Rancho Palos Verdes city leaders to hear updates on landslide movement Tuesday night

As land movement in the Portuguese Bend area of the Palos Verdes Península continues to threaten public safety, the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council is set to get updates Tuesday night from the city's geologist with the latest data.  

The council will also look at information gathered from an emergency $10 million project in place to slow land movement, which discovered "a much deeper active slide plane than previously thought." 

Efforts to stay on top of the land movement grow more challenging, as an earlier report by the city's geologist showed up to a foot of land movement per week in recent months. 

Winter rains led to accelerated land movement which cracked foundations, broke gas, sewer and water lines, and compromised some utility poles. 

The city has been under a local state of emergency since October, leading to some structures tagged as unsafe and the dismantling of Wayfarers Chapel due to extensive damage.  

The utility company SoCalGas cut off natural gas service to about 135 homes in the Portuguese Bend area on July 30 to "protect public safety." 

"Due to worsening land movement, SoCalGas has determined it is unsafe to continue providing natural gas service in your community," the utility company said. "We apologize for this unexpected disruption of service. This dynamic situation requires we take immediate action to protect public safety." 

They claimed that despite a considerable amount of measures taken to fix the situation, the constantly moving land threatens public safety. 

Trying to manage it all, city leaders invested in a $10 million emergency hydrauger project.  

City staff will also provide updates Tuesday night on the two hydraugers, called dewatering wells, which are underground drains that extract water contributing to land movement. 

"Because test boreholes drilled as deep as 350 feet into the earth have confirmed the presence of a much deeper active slide plane than previously thought, the council will be asked to consider expanding the scope of the project to include the Abalone Cove, Klondike Canyon, and Beach Club Landsides, and to explore additional strategies to slow the movement in a united and coordinated effort with the Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon Landslide Abatement Districts (ACLAD and KCLAD)," the city of Rancho Palos Verdes wrote in a Landslide Remediation Update.