State’s Quake Threat Finding Criticized : Development: Its geologist recommends against designating fault as active, despite experts’ warnings. Critics say property values are being placed above safety.

Despite warnings by nearly a dozen experts that a fault running the length of Malibu poses a significant earthquake threat, a geologist for the state has recommended against designating the fault as active under a law meant to tightly regulate construction in areas of seismic danger, The Times has learned.

The recommendation is unwelcome news for slow-growth advocates who had hoped that a tough stance by the state would enhance public safety and might curtail development.

Critics contend that the recommendation shows the state cares more about protecting property values than safety. They say it also shows that the seismic safety program is compromised by the state’s heavy reliance on data from private geologists, whose livelihood depends on getting jobs from developers.

Several geologists who work in Malibu say that high real estate prices and the potential for high profits if the land is developed place intense pressure on them to issue favorable seismic reports on properties they inspect.

Typical is the experience of geologist Jeffrey Johnson, who three times in recent years has found evidence of recent seismic activity in trenches at Malibu construction sites. When he told his clients what he suspected, he said, he was fired before he could conduct tests that would have borne out his suspicions.

“They weren’t interested in that kind of news,” he said. “Not with their projects at stake.”

Johnson was one of 12 experts invited in 1990 by the California Coastal Commission to share their views on whether the Malibu Coast Fault, a complex network of faults running beneath the community, is active. All but one said they thought it was.

Some said it could produce a death-dealing quake of magnitude 6 or 7 that could bury parts of Pacific Coast Highway and send landslides crashing into houses. Some areas, they said, were susceptible to soil liquefaction, a condition in which earthquake pressure causes the ground to tremble violently and turns loosely packed soils into a liquidlike goo, usually with great structural damage.

It may be a year or more before state officials make a decision about the fault, but the recommendation by Jerry Treiman, staff geologist for the state Division of Mines and Geology, will have a strong bearing on the outcome.

Treiman, who began his investigation after the Coastal Commission urged the state to study the fault in 1990, has concluded that only a half-mile-long branch of the fault in Latigo Canyon qualifies as a “special studies zone” under the state’s Alquist-Priolo Act. The law, passed after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, requires the state to designate and then map special studies zones along active faults in California.

The finding is contained in an internal report prepared for officials at the Division of Mines and Geology, the contents of which were confirmed by several sources, including an official at the agency.

Some geologists familiar with Malibu say they are concerned about Treiman’s recommendation.

Vincent Cronin, a professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has done extensive work in Malibu, said the finding, left unchanged, gives a clean bill of health to a fault system widely regarded as dangerous.

“If that fault were in Death Valley, it would have been designated under Alquist-Priolo a long time ago,” Cronin said.

Former State Geologist James R. Slosson, who headed the Mines and Geology division in the 1970s, agreed. “The bottom line is the damn fault is active,” he said. “It’s going to cause a lot of shaking and a lot of destruction and some death.”

Officials at the Division of Mines and Geology have shrugged off the criticism.

“This is an ongoing process,” said Earl Hart, the senior geologist who supervises the agency’s Alquist-Priolo investigations. “We will continue to evaluate what we do, and politics won’t enter into it.” A final decision on the matter rests with the current state geologist, James F. Davis.

There are nearly 500 special studies zones statewide, but critics say that except for a few obvious locations, such as along the San Andreas Fault, many are in isolated areas where there is little development pressure.

Under the law, construction of high-occupancy buildings, such as schools, hospitals and commercial projects, is prohibited within 50 feet of the trace of an active fault. A trace is where a fault intersects the earth’s surface. An active fault is defined as one where there is evidence of earth movement within the last 11,000 years. The law also requires sellers to disclose to prospective buyers that their property is within such a zone.

In Malibu, where as many as six faults stretch for miles beneath astronomically priced real estate, developers and real estate professionals are skittish about the law.

“When you talk about special studies zones, the perception is that property values take a nose dive,” said one real estate broker, who did not want to be identified.

It was after hearing Johnson and the other geologists describe why they consider the fault dangerous that the Coastal Commission, which regulates development along the coast, requested that the state consider zoning it under Alquist-Priolo.

Later, in giving the go-ahead to investigate the fault, State Geologist Davis said that only the Whittier Fault had a higher priority as a possible special studies zone in Southern California. A 5.9 magnitude quake centered near Whittier killed three people and caused $368 million in damage in 1987.

The evaluation, under Treiman’s supervision, took place from May to November, 1991.

