{"id":41543,"date":"2026-06-17T10:23:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/41543\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T10:23:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:23:34","slug":"el-nino-turns-crumbling-california-pier-into-climate-battleground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/41543\/","title":{"rendered":"El Ni\u00f1o turns crumbling California pier into climate battleground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a historic El Ni\u00f1o supercharges the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco experiences record high seasonal sea levels, the latest structural casualty<\/a> of intense wave action is prompting Bay Area politicians to call for help from the state and federal governments.<\/p>\n

They want to rebuild a concrete pier shut down<\/a> this month after officials deemed it unsafe because of cracking from decades of pounding surf and storms.<\/p>\n

As waves crashed against the derelict structure Monday morning, U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San Jos\u00e9) held a news conference and asked the federal government to follow through on $50 million in climate resilience funding promised by the Biden administration but terminated by the Trump administration<\/a> in 2025. <\/p>\n

The city of Pacifica had been on the shortlist for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, managed through FEMA. California and 22 other states successfully sued to reinstate the program, but the funding has yet to be allocated.<\/p>\n

Liccardo also asked for nearly $1 million in promised funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a handrail project on the pier and an additional $9 million to protect coastal bluffs.<\/p>\n

Coastlines are already being buffeted and inundated by rising seas. With the closed-off Pacifica Municipal Pier in the background, local politicians and community members said they\u2019re on the front lines and want to rebuild.<\/p>\n

\u201cPacifica is ground zero for coastal resilience,\u201d said state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), as he asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and \u201chelp us fix this pier and help this community recover again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very much a reminder that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,\u201d he said, noting that previous attempts for funding went unheeded. \u201cWe cannot wait until infrastructure fails before we invest in protecting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As climate change starts to become expensive, it prompts questions about what to protect and what to abandon. <\/p>\n

Chad Nelson, chief executive of the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal environmental advocacy organization, said city piers provide coastal access to people who can\u2019t swim or walk on the beach; they are often popular fishing spots and tend to serve a broad swath of their communities.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, he said, they keep getting beat up by the ocean and costing taxpayers millions of dollars to repair or replace.<\/p>\n

In Santa Cruz, a public wharf damaged by storms in 2024 recently reopened after $1.3 million in repairs. In Capitola, a storm-damaged wharf reopened earlier this year after $10 million had been sunk into repairs. The city is now considering building an open-air restaurant, public bathrooms, a bait shop and a boat launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the larger question is: Are we subsidizing bad responses to problems that we know are going to persist?\u201d he said, responding to a question about infrastructure that won\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at UC Santa Barbara, agreed with Nelson that it\u2019s important to distinguish public from private benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of a difference between a public recreational pier, for example, and your private development that\u2019s going to impact the beach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And at some point, he said, we have to acknowledge things are only going to get worse. <\/p>\n

In a white paper authored by Lester and Nelson, the two described the coming El Ni\u00f1o as a \u201creckoning\u201d for the California coast.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1os result in larger waves, elevated sea levels and powerful storms \u2014 \u201cpredictable signature(s) of a climate pattern that returns every two to seven years and is expected, as the planet warms, to intensify,\u201d they wrote. <\/p>\n

Wave energy along the shore can run 50% above average during an El Ni\u00f1o, while sea levels can climb 6 to 12 inches \u2014 flooding coastal homes, roads and infrastructure. Coastal erosion increases by more than 69% during extreme El Ni\u00f1o events, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p>\n

During the 1997-98 El Ni\u00f1o, seven Pacifica seaside houses were condemned after powerful waves and storms made them unsafe and irreparable. Seventeen people in the state died as a result of the historic flooding and storms.<\/p>\n

The funding requests for the pier also come as San Francisco sees its highest summer water levels<\/a> ever. On Saturday, the National Weather Service recorded levels 1.83 feet above normal high tide. Early Monday morning, the popular Pier 14 along the city\u2019s Embarcadero waterfront was submerged. <\/p>\n

High surf along the coast <\/a>killed a young girl in Laguna Beach, and hundreds of people have been rescued at Newport Beach.<\/a> Water stranded a hiker along the cliffs<\/a> of San Francisco\u2019s Presidio \u2014 requiring a seven-hour rescue mission that ultimately left the hiker and a rescuer injured as the waves crashed them into the rocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis stretch of coast has been a continuous coastal emergency declaration for almost 10 years due to the repeat damage of storms in recent El Ni\u00f1o years,\u201d the mayor of Pacifica, Christine Boles, said. <\/p>\n

Pacifica has been planning for climate change for years, she said. But climate change is outstripping those efforts, and without financial and regulatory support from the federal and state governments, the battle will be all but lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a historic El Ni\u00f1o supercharges the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco experiences record high seasonal sea levels,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[23674,5727,23677,5711,23323,9262,8,3081,9,2473,23675,415,23676,148,3187,7,7472,1349],"class_list":["post-41543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-california-pier","tag-city","tag-community-member","tag-el-nino","tag-elevated-sea-level","tag-funding","tag-headlines","tag-infrastructure","tag-news","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-pacifica","tag-people","tag-san-francisco-experience","tag-state","tag-storm","tag-top-stories","tag-wave","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116764960583590958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}