The Pacifica Pier is becoming an historic artifact before our very eyes
by Chris Hunter
What many people are only learning now, in addition to the official name of the pier, is that it was built to carry a sewer outflow pipe from the Sharp Park Sewage Plant deep into the Pacific Ocean in 1973.
That purpose created what’s called an “enterprise fund” which paid for city maintenance of the pier itself. When Pacifica built a brand-new sewage plant 26 years ago and put it in the Rockaway Quarry, the city didn’t need that outflow pipe since the new water treatment plant directed its treated sewage into the ocean through the Rockaway Creek. The enterprise fund went to the Calera Creek Water Recycling Plant instead of the pier outflow system. Because it was more highly treated at the tertiary level, the new outflow could run directly into the ocean instead of being piped a half mile out. No other dedicated fund to maintain the pier was ever created, although various grants and public works budgets have helped to some degree. A $19 million repair need was identified in recent years, but was not funded.
After it was built, the concrete pier immediately became a very popular fishing and tourism destination, in addition to its municipal purpose. It’s free to fish and drop crab nets off the pier, so you can easily imagine how successful that lure became through the years. You need a fishing license to fish from the beach. In the 1990s, Pacifica saw more salmon catches than just about any public pier in the world. It made it into National Geographic in 1995 when a thousand salmon were caught in one day.