Local News in Brief : Huntington Beach : Sister City in Japan Pledges Funds for Pier

Sister city Anjo, Japan, has pledged $3,000 to help pay the multimillion-dollar cost of rebuilding the storm-ravaged Huntington Beach Pier.

Toward the same effort, Anjo also has ordered 300 T-shirts and sweatshirts that are being sold by a citizens fund-raising group, Persons Interested in Expediting Reconstruction (PIER). That group says it has raised $9,000--a total of $30,000 has been pledged--since heavy surf washed away 250 feet of the pier, as well as the End Cafe, on Jan. 17.

Cost to repair the pier, a Huntington Beach landmark since 1914, has been estimated at $4 million to $10 million. The county will contribute $250,000 and state and federal disaster aid also is expected.

The Huntington Beach City Council voted 6 to 0 Monday night (Grace Winchell was absent) to spend $56,135 for an engineering study to assess the damage and recommend whether to repair the pier or scrap it and build another one.

Other questions to be addressed by the engineering firm of Fluor Daniel include how to rebuild the pier, whether it should be restored to its pre-storm length of 1,830 feet, whether shortening it would affect wave action enough to create sand-erosion problems, and precisely how much state and federal disaster aid will be available.

Fluor Daniel, a subsidiary of the Fluor Corp. in Irvine, is expected to conclude its study in three months.