Developers Venture Onto Shaky Foothill Ground

Fed by a booming economy, proposed housing developments that were abandoned during the recession are sprouting up against the steep slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains, edging ever closer to the Angeles National Forest.

Such construction, critics say, raises an age-old question in a county consistently racked by earthquakes, floods and fires: Are there places where disasters are so predictable that they should not be built on?

In Azusa this year, the city approved a 1,602-home project on what is now the Monrovia Nursery. Opponents managed to get enough signatures for an upcoming referendum, but in all the impassioned debate about housing density and traffic, there was no mention of the flood in 1969.

A year after a fire ravaged the canyon above, a massive flow of mud and boulders had gushed out of the mountains, down the gentle slope of the nursery all the way to Foothill Boulevard.

“There was one boulder five or six feet high that went right through the back of the house,” said Adolph Solis, the Azusa city clerk and a resident since 1931. “People forget.”

Another company just filed a petition in Azusa to build a 350-home development in the San Gabriel River floor. In Altadena, builders are finishing the La Vina project--272 luxury, terra cotta homes flush against the national forest. And in Glendale the city is reviewing an application to build 572 homes in the Verdugo Mountains.

“We look at these people in Malibu and say, ‘Look at those fools, why are they living there?’ ” said Azusa Mayor Christina Cruz Madrid. “Aren’t we doing the same thing?”

The developments have become a matter of public debate and concern with the improvement in the economy and the resulting growth in the housing market.

Varying Regulations

In the San Gabriel foothills, 15 cities and the county government, in charge of unincorporated areas, regulate proposed developments. The resulting mixed bag of regulations, critics say, could well lead to building being permitted in dangerous areas.

Such problems abound throughout the mountains and hillsides of the Southland, even in areas where a single government agency regulates growth. Control by Los Angeles County government, for example, has not prevented major subdivision growth in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Many local officials are eager to embrace such new developments as benefiting their tax bases, and property owners and developers claim a fundamental right to build on their own land. They say they abide by ever-stricter county fire and flood standards, thus reducing the potential hazards.

A spokesman for Monrovia Nursery said that the county built several debris basins after the 1969 flood and that the structures would be enhanced for the housing development. “No agency said they were worried about any aspect of our planning,” said David Linden.

Dick Stanford, mayor pro tem of Azusa, said such development helps working class cities like his because it brings in more expensive housing and increases tax revenue.

But while mitigation efforts prevent year-to-year disasters, county officials say they can only guess at what nature can hurl out of the mountains in epochal events.

The San Gabriels, after all, are the battleground of a geological war, where two migrating tectonic plates snag, lifting up granite fractured by faults. It is one of the world’s steepest and fastest-growing ranges, and is deteriorating almost as rapidly, costing the county at least $10 million a year to keep the debris from flowing onto streets and homes. Whole cities are built on the fans of sediment that once poured out of the canyons.

Combine that with tinder-dry chaparral and thrust faults, and some say the result is easily foreseeable.

“When that fault lets loose, it will be a total disaster,” said UCLA geology professor Ray Ingersoll. “It’s going to be Biblical.”

Ingersoll referred to the Sierra Madre fault, which runs along the southern base of the mountains. He called it one of the most dangerous in the county. But he added that people can live relatively safely in the foothills if their homes are built away from faults and watercourses.

“It’s really a huge experiment to see how the growing urbanization will deal with the geological [flux] up there,” he said.

The county deals with it by using 200 stream bed stabilizers to slow water flow, and 115 debris basins, some of which are as big as stadiums. It hauls an average of 36,000 dump trucks full of rocks and sediment out of the basins every year.

But in the late 1980s the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works realized about half of the basins were undersized, based on what was expected in a 50-year flood. Thirteen of them were enlarged or upgraded but 47 remain to be fixed, said Michael Bohlander, head of the department’s hydrologic engineering section.

“If you get a 100-year flood on a fresh burn, it would clearly exceed our capacity,” he said.

