HUNTINGTON BEACH : State Wants to Send Old Pier to Bottom

Burial at sea? That’s the best use for the city’s old concrete pier, which is scheduled for demolition later this year, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.

Department officials are hoping that the city will allow the concrete from the old pier to be used as part of an artificial reef offshore. But the cost of hauling the concrete out to sea has to be considered by the city if it opts to dump the old pier into the ocean.

“It’s feasible. It just costs more,” James Crumpley, project manager for Moffatt & Nichol Engineers, the Long Beach firm in charge of getting a new pier for the city, said Thursday.

Crumpley said the cost of loading concrete chunks into barges and sending them to sea would be considerably more than hauling off the material in trucks to landfills, although he said he does not know how much more.

According to John Grant, a marine biologist with the Long Beach office of Fish and Game, the department has been working for about a year to get the city interested in disposing of the old pier at sea. Grant said the concrete chunks could be barged to an artificial reef being formed about five miles off Bolsa Chica State Beach.

“There is already a state license for that reef, and the concrete could be added to that site,” Grant said.

Conservation officials want more artificial reefs built in the ocean because they become breeding grounds for fish and other marine life.

“Many of the few rocks that were in the ocean off Southern California have been carried away,” Grant said. Man-made reefs, such as the one under construction since 1986 off Bolsa Chica, help make up for the loss of rocks, Grant said.

The old city pier, which has been closed for safety reasons since July, 1988, is scheduled to be torn down in September or October. A new pier is scheduled to open in the spring of 1992. Costs for tearing down the old pier and building the new one have been a problem for the city, which is still short by about $4.5 million of the $12 million price tag.

The city has said it will be seeking bids by early summer for razing the old pier. It will not be torn down, however, until after the Labor Day holiday.