COMMUNITY NOTICE
(01/24/2025)
COMMUNITY NOTICE From SRA Board:
City Council, Fire Preparedness and
Land Movement Updates
City Council Meeting
Link to the City Council Meeting Video:
https://youtu.be/Pz9qej99tgM
LA County Fires and Peninsula Fire Preparedness:
There was an excellent presentation at the City Council Meeting by LA County Assistant Fire Chief Brian Kane. He went over the events of the recent LA fires. Key things that homeowners can do:
- Fire resistant vents to trap embers – available from Home Depot
- Ready/Set/Go program. Be sure that your home assessments for brush clearing and management have been done.
■ Priorities for the fire department in order are:
- Preservation of life – evacuations
- Property conservation – There are resource limitations. They use 25% rule. If more than 25% of a structure is on fire, they will move on unless it’s an isolated property in which case they will try to prevent spread.
- Perimeter control – containment of the fire margins
- Extinguishment – going back into burn areas to put out remaining fires
- Containment – control line completely around the fire. Very difficult in steep or difficult terrain.
- Terms:
- Control. Fire is no longer advancing
- Knockdown. No visible smoke.
■ Fire department has maintained staffing throughout the other fires in the LA basin, but there is risk of understaffing when there is such widespread need.
■ Water tanks are in place in some communities for fighting fires, but the capacity can be exceeded in such massive fires. Palos Verdes is not supplied by tanks, but by multiple lines of water coming into the area via Cal Water. RPV does have a reservoir that is currently out of action, but the Fire Department does not see this as an essential source of water for fire fighting in our area. There is also a helo pod that is self-filling to provide water for helicopters.
■ There are backup generators to backup generators for water supply. Regular inspection of fire hydrants is done.
■ Genasys is the main warning system for evacuations. If there is an incident, know your Evacuation Zone is most important. The Genasys app can help you identify where you are and what zone you are in.
■ Coordinated evacuations will be essential. If you are in a zone that has been called to evacuate, heed the warning and leave. They advise you not to self-evacuate if your zone has not been called as it will cause traffic congestion.
■ Evacuation routes will be determined by the particular incident so it’s difficult to tell people where to go ahead of time. Hence, connection to the emergency notifications is very important.
■ A reminder that RPV has the Pano AI cameras for early detection of smoke and to facilitate rapid response. There are 3 towers around the peninsula.
■ The City will be looking at getting signage for homes that have pools to alert the Fire Department about water availability. This has been done in other cities. Watch for updates on this.
■ The reserve will be closed during fire risk events, such as Red Tag Warnings.
■ The City does have a residential fire insurance advocacy letter that lists what the City has done to mitigate fire risk. rpvca.gov/fireinsurance is where you can download the letter to send to your insurance company.
There is a proposal to install a 60-foot cell tower at Hesse Park. There will be a session on 1/29 at Hess Park for public comment. This may be a model by which cell service can be extended into other areas that have poor service.
Land Movement
There was discussion about what the build out plan for wells in the land movement area would look like and the relative costs of the build out
■ The full build out would be $150 M dollars for the full plan. To date for the present 6 months of the fiscal year, the City has spent $33M. The entire City Budget is $39M per year. These are background numbers to be taken into account for the discussion. Bottom line is that RPV alone cannot support the infrastructure investment or the recurring operations and maintenance costs.
■ The City and the land abatement districts have been denied their requests for emergency funds for expenses related to the land movement by FEMA. They are being appealed.
■ SCE is planning to re-energize homes in the land movement area. They expect to do this by March/April. There would be $5M needed to bring in lines that could lead to re-energization of the de-watering wells in the preserve by SCE.
■ There are currently 11 deep de-watering wells. DDW8 has sheared recently, but will be back in operation soon. 770 gal/minute total. (Total water removed to date is estimated to be 112 M gallons)
■ Land movement patterns have shown that there is very little to no movement in the Eastern slide area. In the Western area near Abalone cove, it is moving at a rate of 5 inches per week. There is continuing deceleration in the Abalone Cove area. PB Beach club and Klondike Canyon have not been moving.
■ The conceptual build out plan was presented by Geo-Logic (company doing the well drilling). This would be done in phases. As noted above, the full plan would cost about $150M with an uncertain ongoing operations and maintenance cost.
- There would be band of wells and hydraugers at the toe with higher well drilling and hydraugers higher up.
- Lining of all of the canyons and ongoing fissure filling.
- First priority is to do groupings of well in groups of 3. Complete the band of wells at the toe of the slide. This would be 3 clusters of 3 wells into the Abalone Cove slide area (14-16, then 17-22) Costs would be $3.75M for 14-16 and $8M for wells 17-22. There would be operational costs for the existing and added wells. Approximately $5.5M/year for wells 1-11 and $3M for remaining new wells to be done to complete the initial build out.
■ There was a review of City finances and fund balances. The City has previously allocated $14.7M for the existing wells and test borings. Sources of revenue for the City are approx. 100-line items. Sales tax, property tax, transient occupancy tax, permits/frees, interest earnings. There are about 900-line items of expenditures each year. Approx. 50% of operating budget is a policy of the City for a reserve. There are restricted use funds that are limited to specific purposes and not available for other uses.
- Most of the funding for the land movement have come from the CIP fund. $11.2M
- CIP reserves have consumed another $5M
- General fund reserves $6M,
- General fund $3.4 M
- Supervisor Hahn fund $2.2M
■ Projections showing what would happen to 5-year capital improvement projects is additional wells were added. There would be very little fund left for any capital improvement projects. For the rest of the City.
■ Capital programs that were assessed by staff as able to be delayed and the funds that could be available was presented. Total $3.9 M. available from the CIP funds
■ There was discussion in the public comments and City Council discussion about the completion of the first phase and how to deal with subsequent phases of land movement control.
■ City Staff recommended maintenance of the current 11 DDW wells using the $3.9M from the CIP funds to maintain these. There was not discussion about a sustainable funding source for ongoing maintenance into the future.
■ Ultimately a motion was made:
- To accept the staff plan of what a full build would be into the record
- To accept the staff budget report into the record
- To provide additional funding to ACLAD via either a loan or grant up to $5M (including loan already given) to drill or move existing wells into the Abalone Cove area with ongoing O&M to be on ACLAD. This is due to the reality that ACLAD can drill wells at a lower cost than the City due to their standing and a state Land movement abatement district. City Staff will explore whether this should be loan or grant.
- To provide an additional $2M of funding to support operations and management of the existing wells to the end of the year and provide fissure filling for Altamira Canyon new fissures that have opened. The funding for this will come from deferred Capital Improvement Projects (CIP Funds)