R.P.V. Seeking Port Funds to Combat Oceanfront Damage

Rancho Palos Verdes has a multimillion-dollar problem in its own back yard: a 1,200-acre landslide that has damaged or destroyed more than 145 homes since 1956. Now, the city is asking its neighbor, the Port of Los Angeles, for help.

When the port undertakes massive projects such as building piers, it must donate money or services for environmental projects such as wetlands restoration. Within reason, officials say, the restoration can take place almost anywhere.

For example, the port is restoring the Batiquitos wetlands in Carlsbad, near San Diego, for an estimated $55 million. Restoring Batiquitos means increasing the fish population, which is a fair trade-off because port construction has destroyed a habitat for young fish, said James Raives, a California Coastal Commission analyst who worked on the restoration.

Rancho Palos Verdes is hoping that the port can donate an estimated $25 million to help halt landslides on the city’s oceanfront property.

“When we first got approval to spend the money in Carlsbad, people asked, ‘Why are you spending port money--Los Angeles money--in San Diego?’ ” recalls Vern Hall, chief engineer at the port.

He added: “Politically, it makes sense to spend port money a little closer to home.”

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Rancho Palos Verdes has lobbied for port money for at least six years, but it had never detailed how the port could help the city.

Last month, however, the City Council, acting as the redevelopment agency, agreed to pay $320,000 of a $1.6-million federal study on how to halt shoreline erosion.

Experts say the erosion is linked to the landslide, so anti-erosion measures would probably double as anti-landslide measures. Possible solutions include dikes, a breakwater, rock walls and gabions--wire cages filled with rocks that buttress the shoreline--said study manager Anna Zacher of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In the past couple of months, port and city officials have renewed talks about having the port pay for such projects in Rancho Palos Verdes.

But before any landslide is halted, or any more millions of dollars are spent, the city must convince local, state and federal officials that such a project is worthwhile.

That’s because the port cannot get “mitigation points” for halting a landslide or simply stopping erosion. The port must restore marine ecosystems replete with plant and animal life, such as the Batiquitos wetlands.

So the city hopes the study will show that erosion has dumped earth into coastal tide pools and buried plant and animal life. Once the erosion is halted, the theory goes, ocean currents will clear out the tide pools and bring them back to life.

“It’s speculation that this is actually going to happen,” said Richard Nitsos, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Fish and Game who has worked on the Batiquitos project.

But Nitsos, and representatives of other regulatory agencies who must sign off on the project, say they are keeping an open mind until the study is completed.

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Nitsos cautioned that even if the city’s theory holds true, there could be one final glitch: the possibility of DDT in the buried tide pools. Montrose Chemical Corp. in Torrance manufactured DDT from 1950 until 1970, and dumped several million pounds of the pesticide into county sewers that emptied into the ocean off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

If DDT is discovered in the area, the city might have to dispose of the contaminated soil.

Besides the Fish and Game Department and the Coastal Commission, other agencies that would probably be involved in a mitigation project include the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and possibly the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The port’s primary concern is the number of mitigation points regulators assign to a project.

But even if the city and the port can get good point spreads, Hall said that a final agreement is probably years away.

The study on erosion will not be completed until January, 1998.