In an interview, Treiman said the work relied heavily on reports from private geologists, as well as aerial photographs and his own observations. He said that although future research may show the fault to be active, there is not enough evidence now to designate it as such.

“I have to ask myself, is (the fault) sufficiently well-defined, and can it be determined to be sufficiently active?,” he said. “Those are the criteria spelled out in the law.”

Some geologists insist that there is plenty of evidence to justify zoning the fault under Alquist-Priolo. Others, although they agree that the fault is active, say that zoning it as such would be difficult because of the way the law is written. But even some who take such a position say the state appears to have gone out of its way to accommodate development interests in Malibu.

“They are absolutely ignoring evidence,” said Malibu geologist Don Michael. “They’re saying because we don’t have any specific new evidence we can’t say (the fault) is active. But that’s an approach they haven’t used anywhere else.”

Former State Geologist Slosson expresses a similar view. “I know places in Compton on the Newport-Inglewood Fault that are more difficult to define using the (state’s) criteria than what you have in Malibu,” he said. “It didn’t keep them from zoning (declaring the fault active) down there.”

The Malibu Coast Fault is not a single strand, but a complex web of faults that rises from the ocean and stretches almost literally from one end of town to the other. The fault zone’s main trace comes ashore near Carbon Canyon in eastern Malibu, then parallels Pacific Coast Highway westward for about 15 miles before returning to sea beyond Point Dume. Along the way, it crosses the heart of the commercial area near the Malibu Civic Center.

The fault has been getting in the way of construction projects for years.

The discovery of a splay, or section, of the fault in Corral Canyon in 1964 spelled the end of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s bid to build a nuclear power plant there.

In 1977, General Motors Corp. canceled plans to build a think tank for its design engineers on a site near Pepperdine University after geologists found evidence of recent seismic activity there.

In 1989, at the urging of the Coastal Commission, Pepperdine amended its long-range development plan to ensure that future buildings would be located away from a section of the fault that bisects the campus.

While much is known about the fault, there is little evidence to establish for certainty the age and extent of earth movements along it, factors that figure prominently in the state’s Alquist-Priolo investigations.

Under the law, a fault warrants special studies zone designation if there is evidence of Holocene surface displacement--meaning it has occurred in the last 11,000 years--along one or more of its segments or branches.

There are two spots in Malibu where Holocene movement is not in dispute. Some geologists say the evidence from those two locations is enough to show that the entire fault is active and should be zoned accordingly.

One place is in Latigo Canyon, where evidence of recent earth movement was found in 1989 during construction of a house, and where the state has recommended a special studies zone.

The other spot, which the state did not recommend for zoning, is the GM site. Although the geologists who studied the site concluded that the earth had shifted there less than 6,000 years ago, Treiman said he did not recommend it as a special studies zone because it is not sufficiently well-defined.

“It would essentially be a dot on the map,” he said. “Under the law, for us to zone it, we would have to show (the fault) going somewhere.”

Not everyone agrees.

“You have one clean break that comes across there,” said Richard McCarthy, formerly the geologist for the Coastal Commission. “I would think it would be easy to zone.”

But even some geologists who accept the state’s rationale for not recommending that the site be zoned as active say that a more fundamental problem with the approach the state has taken in Malibu rests with the law itself.

Alquist-Priolo, these experts say, was written with strike-slip faults such as the San Andreas in mind, where surface ruptures are common and fault traces are easy to identify.

The Malibu Coast Fault, however, is a thrust fault, caused by blocks of earth moving up and over each other deep within the earth. Thrust-fault ruptures often dissipate before they reach the surface. They are thus harder to locate and their movements harder to measure.

Critics also say there may be a flaw in the law’s implicit assumption that faults that have moved in the last 11,000 years are more hazardous than those that have not. Neither the fault responsible for the 1971 Sylmar quake nor the fault linked to the 1983 Coalinga earthquake had exhibited movements in the last 11,000 years, they said.

Another complaint is that the law’s primary aim is to protect against damage caused by fault rupture, even though fault rupture accounts for less than 5% of earthquake damage. The greater hazards posed by ground-shaking, landslides and liquefaction are not addressed by the law at all.

The devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, for example, which killed 63 people and caused an estimated $8 billion damage in the Bay Area, occurred along a thrust fault--and almost none of the damage was attributable to fault rupture.

“We have . . . a gap between what most scientists know or strongly believe to be true with respect to faults such as Malibu, and what the state is willing or capable of acknowledging by holding to a very strict interpretation of the law,” said geologist Slosson.

