SANTA CRUZ >> After a massive swell broke off about 150 feet of the end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf Dec. 23, 2024, city officials announced Friday that crews plan to remove heavy equipment and woody debris from the sea floor next to the wharf this weekend.

Officials wrote in a press release that crews were set to mobilize equipment Friday before removing the fallen debris and equipment Saturday and wrapping up operations on Sunday. Community members and visitors can expect to see increased activity and the presence of vessels and crews near the south end of the wharf through the weekend. The U.S. Coast Guard and city staff will manage access to affected areas to ensure public safety.

“This complex effort has been delayed until now due to the need for a window of calm sea conditions,” officials wrote in the release. “Favorable marine weather forecasts now allow the operation to proceed.”

The city is working with the Coast Guard and contractor Power Engineering Construction Co. for the debris and equipment removal. The city said it coordinated extensively with multiple local, state and federal agencies, including the California Coastal Commission, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California State Parks, the County of Santa Cruz, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Santa Cruz Harbor.

While wharf businesses will remain open during the operation, the public is asked to stay clear of the work zone and debris areas and to avoid approaching crews or vessels involved in the removal.The Coast Guard requested all beachgoers, swimmers and boaters remain at least 300 feet away from any dive flags. Dive teams will be moving throughout the day, and the position of dive flags will shift as the work progresses. Your cooperation is critical to ensure diver safety.

The 110-year-old wharf remained closed until Jan. 4 after crews located the heavy equipment that sank to the ocean floor using sonar, and an engineer assessed the structure to ensure that it was safe. The city has already removed one of the pieces of lost equipment, a skid steer, from the ocean floor. But a 20-ton crane is still sitting under about 30 feet of water, roughly 150 feet southeast of the wharf. About 300 pilings from the wharf were lost to the ocean Dec. 23 alongside other debris.

In April, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to spend $100,000 to hire Moffat and Nichol, a Long Beach-based engineering firm, to draw up plans for a $1 million partial repair. The design, chosen from five alternatives, would replace lost wooden pilings and about 1,100 feet of the roughly 15,200 square feet of decking that fell into the ocean during the storms. The plan also would rebuild one sea-lion viewing hole and replace some lost parking spaces.

The goal is to put the job out to bid in July and start construction in October, finishing by early 2026, said Tony Elliot, Santa Cruz’s city parks director, who is overseeing the project.