Mike Winter lives immediately below the landslide prone hill on the 6200 block of Beach Drive s.w. and, along with city council members, voiced his concerns over a several year delay in fixing the problem to representatives from the Department of Planning and Development (DPD), Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and the City Attorney’s Office in a Seattle City Council meeting on Jan. 25.

“My wife and I and the neighbors around us have been living with the effects of this slide since December 2007,” Winter said during the public comment phase of the meeting. “We live in constant fear of another event and worry not only for our own safety but our adjoining neighbors, the neighbors on the hillside above and the public who use the Beach Drive arterial on a daily basis. If we had even a minor earthquake during a period of heavy rains it could be disastrous.”

The hillside Winter referred to has been unstable and slid several times over the years, ultimately the result of a resident on the hill above that built in a “non-disturbance area,” according to Diane Sugimura with DPD. The City issued a citation to that resident (who was not named) in 2008 for placing fill and building a retaining wall on the south end of the property in a non-disturbance area. Sugimura said the resident signed a Potential Landslide Area Covenant (anyone building in a landslide prone area is required to sign one), but built in the off-limits area anyways.

“Unfortunately, we were not able to gain compliance and ... we referred it to law,” Sugimura said.

The City of Seattle sued the resident in 2008. Three years later, the issue is still not resolved.

Roger Wynne with the City Attorney’s Office briefly explained where procedures stand. He said the city thought they had an agreement in principle, but last week got word that the defendant (non-compliant resident) had pulled out of the agreement and a rumor is swirling that he may be getting a new lawyer who wants to “remove (the case) to Superior Court.” Between the lines, this means the resolution is a distant one.

Winter, in his opening statement to the council, said, “For three years we’ve waited patiently while negotiations to fix the hillside have gone on between the upslope property owner … and the city. It’s been a frustrating period. To us it seems like Nero fiddles, Rome burns. While the city and the property owner fiddle and negotiate, the hillside has continued to deteriorate and the slide are has spread to adjoining properties.”

Winter cited additional problems including a fire hydrant that is nearly buried in mud and debris from the ever-sloughing slope, the cost of recovery from slides whenever they occur, the poor condition of Beach Drive due to water damage and two upslope homes that were recently “yellow-tagged” by the City.

Sugimura explained the two houses were tagged because their decks have become dangerous as the slide deteriorates the land around the deck holdings. According to Winter, those homeowners were told they had until Feb. 11, 2011 to hire a geotechnical engineer, submit plans and finish stabilizing their decks.

“Not 2012, 2013, (but) 2011. They are asked to do something in less than 30 days what the city couldn’t get the property owner where the slide originated to do in three years,” Winter said.

Peter Hahn, SDOT director, said ecology blocks (48 inch high, 8 foot long concrete retaining walls) have been installed on the slide side of Beach Drive to keep mud, debris and excess water from bleeding over onto the roadway and crews remove debris behind the blocks to ensure it doesn’t overflow. He said the blocks have done a good job of containing surface slides.

“The road condition has deteriorated,” he said. “It is not a great road.”

Hahn said SDOT plans to fix potholes on the road and Seattle Public Utilities is going to take care of the fire hydrant submerged in mud (no definitive time lines were given).

Tom Rasmussen, chair of the Seattle City Council, weighed in on the City providing better communication with residents where problems like the Beach Drive slides exist.

“I think the departments know the neighborhood has been really concerned for years and the neighborhood feels like they have not been kept up to date and so I would encourage you, when you have a serious situation like this, to develop a mailing list or communication process to … say, 'Look we are working on this, we know you are concerned and we are trying to get a resolution to this. Please let us know if you have questions,'” Rasmussen said.

“But when a neighborhood is not kept informed and they see things deteriorating, which they are, they really begin to wonder what the City is doing,” he added.

“We should be putting money into fixing the hillside rather than wasting it on lawyers and cleanup for each additional slide that occurs,” Winter said in summary of his public comment. “We need to get a plan in place as soon as possible so a fix can be implemented this year’s dry season.”

“Three plus years is more than enough … we need to fix it now before the whole hillside comes down and no one can afford the cost, either in dollars or human life.”