Bohlander said there are numerous neighborhoods built dangerously above the debris basins. Over the years, people have moved into narrow canyons where previously there were only summer cabins, he said. And one developer recently built homes below a basin in Glendora that overflowed in 1969, despite calculations that it should have only been 60% full.

“Local communities are designing the future disasters,” said Mary Fran Myers, co-director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado. “In designing them, they should be deciding how to pay for them.”

As in Malibu, homeowners in the San Gabriels must contend with fire, driven by Santa Ana winds, that can scourge entire mountainsides. The U.S. Forest Service spends an average $30 million a year fighting fires in the Angeles National Forest. Because the area is so close to homes, firefighters must react immediately to douse any flames.

“One of the things that work against us is that residents tend to be somewhat mobile in Southern California,” said Don Feser, fire management officer for the Department of Forestry. “They might not have been there to remember when the area last burned.”

Around Kinneloa Canyon in Altadena, new homes are replacing the charred skeletons of 123 homes that burned when a brush fire stormed out of the mountains in 1993. Above the canyon, builders are grading home sites so high up the mountainside that they’re visible across the San Gabriel Valley.

Duarte is considering proposals for 46 homes in the last of its buildable terrain. Of those, half would be built on Duarte Mesa, where about 60 homes burned in 1981. Fifteen other homes were completed in the area a couple months ago, said Steve Sizemore, the city planner.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department requires ever-more brush clearance in the foothills and tries to get developers to leave greenbelts around new neighborhoods. In 1996, the department began requiring approval of construction plans in dangerous areas to ensure that there would be a minimum of flammable plants and trees around new homes.

In 1997, the county was asked to approve 60 projects. In just the first six months of this year, 165 projects were submitted for approval.

“We’ve definitely seen the upswing,” said John Todd, assistant chief of the forestry division of the county Fire Department. “As more people move into that urban-wildland interface zone, there’s more of a risk.”

In the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, the sprawl has reached the wall of the mountains, which means most new development is moving into more rugged, albeit spectacular, territory.

“You have to realize the reason certain areas in Southern California weren’t developed is because they’re problem properties,” said Sandy McHenry, a foothill property owner and City Council member in San Dimas. “What we’re seeing built in the San Gabriel Valley is problem property.”

No Plan for Growth

Ann Croissant, president of the San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy, which is a coalition of six local conservancies, said the patchwork of cities in the San Gabriel Valley creates an inconsistent approach to growth.

“The councils come and go and each one will have a different view of development,” she said.

Last month San Dimas rezoned its foothill territory to allow only 94 homes, down from 400. Regardless, a Colorado developer has expressed interest in building 200 homes there and in neighboring Glendora.

In Glendora, the city has set aside almost 1,000 very rugged acres as open space, but new homes continue to move up the mountainside. Nearby Claremont’s hillside ordinance would allow about 400 new homes clustered together, according to city officials, while the subdivisions in La Verne have recently maxed out against the edge of the national forest.

In Sierra Madre, foothill growth is restricted. Building in La Canada Flintridge has moved up into the steepest reaches of its canyons; some homes are being built on lots graded years ago. In Tujunga, grading has begun for a subdivision in Big Tujunga Canyon.

In Monrovia, landowners, city officials and environmentalists are haggling over how many homes can be built in the foothills. So far the numbers range from 81 to 128. Another 21 expected homes had been approved before the city began designing a master plan for the area. “Pressure for development is definitely more evident when the economy is good like this,” said Robert Kastenbaum, Monrovia community development director.

With so many local jurisdictions along the San Gabriel foothills, it is hard to keep track of all the building, much less come up with a regional plan.

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to ensure more open space.

In Glendale, state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena) helped get $5 million allocated in the state budget to buy and set aside land in the Verdugo Mountains where a massive development is proposed.

Others who would like to see open space preserved in the hills hope that a bill to create a state conservancy in the area, proposed by state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente), passes the Assembly and is signed by the governor. Such an agency could raise bond money and other state funds to buy land in the foothills.