RPV Land Movement Shares Key Community Updates – May 7

May 6, 2025 City Council Meeting Discussion Recap

At the May 6 city council meeting, city geologist Mike Phipps gave an update on movement in the landslide area. According to the latest data from April, overall, the land movement continues to decelerate or maintain a steady state in areas that are still moving. Phipps believes this is largely due to significantly below-average rainfall through April, positive effects from winterization measures implemented in the fall, and ongoing dewatering efforts by the city, the Abalone Cove Landslide Abatement District or ACLAD and Klondike Canyon Landslide Abatement District or KCLAD. 

Using a $1.6 million loan from the city, ACLAD has installed: five deep dewatering wells that are removing approximately 158,000 gallons of water per day and two monitoring wells (the wells are not operating 24/7). ACLAD anticipates activating three more dewatering wells in the coming weeks. These wells are targeting the fastest moving parts of the landslide area — in the Altamira and Abalone Cove Landslides — which are moving at a rate of about 4 inches per week. For comparison, at this time last year, the landslide was moving roughly twice as fast and was rapidly accelerating. 

The city’s effective deep dewatering wells at the toe of the Portuguese Bend Landslide have removed 215 million gallons of groundwater at a current rate of about 0.85 million gallons per day. The council allocated another $500,000 toward re-drilling several wells that have sheared or are anticipated to by June 30, 2025.

The council also directed city staff to revise the scope of work on a proposed hydrology and hydraulics study that would identify the source of water, ground and subsurface, contributing to land movement, including water originating outside city limits and from upper watersheds. An updated contract for the revised study will be considered by the council at a future meeting. 

Finally, the council renewed for 60 days the local emergencies in the landslide area and the temporary prohibition of motorcycles, bicycles and other one- or two-wheeled devices along a two-mile stretch of Palos Verdes Drive South. 

Update on Disaster Recovery Appeals

In March, the city formally appealed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s or FEMA decision to deny $37.9 million in disaster recovery funding requested by the city for costs incurred responding to the landslide emergency due to the winter storms in late January and early February 2024. Earlier this week, the city was notified that the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services or Cal OES will not support the city’s appeal. This is due to Cal OES’ position that while the winter storms may have greatly accelerated land movement, what it considers to be pre-existing conditions in the landslide make the city ineligible for reimbursement under the 2024 federal disaster declaration. FEMA District 9 administrator Robert Fenton has 90 days to consider the city’s appeal, Cal OES’ recommendation, and to render a decision. His decision is then appealable to FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Cal OES is also not supporting appeals submitted by ACLAD and KCLAD for their denials of disaster recovery assistance respectively.