La Conchita Residents Sue County Over Slide Debris

La Conchita residents--tired of tons of mud and debris still clogging their streets nearly a year after a massive mudslide blanketed part of the seaside community--have gone to court to force Ventura County to take some responsibility for cleaning up.

The March 4 slide destroyed nine homes and damaged dozens more.

County officials maintain that the legal dispute is between the owners of the damaged homes and La Conchita Ranch Co., which owns the hill that collapsed. More than 80 property owners have sued the company, charging the citrus grower with negligence.

But they contend in their suit filed Tuesday that the tons of mud and debris blocking a large portion of a roadway are the county’s responsibility to clear.

“We are not saying the county is responsible for the slide,” attorney John F. “Mick” McGuire said. “But once the mud is on the road, it’s their problem.”

Further, the residents fear that future rains will send tons more mud flowing into their homes and are asking that the county at least put up more barriers and sandbags.

The suit asks that the Board of Supervisors be forced to declare the site a public nuisance, which would legally bind the county to clean up the debris.

But county attorneys said Wednesday that geologists have advised them that to simply clear Vista Del Rincon Drive of the mud and nine crushed homes that block the roadway would substantially weaken the still-precarious hillside above La Conchita. The geologists consider the mud on Vista Del Rincon Drive the “toe” of the landslide and have concluded that it is underpinning tons of dirt.

“This has been thought through and we have decided not to disturb the hillside,” said Dennis Slivinski, assistant county counsel. “In this particular situation, removal of the dirt could cause significantly great damage” to La Conchita.

Moreover, Slivinski said that “the courts do not have the jurisdiction to order legislative bodies” to act.

But McGuire said there has to be a way to clean the streets, regardless of the cost.

“The law says it is the county’s job to keep the roads open,” he said.

Neither McGuire nor county officials could estimate the cost of cleaning Vista Del Rincon.

But Ventura County Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Marty Robinson said she has been asking federal officials to pay for a study of the “toe problem” that could answer that question. She said she is meeting with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials next week in hopes of securing the more than $400,000 that it will cost to study the issue.

Robinson said geologists have estimated that it will take more than $30 million to make the hill safe.

Meanwhile, frustrated residents of La Conchita say all they have seen since the slide is inaction.

“To still be homeless after a year is real frustrating, to say the least,” La Conchita resident Chris A. Caputo said. “We did everything the right way. We paid permits, we paid taxes . . . but nobody has done anything. It’s a real stomach turner. I’m getting so that I hate La Conchita.”

Caputo and her husband lost their three-bedroom home of 15 years to the slide and have been renting a nearby house since.

“Somebody should pay for our home,” she said.

The county rejected the claims of Caputo and 79 other homeowners seeking redress late last year, allowing them to file suit against Ventura County. McGuire said the decision to add the county--which maintains that it had no culpability in the slide--to the lawsuit against La Conchita Ranch Co. has yet to be made.

Slivinski said he is unsure what weight a judge’s ruling on the latest suit would have on the bigger issue of negligence.

“We will cross that bridge when we get there,” he said.

But a colleague said that even if a judge forces the county to clean Vista Del Rincon, it does not follow that the county is responsible for the slide.

“I think it is merely asking the county to take action in some [narrow] fashion,” said William A. Waters, assistant deputy county counsel. “I don’t think it will, in and of itself,” imply that the county is somehow responsible for the slide.