Difficult path forward for West Cliff Drive

What is more Santa Cruz than West Cliff Drive? After all, the roadway hugging the coastal cliffs is one of the main attractions for locals and tourists alike who can watch on any given day surfers at various breaks along the road, marine life, the glittering Monterey Bay on a sunny day, skaters, bicyclists and pedestrians sharing space along the 2.7-mile long promenade, or ... waves and tides battering the coast.

As we head into another round of stormy weather in this winter of discontent, Santa Cruz city officials face some tough choices about what's next for West Cliff, which saw sections of the roadway fall asunder to waves, tides and water flow, closing parts of West Cliff to twoway traffic for the time being, with the most erosion occurring between Woodrow Avenue and Columbia Street. That section is one-way traffic now as efforts continue to stabilize the road, placing boulders and fabric material to protect the exposed cliff until a permanent solution is settled upon.

But the greater issue is — what's the future hold for West Cliff as sea levels rise and storms intensify?

Sentinel columnist and UC Santa Cruz Earth Sciences professor Gary Griggs — who told reporters, “I've never seen this much damage this quickly in my 55 years here” — put it this way in a recent Sentinel story:

“Mother Nature always bats last. And in the long run, there is nothing we can do to hold back the Pacific Ocean. Everything that we do is just a Band-Aid.”

Santa Cruz's dilemma is faced by other coastal communities as well, since a majority of the state's coast is lined by cliffs many of which are eroding, with studies showing an average of two inches of California's coast falling into the sea every year.

A lot more than two inches fell on West Cliff last month. So what Santa Cruz does about West Cliff erosion may prove a harbinger of what other coastal cities have to do with their cliffside roads and buildings.

The damage from the recent storms to West Cliff will cost $13 million to repair, Santa Cruz City Manager, Matt Huffaker said earlier this month and the costs could escalate in coming years as climate-related damages multiply.

“We can't simply build back in the same way,” Huffaker told reporters.

Then again, it's not as if this latest damage took the city by surprise since work has been underway for several years on the West Cliff Drive Adaptation and Management Plan that among other objectives, would “reduce the costly need for emergency responses” and consider the “inevitable future” of sea-level rise and further erosion. The plan is under review by the California Coastal Commission.

As the city works its way through all this, a local group called “Save West Cliff” has started up, led by, among others, former Santa Cruz Mayor Hilary Bryant.

Bryant told the Sentinel the group was formed to bring awareness to the damage and the repair process and to give community members a venue to voice opinions about West Cliff's future.

There is no one answer that will please everyone, but the main options, other than pouring more money into what will certainly only be a temporary fix, remain making an undetermined section permanently one way (much like East Cliff Drive in the Pleasure Point area) to make room for the retreating coastline, or what seems more unpalatable, closing off the street entirely to automobile traffic.

Bryant told this newspaper last week that a consensus has not yet been reached as community members and city officials continue to weigh in on what they'd prefer for the road and pathway.

We won't be surprised if the first “fix” includes making eroded sections of West Cliff permanently one-way, thus preserving access to residents, even at the cost of tourist parking.

Would that set a precedent for making all of West Cliff one way? Perhaps, but any such solution would have a beneficial outcome for the near future, by keeping the pathway available and accessible to pedestrians, bicyclists and surfers.