NORTH LAKEPORT, Calif. – A Lake County Public Works road crew spent Friday clearing tons of damp soil that covered a portion of Hill Road East near the Lakeside Heights subdivision.
The subdivision has been plagued for the last two years by a landslide that has destroyed several homes.
The road below has been closed since Dec. 2 because of concerns over the potential for the landslide to impact the road, as Lake County News has reported.
Those concerns proved well-founded after the early December storm that brought heavy rain and wind to the county.
At that point, the slide topped concrete K-rails and began slopping over onto the road. By January it was in the middle of the road, and the storm the first weekend of this month saturated the soil again, resulting in the earth covering Hill Road.
Not only was it covering the roadway but it also was threatening to push into a small creek on the other side of the road, according to county Road Superintendent Lyle Swartz, who was on the scene supervising the work.
By about 1 p.m. Friday, the crew had removed 40 10-yard dump truck loads of soil and were depositing the loads at another location the county uses for such materials, Swartz said.
“It's just goo,” Swartz said of the soil being taken from the site.
The saturated dirt also was filled with what appeared to be pieces of pipe and other debris, including the remains of torn up tarps and plastic that had been put down in the fall of 2013 to try to keep the slide dry during the rainy season.
Swartz estimated the sagging hillside is composed of about 25,000 yards of soil.
“That's a lot of dirt,” he said, surveying the area.
In his 30 years of working in the area, he's never seen problems like these for that stretch of road. In the past, there has been large amounts of water running off the hill, but not mud, Swartz said.
Getting the one lane of Hill Road East cleared would protect the creek and guard against the potential for backing up water and silt into nearby properties should another big storm hit, although Swartz said none have been forecast.
The crews also are going to have to dig out several sections of K-rail that have been buried by the slide, he said.
The immediate goal, he said, isn't to make the road passable for the public.
“It's not going to open any time soon,” said Swartz.
In December, Lake County Public Works Director Scott De Leon told the Board of Supervisors he was pursuing a state grant to cover 75-percent of the estimated $225,000 cost to install a gabion wall along that portion of Hill Road East.
Gabion walls are made up of a series of baskets filled with stones that allow water to pass through them, De Leon explained.
De Leon told Lake County News on Friday that the grant process is still ongoing.
“We have not heard anything on the grant other than it’s being considered,” he said.
Swartz anticipated the crew would return on Monday to continue clearing the road.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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