Replacement for Scripps Pier Should Be Ready in Early ’88

Ground was broken Thursday on a $3.95-million pier that will replace the deteriorating and storm-beaten Scripps Pier.

About 65 descendants of the Scripps family, joined by officials from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, local and state government officials, watched Ellen Revelle, the grandniece of Ellen Browning Scripps, use a gold oceanographic coring device in the official ground-breaking ceremony on the beach in La Jolla. The coring device is often used by divers to collect sediment samples.

The new, state-financed pier will be 1,102 feet in length, 84 feet longer than Scripps Pier. The new pier, which will be concrete, will also be 2 feet wider than the structure it will replace. It will take about 10 months to build, said Tom Collins, assistant director for administration at Scripps.

The new structure, which will be named Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier, also will include a new water-supply channel, which will be installed beneath the deck. The new channel will allow an increase in seawater pumping capacity from about 800 gallons per minute to 1,200, Collins said.

Additionally, a new pump will be able to reach deeper into the ocean to retrieve cold seawater, vital for lab researchers, Collins said.

When the new pier is ready, the 71-year-old pier will be razed, along with its current 1,000-foot-long channel, in which about 1.8 million gallons of ocean water is pumped daily to the institution’s research laboratories and aquariums.

Scripps officials and oceanographers considered the old pier an integral part of the institution’s livelihood, but last year conceded that it could no longer withstand the punishment of fierce waves and would eventually collapse, destroying the institution’s seawater supply system.

Collins acknowledged that there is still concern because the old pier needs 10 months more to survive possible storms while the new pier is built.

“The best I can say on that is that I lose a lot of sleep on each storm that comes,” Collins said. He added, however, that the school has an emergency response team trained to react if the seawater supply is cut.

Scripps also has made arrangements for emergency pumps to be used in case the old flume is inoperable.

Construction for the pier will be handled by a Utah contractor, Kiewit Pacific Co.