> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Stuck in the mud: Battered bluff gets officials’ attention - URL: https://www.smdp.com/stuck-in-the-mud-battered-bluff-gets-officials-attention/ - Published: 2005-01-26T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T06:02:27.000Z - Author: John Wood - Tags: Environment, Pacific Palisades, #archive-import *Mudslides, cracking lead to frequent road closures: compromise beach access* PALISADES PARK — As a new round of rainstorms headed towards Santa Monica on Tuesday evening, officials were closely tracking Palisades Bluff for further signs of cracking and mudslides. The heavy deluge earlier this month saturated the bluff and sent mud, branches and other debris onto the Pacific Coast Highway, the California Incline and Moomat Ahiko Way, which connects PCH to Ocean Avenue by the Santa Monica Pier. The downpour also cracked the bluff in several places, and forced the closure of staircases and paths to the beach. While officials said a major failure was more likely to occur two to three weeks after a storm, when the bluff is drying out, they cautioned motorists to keep abreast of weather updates, adding ongoing slides could be expected. “It’s a long-standing problem,” said James Rosenfeld, professor emeritus of geology at UCLA. “The city of Santa Monica was extremely smart making that a park because it is risky... There are a lot of places in the Palisades that say, ‘Oh, what a wonderful view.’ That’s sort of the idiot way of picking a building site. All those bluffs are unstable and anytime you have a cliff like that, with weak rocks, you’re asking for it.” The bluff, which runs from Santa Monica Canyon to the pier, ranges from 30 to 150 feet in height. It’s comprised of sand, silt and gravel bound together by clay, all washed down from the Santa Monica Mountains between 100,000 and 2 million years ago, according to Don Michael, a Malibu-based engineering geologist consultant. Michael said deep-seeded failures rarely occur in that type of bluff, though rain is still a major concern. “When it gets wet, the clay loses its power to bind the other materials, the silts and the sands and so on — that’s when a failure occurs,” said Michael, who added mudslides are frequent and large slabs of material sometimes come crashing down. “That can make one hell of a mess.” Still, the most significant slides historically have occurred weeks after, not during rainstorms, said Dave Britton, the principal civil engineer at City Hall. “In 1995 and again in 1998, there were two disaster-level storms that the president declared as disasters,” said Britton, who has worked in City Hall for more than 30 years. “Those are very heavy rains and the major sloughing in those storms did not occur in the storm, it occurred weeks later, in the spring as the bluffs were drying out. “Nobody can predict the future,” Britton added. “All we can do is look back to what’s happened in the past.” Britton said officials will re-examine the bluffs two or three weeks after the storms for further signs of cracking and mudslides. Already, several areas with nearby cracking have been marked as off-limits and two beach-access paths have been closed indefinitely. While the path at the end of Broadway has been undergoing renovations for new lighting and other improvements, and may reopen in as little as two to three weeks, the storm-damaged paths at the end of Idaho and Montana avenues will remain closed for several weeks at least, according to Britton. “This is going to require the city getting a contractor in there to clean up this material that’s on both of those paths, and the upcoming rains to subside, before we would consider reopening those to the public,” said Britton, who added pedestrians still could reach the beach via the paths at Arizona Avenue, the California Incline or the pier. The Montana path had been re-opened shortly before the rainy season after undergoing renovations. Though slides were frequent in the recent storm, Britton described the damage to the bluff as relatively minimal, despite an area of concern north of Montana Avenue. He credited a set of vertical pipes which were drilled into the bluff in 1998 with keeping water from running over the face of the bluff and thereby limiting damage. “Since 1998, the sloughing has been less frequent and less severe,” Britton said. “There’s kind of a marked improvement in the frequency of sloughing of the bluff material.” Between 1992 and 2000, City Hall spent upwards of $500,000 on improvements to the bluff, Britton said. Meanwhile, the City Council in April of 2003 pushed ahead plans to help preserve the bluff long term, through such measures as grouting major cavities, adding drainage pipes, spraying a clear binding material on the face of the bluff, and using what are called “soil nails” to hold the bluff together. According to Britton, $5.6 million of the $10.7 million project will be paid for with federal dollars, and the rest by City Hall. The project is currently undergoing its environmental clearance phase and Britton said he expected it to return to the council in April, after which a contractor will be chosen to begin work. In the meantime, Britton said city engineers and maintenance workers will be closely tracking the bluff though the coming storms. “We monitor the California Incline (and the other roadways) for debris and we close (them) as needed, and we also make sure that there’s no substantial area of sloughage,” he said. “With the bluffs, it’s a little bit unpredictable.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 26, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/012605.pdf?ref=smdp.com)