“Any way you slice it, the public in communities such as Malibu are not being well-served,” he added.

The law itself has been weakened several times.

Under pressure from the real estate industry, the Legislature amended it in 1975 to exempt mobile homes, condominium conversions and single-family houses that are not part of a subdivision. The width of the zones within which geologic studies were required was reduced in 1977 from 660 feet on either side of a fault trace to 500 feet.

And in perhaps the clearest signal of how the law has been defanged, the names of the affected zones were changed from “geologic hazard zones” to “special studies zones.”

Critics say that for the Alquist-Priolo program to be truly effective the state needs to do more of its own research and rely less on data from private geologists.

“You could spend $1 million digging trenches in Malibu and it wouldn’t be long until you had your Holocene evidence,” said one geologist, who asked not to be identified. “The state doesn’t do any of that.”

Some experts also say privately that, regardless of what the state decides, Malibu residents would be better served if local officials moved ahead with a law of their own to require tougher seismic standards for new construction throughout the city.

As with most Alquist-Priolo investigations, the one in Malibu relied primarily on the accumulated reports of engineering geologists whose livelihoods depend largely on developers.

Some geologists acknowledge that some in the profession have been known to look the other way upon encountering seismic evidence that would have a negative impact on their clients.

Land use experts say that developers who suspect they have hazards on their property often are tempted to engage in “geology shopping,” knowing that if one geologist won’t give the project a clean bill of health, chances are another one will.

Although this inherent conflict of interest is not unique to Malibu, several geologists who work in Malibu, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the area’s high real estate prices make the problem especially acute. Other people familiar with the high-stakes politics of development in Malibu say the situation is a recipe for trouble.

“I’ve heard enough stories about geology reports being buried, and geologists being fired, to make me believe the problem is serious,” said Coastal Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld, who lives in Malibu. “It puts people in a scientific profession in the position of being used-car salesmen.”

Cronin, the Wisconsin geology professor, agreed.

“I would say the situation in Malibu could be described as sordid,” he said.

“Here’s the way it works. You do a bang-up job. The client reads your report. It isn’t what he needs. So he says, ‘That’s a nice report. Now you’re fired.’ Then he goes and has breakfast with his buddies, and says, ‘You know, old so-and-so just doesn’t get it. I’d be careful about using him.’ If you’re a geologist trying to feed your family, you feel the squeeze very quickly,” he said.

If a geologist is fired before he completes tests that would confirm evidence of recent earthquake activity, it means his data generally does not become available to the state geologists making Alquist-Priolo investigations. If it does, the data is not complete enough to be granted full consideration.

Johnson, for example, after sharing with the Coastal Commission the observations he made during the three jobs he was fired from, also made the information available to Treiman for the state’s investigation. But because his visual observations of recent seismic activity were not confirmed by carbon-dating tests proving that the ground movement was recent, the state did not find them persuasive.

“We have to go by what’s authenticated,” Treiman said. “For the purposes of the law, we cannot make decisions based on anecdotal evidence.”

As a way to ensure that evidence of earthquake hazards is made public, Glickfeld suggested that geologists should be required to report hazards they observe to local governments in much the same way doctors are required to report certain diseases.

“As long as we’re dependent on reports from engineering geologists in determining what to zone in these (seismic) investigations, the public will be the big loser,” she said.

Others agree. “My own view is that public safety isn’t the main focus of what’s done (in Alquist-Priolo investigations),” said Johnson, who moved to San Diego shortly after his participation on the Coastal Commission panel.

Asked if he believed he would have suffered financially had he not made the move, he replied, “No question about it.”

Experts say the Alquist-Priolo law was written with strike-slip faults in mind, which are easier to identify. The Malibu Coast Fault, however, is a thrust fault, whose ruptures often dissipate before they reach surface. They are harder to locate and measure.

Thrust Fault In a thrust fault, the rubbing of two plates compresses the land, creating stresses in the crust that can only be relieved when one large block moves up and over its neighbor.

The Malibu Coast fault The Malibu Coast fault is really a web of faults that comes ashore in eastern Malibu and stretches across much of the 20-mile-long city before returning to sea west of Point Dume. The dark line represents what geologists generally consider to be the fault’s main trace. Some of the many smaller splays, or branches, of the fault are indicated by broken lines. The Latigo Canyon Splay is the only section of the fault the state has recommended as a “special studies zone” under the 1972 Alquist-Priolo law. Discovery of evidence of recent seismic activity at a site near Pepperdine University in the 1970s forced General Motors Corp. to drop plans to build a research facility.