Capitola Lays the Groundwork for Cliff Drive Adaptation

The Commission approved the first phase of the City of Capitola's coastal hazards planning, an LCP amendment focused on the Cliff Drive corridor. Cliff Drive is one of the main routes into Capitola Village and an essential evacuation route, and it sits atop 40- to 60-foot bluffs that have been eroding since the 1960s. The amendment updates the City's decades-old Land Use Plan to reflect current sea level rise science and sets the ground rules for how the City will eventually protect the corridor.

Surfrider submitted a comment letter in support, with several recommended refinements. Central Coast staff had already been pressing the City on most of these points, and Surfrider's letter helped move a few over the finish line. Staff worked through each point with the City and Surfrider and issued an addendum adopting two changes.

First, the Commission struck override language from a Cliff Drive policy that could have been read to let an armoring project skip the City's own armoring rules, which are stronger than the Coastal Act baseline. Any armoring along Cliff Drive now has to clear those tests, including proving it is the least damaging feasible option and fully mitigating impacts to the beach and public access.

Second, staff confirmed in the findings how the term "existing structure" will be read under this LCP. Consistent with the recent Casa Mira court decision, armoring may protect only structures built before the Coastal Act took effect in 1977 and not redeveloped since. Staff also confirmed that the coastal-dependent-use justification for armoring is applied sparingly, that roads and parking lots generally do not qualify, and that in Capitola it likely reaches only the California Coastal Trail. Staff extended that commitment statewide, which gives ActCoastal and the public a useful reference in future armoring fights well beyond Capitola.

Surfrider's remaining suggestions, including a definition of "redevelopment" and monitoring and removal requirements for armoring, were deferred to the City's more comprehensive phase two update. The City has acknowledged that its 50-year setback standard is on the low end statewide and agreed to revisit it.

Capitola is a small city, but it faces the same choices confronting shoreline communities up and down the coast: how to protect aging infrastructure without sacrificing the beaches, surf, and public access that make the coast worth protecting. This amendment is an early step, and it bends toward protection. It keeps armoring decisions inside a strong set of rules, locks in a narrow reading of who qualifies for armoring, and commits the City to a fuller adaptation plan to come.

That larger phase two effort, which the City intends to fund through the Ocean Protection Council's sea level rise grant program, is where the harder questions get decided. Surfrider and the coalition will stay engaged as that work moves forward.

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