At the Friday morning, Dec. 27, press conference in front of the Santa Cruz Wharf, the city manager said that “we have projects that have been ready to go that could have prevented this most recent collapse.” He then cited delays caused by lawsuits against the city “that have left our Wharf more vulnerable.” The mayor, standing behind him, nodded in agreement.

These statements and their implications are untrue and unfair. To scapegoat a community group for the city’s failure to follow its own 2014 engineering report recommendations to replace the pilings at the end of the Wharf is poor leadership, at the expense of truth and accountability. A brief overview of the facts is in order.

After the 2011 tsunami, the public record shows the city made a grant application to the federal Commerce Department for disaster relief funds, representing that the Wharf had been “severely damaged” by the tsunami. The city’s grant application was approved for almost a million dollars. Somewhere along the way, without addressing the “severe damage,” the money flowed to a San Francisco design firm which drew up the Wharf Master Plan with token community input.

The grant also paid for an engineering report finalized after divers had inspected each of the 4,445 Douglas fir pilings and stringers that provide the strength for the Wharf. That 2014 report confirmed the Wharf had been undamaged by the 2011 tsunami. It concluded that “overall the Wharf is in good condition” thanks to the maintenance work of Wharf crews over the past century. The report stated that 5% of the Wharf pilings needed replacement and provided a map pinpointing their locations. Many were under the Miramar Restaurant, which has since been demolished and those pilings were replaced.

Many of the report’s other cited pilings were at the south end of the Wharf, the site of the recent collapse. None of those pilings have been replaced since the engineering report alerted the city to their dangerous condition. The piling that failed in last year’s storm was also one of those reported as vulnerable in 2014. It was outside the footprint of the Dolphin restaurant and could have been relatively easy to replace.

As for Don’t Morph the Wharf’s lawsuit, recall that the Wharf Master Plan proposed three new 40-foot-tall new buildings, including a “Landmark” building at the now-collapsed southern end which faced strong public opposition. The building — which the city deleted from the Plan last year as a result of the court judgment — would also have resulted in loss of the popular sea lion viewing holes.

In the face of the city’s disregard for proper environmental review, the community group filed a successful lawsuit seeking compliance with state law. Judge Paul Burdick ruled against the city, requiring the city to revise its environmental impact report and Wharf Master Plan to comply. However, at the specific request of Don’t Morph the Wharf, the court order after judgment directed that the replacement of the 5% pilings called out in the Engineering Report, which had never been contested, could proceed unaffected by the judgment, as could all other proposed Wharf maintenance projects.

The city thus has had a decade to replace the defective pilings, wholly unaffected by the lawsuit. The city secured funds to replace the pilings under the Miramar while the lawsuit was pending. Only the south end pilings were neglected. Delay in building the new Wharf Master Plan projects — which will require further strengthening of the Wharf — did not cause the collapse.

In sum, the collapse occurred due to compromised pilings that the city was belatedly addressing in the face of large ocean swells.

Better for the city to admit mistakes and regain public trust than posture about climate change and incite anger toward a community group whose actions were solely in the public interest, as affirmed by the Superior Court, and were not the cause of the current catastrophe.

Gillian Greensite is a 50-year resident of the city of Santa Cruz and a member of Don’t Morph the Wharf!