Home Care In Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Rancho Palos Verdes has removed 585 million gallons of groundwater as crews prepare the unstable hillside for winter storms.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA — Nearly 600 million gallons of groundwater have been pumped from the sprawling landslide complex in Rancho Palos Verdes over the past two years, as city officials work to limit further movement and prepare the unstable hillside for another rainy season.

According to the city's Oct. 21 administrative report, approximately 585 million gallons of water, equivalent to 1,794 acre-feet, have been extracted through its deep dewatering well program since September 2024.

The wells are part of an extensive effort to stabilize the Greater Portuguese Bend-Ancient Altamira Landslide Complex, where groundwater has contributed to shifting terrain, damaging homes, roads and infrastructure. Removing water from deep underground is intended to reduce the pressure that drives the landslide, although the operation does not mean the ground has stopped moving.

Of the original 11 wells installed by the city, nine remained in service as of Oct. 21, with eight operational. The ninth had been redrilled and was awaiting a new pump and electrical activation, which officials expected to complete by the end of that week. The report did not confirm whether that work was subsequently completed.

Meanwhile, the city has finished its originally planned preparations for the 2026-27 rainy season, including securing canyon liners, clearing drains, replacing sandbags, filling ground fissures and carrying out erosion-control improvements.

The work began in July and was completed during the first week of October, according to the report. Additional drainage improvements along Palos Verdes Drive South, near the former Wayfarers Chapel and Klondike Canyon, have also been completed.

City officials said those improvements should reduce reliance on pumping operations and lower the risk of road closures during storms. With more rainfall potentially adding groundwater to the unstable hillside, city staff and geologists are evaluating whether further protective measures will be needed.

The pumping and drainage projects form part of Rancho Palos Verdes' continuing response to the landslide emergency, with officials monitoring conditions as work proceeds. Additional information about the landslide and ongoing remediation efforts is available through the city's land movement updates.

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California’s coastal cliffs are retreating. The rate of this retreat, researchers say, varies across the coast

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The cliffs that comprise much of California’s coastline are constantly being reshaped by rain, waves, and other geologic forces. The erosion of cliffs threatens critical infrastructure such as highways, railways, homes, park lands, public access points, and more.

Therefore, it is important to monitor and track change occurring along the coast. Previous cliff erosion rates were a decade old. To address this issue, researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography collected new airborne lidar in 2023 and developed new cutting-edge approaches to map cliff erosion and retreat. Using these approaches, they recently measured how California’s coastal cliffs changed between 2016 and 2023 and found that change was highly uneven. In some cliff retreat hotspots, the area of land loss over the seven-year period exceeded 800 dump-truck loads for every yard of shoreline.

Their findings, published in the journal International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, improve the understanding of California’s coastal geology and provide a framework for systematic statewide cliff monitoring. And with a very strong El Niño expected to threaten the California coastline this winter, understanding the health of California’s cliffs and erosion hot spots can help with coastal management and preparation.

California’s coastal cliffs are of great interest to both scientists and the public. Roughly 70% of the California coast is made up of coastal cliffs. In addition to threatening coastal infrastructure and public resources, cliff collapse poses a serious threat to beachgoers, so monitoring erosion has become a priority for the State. That’s why Senate President pro Tempore Emeritus Toni Atkins led the effort to secure funding, with support from the California State Legislature, to advance research aimed at better understanding California’s coastal cliffs.

“The cliffs are not stable. They erode and collapse over time,” said Danghan Xie, an assistant professor and coastal geomorphologist at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study, who did the research while a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps. “We’ve seen many sad news stories about fatal cliff landslides. It’s unpredictable and a significant hazard to the coastal community.”

Addressing these safety and infrastructure issues requires a better understanding of how California’s coastline is changing and how geologic processes affect it. California’s coastal cliffs had previously been surveyed from airplanes using lidar in 2016.

Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing technology that uses a laser scanner to create precise, three-dimensional models of the Earth's surface. However, limited statewide cliff information has been available since then. To provide a new statewide snapshot, Scripps scientists collected new airborne lidar along the California coast in 2023.

The rates of cliff top retreat vary alongshore with retreat hotspots mostly located in Central and Northern California, with some areas experiencing retreat rates exceeding 70 feet per year, such as the Lost Coast Headlands in Humboldt County where a landslide occurred involving over 1.4 million cubic yards of rock and soil.

