Cure for Slice in Golf Course Not Yet Found

If a striking 18th hole is the signature feature of every championship golf course, bluff-hugging Ocean Trails Golf Course is among the world’s best. The only trouble is, you can’t reach that final hole without a helicopter or a grappling hook.

After a sudden landslide carved a scythe-shaped gorge through the par 4 hole and tore away a 500-foot run of sewer line, developers of the Ranchos Palos Verdes course say they have yet to figure out a way to repair the damage. They are not even sure that the bluff that suffered the slide won’t move again.

Similarly, county sanitation officials say they are trying to figure out how they will ultimately repair their damaged trunk line, which has been replaced by a temporary, above-ground line. The reason for the slide remains a mystery to officials at the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County.

The slide occurred late Thursday morning, with the course just weeks away from opening. Designed by Pete Dye, the course commands stunning views of the Pacific Ocean, and developers hoped it would someday day host the U.S. Open. Part of a planned $80-million project that includes 75 building lots, the development has been going through the courts, environmental reviews and the local permitting process for 15 years.

Much of the 18th hole, as well as part of another undamaged hole, occupy areas of ancient landslides, according to developers Kenneth and Robert Zuckerman. The rest of the project, including the house lots, is on stable ground and the development is moving along as planned.

The developers said they took great pains to avoid touching off a slide and that their efforts concentrated on keeping the bluff dry.

“Our concern is that water is the source of problems,” Zuckerman said on Monday. “If you don’t have water, you won’t have problems.”

They planted special grasses, laid a network of drainage pipes and installed protective layers of compacted clay beneath the greens. Because of the precautions taken, Ken Zuckerman said he was sure the slide resulted from a break in the county’s 27-inch sewer line that allowed sewer water to saturate the the bluff and weaken it. Zuckerman said he believed the leak must have existed for quite some time.

“For something like this to happen, it’s necessary for the water to be added over an extended period of time--months, perhaps a year,” Zuckerman said.

County sanitation officials are in strong disagreement.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Sanitation Districts said there was no truth to the claim that the line was broken before the slide. “Absolutely not,” Don Avila said. “We’re very certain it was intact until the slide. We run routine videos through our lines. That line was not leaking.”

The gravity-fed sewer line was installed in 1955 about 10 feet below ground. Golf course construction crews accidentally punched holes in the top of the line in June 1998, but the damage was reported and repaired immediately, Avila said. There was no spillage in that episode, he said.

County officials and the developers agree that none of the 900,000 gallons of sewage that spewed from the pipe after last week’s slide made it to the ocean. Instead, the collapsing soil acted as a dam, causing the effluent to pool on land and eventually seep into the soil. “No raw fluid washed into the ocean,” Zuckerman said.

County health officials ordered seven miles of beaches closed just hours after the landslide, predicting that the severed line would pump a million gallons of waste into the sea.

The beaches were reopened Saturday, and on Monday, officials said they found no evidence that sea water had been contaminated. Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection at the Department of Health Services, said tests of the water showed no unusual increase in bacteria.

“There wasn’t any more than what we normally see there,” Petralia said. “One could reasonably argue that none of the runoff made it into the water.”

In the early stages of development, many local environmentalists objected to the golf course plan and battled it in court. As a result, the developers agreed to move the course farther inland, limit the use of herbicides and pesticides and increase public access.

On Monday, at least one local environmental activist viewed the the slide as one of a number of impending collapses. “This whole coast is unstable,” said Larry Vivian, chairman of the Palos Verdes-South Bay Sierra Club. “There will be more. The question is when.”