Posted on November 14, 2017
By Jessica A. York, Santa Cruz Sentinel
As the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor shifts into full gear in its annual fight to keep the entrance channel open, a new challenge has sprung up this year.
Santa Cruz County’s ongoing $4.7 million beach improvement and seawall project is “dead center” in the harbor’s dredged-up sand disposal site, at the adjacent Twin Lakes State Beach, said Santa Cruz Port Director Marian Olin.
“They can’t move their fence and we can’t go outside our dredge disposal zone. So we’re going to be dredging on the perimeter of their fence,” Olin said. “We can’t really get out of each other’s way.”
The county’s Twin Lakes Beachfront Improvement Project kicked off in September 2016, with an initial completion goal of this past summer. However, after construction was put on hold from May through October, the latest end date is estimated to stretch through April, weather permitting, said Betsey Lynberg, county director of capital projects. Contractor Graniterock, out of Watsonville, proposed a design change for the project’s seawall that resulted in an improved design and a delayed approval process, Lynberg said.
This week, construction-related chain-link fencing lined much of the beach’s perimeter from the harbor parking lot up to Schwan Lagoon and out to about halfway down to the ocean.
“We weren’t building this coastal structure over the summer and I can say that port district businesses that I have spoken to are glad of that. When you can see what that could have been like, because we have such a popular beach, that could have been really difficult for businesses as well as visitors to the area who wouldn’t have had the same access,” Lynberg said. “There are benefits, although I know it does require coordination with the dredging operation now. To a lot of the people who use that beach, it was beneficial not to have that large hole and berm all summer long.”
Sand swept along the Monterey Bay coastline from Santa Cruz toward Capitola is snagged by the harbor mouth each year, requiring annual dredging work. In the winter, sediment released into the ocean up coast, from the San Lorenzo River, can add extra strain. Last winter, in December and January alone, the equivalent of more than 10,000 dump trunks worth of sand were washed into the bay.
As harbor mouth dredging and federal entrance channel work is set to begin as early as Monday and the commercial Dungeness crab fishing season opens Wednesday, Santa Cruz Port District officials will seek to keep vacuuming ocean-delivered sand to a depth of up to 20 feet. The most recent harbor depth sounding available, taken Oct. 24, showed the entrance at 15 to 17 feet at its deepest. Olin said last week that the entrance is “starting out a little shallow.” Dredging already has begun in the back of the harbor, where some 16 berths remain unusable due to last year’s sand buildup.
“The crew’s working extra hours, they’re working longer weeks. They decided to try and do that up front to try and get ahead of it,” Olin said. “It’s always a full court press this time of year. Because we know that crab season is coming, we know we have charter operators, we know we have bookings — they want to get out. Starting in November, you have weather and seas and the entrance always takes priority. It’s not shoaled, but it’s not design depth.”
For the previous two winters, the harbor struggled with keeping ahead of the shoaling, as repeated rainstorms slammed the region. In both years, the district sought and received dredging permit extensions to continue addressing buildup.
The district received its new $5 million dredge, named the “Twin Lakes,” last year and also had to wade through “start-up” issues with the equipment, Olin said. There may be challenges with the new dredge again this year to work through, she said, but a new engine on the district’s smaller diesel-powered dredge “Squirt” will allow harbor crews to operate both machines simultaneously without exceeding regional air quality control limitations.
Olin said that while the neighboring construction work carries significant impacts on businesses, employees and harbor users, “the end result is something that we’re excited about.”
Until construction work blocked parts of East Cliff Drive between Lake and Seventh avenues, visitors parked their vehicles haphazardly along the shoulder and even up on the beach.
“It’s going to improve the pedestrian and bike way, it’s going to formalize the parking down there,” Olin said. “There will be some parking loss, but it will formalize it.
I think that the project, ultimately, will be beneficial for the area.”
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
