishing.
“We entered there as strangers, we came out as very close friends and family,” Cadotte said. “The Pacifica Pier is more than just a pier. It brings people together, the community together.”
For Ginger Davis, co-owner of the Chit Chat Cafe, the slow deterioration of the pier was even more tangible with the destruction of her cafe. “This tough time isn’t ours alone,” she said. “This is a huge loss for our fishing and crabbing community. We had folks that were here everyday as soon as our doors unlocked, hoping to quickly warm up with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.”
Liccardo pointed to potential funding sources for Pacifica to tackle not only the pier repairs but also additional issues along the coastline. That includes about $963,000 awarded to the city by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to repair the pier’s rails, which he argued should be allowed to be re-allocated to help fund the reconstruction of the pier, and an extension to the city’s $9.3 million Esplanade Drive Infrastructure Preservation Project from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Office of Emergency Services.
Another source of potential funding is $50 million that Pacifica was awarded under the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, he said. The money, which was intended to support Pacifica through its Beach Boulevard project that would rebuild aging seawall infrastructure along the city’s coast, was previously allocated to the city but was scrapped last year after the Trump administration canceled the program. Though that money would primarily fund the seawall project, it would “also help support the pier,” Liccardo said.
FEMA reopened applications for the program in March after a federal judge ordered the agency to reinstate the funding.
Liccardo also announced plans to introduce a bipartisan bill in Congress next week aimed at allowing local communities to use funding from the Community Development Block Grant for disaster prevention infrastructure, which localities can currently only get for disaster prevention “after the disaster has struck,” he said.
“We are going to push to ensure that cities have the flexibility, and local communities and counties have the flexibility to use their CDBT money for critical capital projects, for disaster prevention as well,” he said.
State Senator Josh Becker described the loss of the pier as being “like a limb is missing.”
“This pier is a community gathering place, a source of pride for Pacifica and also an economic driver for the whole community — and the people of Pacifica have been sounding the alarm for years and fighting to protect their community,” Becker said. “This is very much a reminder that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We could have fixed this for a lot less money, and now we’re going to have to marshal additional resources to make sure this gets fixed or possibly replaced.”
State Assemblymember Marc Berman also called on the state and federal government to “step up” to help Pacifica handle the damage, noting that he has initiated conversations with the assembly’s budget chair on the issue.
“These are issues that have been building and building and building for a long time, that we knew were happening,” he said. “It’s tragic that it takes the closure and the loss of an amazing Pacifica establishment to really jolt us into action, but I promise that that’s what we’re going to do.”