“70 feet per year is a lot, over the seven-year study period that is more than the length of a football field,” said Adam Young, a coastal geomorphologist at Scripps and co-author of the new study and Principal Investigator of the project. Cliff top retreat rates exceeding 10 feet per year were also observed in the King Range, Redwood National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, Big Sur, near Martins Beach, Vandenberg Space Force Base, El Capitan State Beach, and Palos Verdes. Statewide, 65% of cliffs showed a measurable change above the study thresholds.

Knowing where and the rate at which cliffs are crumbling is crucial for coastal planning and management. That’s why Young and his colleagues have created a California Coastal Cliff Erosion Viewer website where all of this information is available to the public – one they plan to update as more information becomes available.

“This monitoring program is collecting lidar twice a year throughout the state of California, and we are using the data to update the rates on an annual and seasonal level,” said Young. “A detailed time series of cliff changes does not exist in many areas, and this makes it hard to build better predictive models. This project creates updated routine systematic data for improved coastal planning.”

While plans are in place to track changes related to El Niño this winter, funding for the project ends in 2027.

Additional study authors include Luc Lenain, who was co-Principal Investigator, and Hironori Matsumoto of Scripps, and Zuzanna Swirad from the Polish Academy of Sciences.

With strong Super El Niño storms expected to hit the coast this winter, Rancho Palos Verdes has been working to mitigate potential impacts that could worsen the substantial land movement some areas of the city have dealt with in recent years.

And on Monday, Sept. 21, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi’s office announced that Rancho Palos Verdes will receive $5 million in state funding to “support its ongoing landslide mitigation efforts at the Greater Portuguese Bend-Ancient Altamira Landslide Complex, and to help prepare for the upcoming El Nino winter storms,” according to a press release.

The city is “deeply grateful to Assemblymember Muratsuchi for adding this allocation to the state budget bill, and for his attention to this issue going back to years before the 2023 acceleration,” Mayor Paul Seo said in a statement. “These funds will go a long way toward helping relieve some of the tremendous financial strain taken on by our small city and its residents in responding to the landslide emergency.”

Since the land movement began several years ago, the city and its residents to employ various methods to slow the shifting, such as installing deep dewatering wells and other winterizations efforts — which are even more critical before the Super El Niño arrives in force.

“Since September 2024, DDWs have extracted approximately 539 million gallons of groundwater, resulting in a substantial reduction in land movement,” the city said in a press release from Muratsuchi’s office. “Preventative measures are ongoing and have placed a significant financial burden on the city.”

In a statement, Muratsuchi referenced Gov. Gavin Newsom’s declaration of a state of emergency in California on Monday because of the “growing threat” of El Niño storms.

“This fall and winter could be dangerous, and Californians should take it seriously,” the governor said in a Monday press release. “Federal forecasters say El Niño is strengthening, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event this fall and winter, and a 75% chance it could reach historic strength. In plain terms, the Pacific is unusually warm, and that warmth can shift storm tracks and load the atmosphere with more energy over the months ahead.”

The $5 million will help out the city with about $15 million in expenditures, which accrued during the 2025-2026 fiscal year, RPV said in Muratsuchi’s press release.

In September 2024, Newsom declared a state of emergency in Rancho Palos Verdes to help increase the response time from utilities after electrical and gas services were shut off to multiple homes in the landslide area.

Since then, the city has sought financial help from the county, state and federal governments because RPV faces substantial budget issues from the land movement, including the cost of continually repairing Palos Verdes Drive South.

Rancho Palos Verdes expects to begin purchasing affected properties in the coming months, but completing all 27 buyouts could take years.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA — More than $54 million in federal grants has been formally awarded to Rancho Palos Verdes, clearing the way for the city to begin purchasing 27 properties severely affected by the ongoing Greater Portuguese Bend landslide emergency.

The funding, announced Wednesday by city officials, marks a significant milestone in a voluntary buyout program designed to help homeowners relocate from neighborhoods where accelerating land movement has damaged homes, roads and utilities.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded the grants following a federal regulatory review, allowing the city to begin acquiring 22 properties selected in the program's first round and five in its second.

However, the purchases have not yet begun. Because federal grants operate on a reimbursement basis, the city plans to acquire properties in small groups, with the first transactions expected in the coming months. Completing all 27 acquisitions and demolishing the structures could take several years.

"Our community has faced historic challenges over the past three years, with many of our neighbors showing incredible resilience," Mayor Paul Seo said. "The Voluntary Property Buyout Program allows us to offer our most vulnerable residents a compassionate path to relocate."

The program was announced in October 2024, when FEMA and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services initially selected Rancho Palos Verdes for $42 million through FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

The city subsequently received notice of another $10.16 million in second-round funding in February 2026, before Wednesday's confirmation that the combined federal awards exceeded $54 million. Properties were prioritized according to safety risks, including whether homes had been red- or yellow-tagged, lost utility service or were located near active land movement.

