Impacts from winter storms still being felt at Moss Landing Harbor

Winter is over and El Nino is fading, but there’s still impacts being felt. This past winter has been one to remember. Powerful storms beat up the coastline on the Central Coast. One of those areas is the Moss Landing Harbor. Several docks there are in need of immediate repair and there’s also erosion along the visitors dock.

“Those storm surges combined with the wind and the weather, it just was too much for those docks and the same with the erosion,” said Linda McIntyre, the Moss Landing Harbormaster.

The damaged docks are unusable, reducing the harbors capacity by about fifteen boats. And with the salmon season opening on Saturday, that’s bad news.

“And it’s caused us to have to turn away some of those boats that would ordinarily go into those slips. And with salmon season starting, that’s precious real estate we’re not able to use,” said McIntyre.

The good news however, is that vessel traffic in and out of the harbor won’t be effected. Now waiting for a Caltrans encroachment permit because the harbor is so close Highway 1, the harbormaster said it’s been a bit of a challenge fixing the docks and erosion.

“We’re just working on it almost on a daily basis to try and get whatever we can resolved as quickly as we can,” said McIntyre.

The damages should be fixed within the next six weeks.