First phase of management plan for West Cliff Drive underway

While thousands of people, tourists and locals alike, walk and drive the iconic West Cliff Dr. daily, not many know what lies underneath.

But that’s not the case for others living along the beloved coastline.

“There’s a cave that goes under my neighbors house, right in front, I live right next to West Cliff they live right on West Cliff and it goes back maybe 50 or 100 feet and it impacts and explodes and shakes the whole sandstone layer. And that’s a big time concern,” said Partridge.

There are roughly 6 sea caves at different parts of W. Cliff Dr. that experts say could collapse at any given time. While they have been there for decades, we’re told many still don’t know about them.

“A lot of people are not aware of them, a lot of the caves will go under the walkways, under the road on W. Cliff Dr., some of them are aimed toward the lighthouse here at lighthouse point and Steamer Lane and if they collapse they can really cause a lot of disruptions. Also, beneath a lot of the roadway are infrastructure, utilities, those can also be compromised during a sea cave collapse,” said geomorphologist David Revell.

The city of Santa Cruz said they know with rising sea level W. Cliff Dr. will continue to erode at an accelerated rate if something isn’t done.

Climate action manager Tiffany Wise-West said the city is working on several projects to preserve the beloved stretch of coast.

“All options are on the table at this point from policy which includes are there potential setbacks, when do we need to potentially elevate buildings, is there a set of conditions under which we may need to relocate things, as well as infrastructure. Where potentially do we need Sewalls, are there sea caves that need to be filled in or rectified in some other kind of way. So there are a range of solutions.”

At the Open Streets event on W. Cliff Dr., October 13th the city will have several booths dedicated to sharing information with the community about their findings so far. They said they plan to include the community in each phase of their project.

“We are just finishing up on our first set of focus groups where we are trying to understand how people use the coastline, what their priorities and concerns are going forward and in between each of these phases we will be checking back not only with the public, but with our technical advisory committee.”