Under the program, properties are purchased at their pre-disaster fair market value, based on a Dec. 1, 2022, valuation date, before the landslide's acceleration. FEMA covers 75 percent of eligible acquisition and related costs, including appraisals, title expenses and demolition. The remaining 25 percent is provided through a deduction from the seller's final proceeds at closing.

Once purchased, buildings will be demolished and the land permanently restricted to open space, preventing future residential redevelopment.

The city received 85 applications when the program launched in fall 2024, substantially more than the 27 properties covered by the newly awarded grants.

Officials have also submitted a separate $19 million application for a third round of funding, which could finance approximately eight additional acquisitions. That application remains waitlisted, with no guarantee of approval.

Homeowners already on the waiting list will retain their priority rankings. If a selected property owner withdraws, the next eligible property will advance according to its assessed risk.

City Manager Ara Mihranian described the funding award as a significant milestone for residents whose lives and homes have been affected by the landslide emergency.

"We will continue working to expand this program to all those patiently seeking buyouts," Mihranian said.

Selected homeowners will be contacted directly by the city's consultant, Black & Veatch, to finalize appraisal information, review documentation and coordinate escrow and closing arrangements.

Residents seeking additional information can visit the city's land movement information page or email [email protected].

The proposal would fund designs for permanent landslide repairs, with construction targeted for 2027.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA — Rancho Palos Verdes officials are considering a $6 million expansion of an engineering contract to advance permanent repairs across the Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex, where shifting ground has damaged homes, roads and infrastructure.

The proposal, scheduled for consideration Tuesday, Oct. 20, would increase the city's contract with Geosyntec Consultants from $1,100,200 to $7,100,200, allowing the firm to complete engineering designs for two major landslide remediation projects.

According to the City Council staff report, the improvements would include groundwater extraction systems, drainage infrastructure and other measures intended to reduce water infiltration and slow land movement. The contract expansion is part of a broader remediation program that city officials hope will eventually stabilize the landslide complex sufficiently to make ground movement manageable.

The proposed engineering work would support two projects associated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program. Approximately $2.02 million in federal reimbursement is anticipated through Pre-Disaster Mitigation grants associated with the Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon landslide abatement districts.

The remaining approximately $3.98 million would come from the city's Capital Infrastructure Projects Fund. However, federal reimbursement is not guaranteed, and the city is proposing safeguards before committing the additional funds.

Under the proposal, the contract amendment could not be executed until the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and FEMA concur that the procurement arrangements comply with federal requirements. The city would also confirm that expenditures qualify for reimbursement, with staff returning to the council for further direction if those conditions cannot be satisfied.

The $6 million would establish additional contract authority rather than authorize the immediate expenditure of the entire amount. Individual engineering assignments would undergo further review as designs progress.

The broader remediation effort comprises three construction projects, with engineering already underway on the first. Final plans for that project are expected by Dec. 31, 2026, while the city hopes to complete designs for the remaining two by March 31, 2027. That would allow approximately three months to solicit bids and award construction contracts before work begins in July. However, Geosyntec's proposed schedule anticipates completing the designs by May 31, potentially leaving less time for bidding and procurement.

City officials are targeting completion of all three construction projects by December 2028, although the timetable remains subject to engineering progress and construction conditions. The proposed engineering fees also reflect the unusual challenges of working in an active landslide area. According to the staff report, the $6 million proposal represents approximately 9.7 percent of the estimated $61.6 million construction cost for the two projects, above the roughly 5 percent to 8 percent range typically associated with conventional civil infrastructure projects.

Officials attributed the higher costs partly to unstable ground conditions, technical uncertainties and potential litigation risks identified by subcontractors. The city also estimates that launching a new competitive procurement process could take approximately three months, potentially jeopardizing its construction schedule. Nevertheless, federal and state concurrence remains necessary before the proposed Geosyntec amendment can proceed.

The expansion comes amid a costly response to the ongoing landslide emergency. City officials project approximately $74.8 million in landslide-related expenditures between 2022 and June 2027, supported by a combination of local, county and federal funding sources.

The engineering proposal is separate from the city's voluntary property buyout program, for which FEMA recently awarded more than $54 million to acquire 27 properties in the affected area. The City Council will consider the amendment during its regular meeting Tuesday, Oct. 20, beginning at 7 p.m. at Fred Hesse Community Park, 29301 Hawthorne Blvd. Residents can also participate remotely.

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