Despite dry year, water still leaks from hillside

By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer | Monday, July 23, 2007 11:56 PM PDT ∞

OCEANSIDE -- Though the city has had no substantial rainfall since March, water continues to seep from the hillside between Arroyo Avenue and Comanche Street, where a landslide destroyed six houses and damaged a dozen others in January 2005.

Residents who still live in the quiet east Oceanside neighborhood say they look at the areas where the moisture drains -- sometimes in a trickle, sometimes in a gush -- with a mixture of suspicion and dread.

"Where is that water coming from?" asks Patricia McKenzie, who has lived on Comanche Street with her husband, Michael, for 14 years. "I would like to know, and I think a lot of people would like to know."

The courts may be left to decide the answer. Residents have filed lawsuits against the city and against each other, alleging various reasons for the conditions that led to the devastating slide.

Dueling arguments

In 2005, the steep hillside between Arroyo Avenue and Comanche Street slowly gave way after months of heavy rain. Within days, six homes on Arroyo at the top of the hill were destroyed, while homes below lost chunks of their backyards and sustained other damage.

The slide forced several families from their homes, and left others stuck in properties whose values had plummeted, in some cases to a fifth of their previous worth.

It wasn't the first time the slope had moved; it had slipped at least once before, in 1983, leading to significant damage for some homes in the area.

After the 2005 slide, both the city and homeowners hired geologists and hydrologists to probe the area.

Patrick Catalano, the attorney hired by 24 Arroyo and Comanche homeowners to sue the city, said his experts say the hillside holds a store of water from previously leaking city pipes.

Because the soil has a high clay content, he said, it can hold the water and release it over time.

"The density of the earth in that area does not give up water very easily," Catalano said.

However, Charles Berwanger, an attorney hired by the city to defend the lawsuit, said his experts point to the topography of the surrounding land.

"The hill appears to be at the end of a drainage area," Berwanger said.

He added that the Oceanside water department has tested and retested its water lines in the area to make sure there are no leaks.

"We have found none," Berwanger said.

Neither Berwanger nor Catalano would provide the North County Times with access to the geologists who conducted their studies, saying they could be called as witnesses when the lawsuit goes to trial.

Homeowners on Arroyo and Comanche have said their suspicions about leaking city pipes may be buoyed by residents on Via Tercero, a street just southeast of the slide. Neighbors there have reported water bubbling out of city water fixtures.

Berwanger said the city is aware of the situation on Via Tercero, but he said tests of the water there found that it came from the ground and not from city pipes.

"Whenever there is a complaint about there being water coming out of the ground over there, we go and take samples and we test the pipes," Berwanger said.

He added that water inside the city's pipes, because it largely comes from the Metropolitan Water District, has a different chemical signature than groundwater.

"We are sure that what we are seeing is groundwater," he said.

Continuing concerns

Today, the city keeps an eye on the amount of water leaking from the Arroyo-Comanche slope by using a series of plastic pipes, called hydroaugers, to monitor the flow.

City Attorney John Mullen said last week that a water-works employee drives both streets and documents the amount of water coming out of the hillside.

In May 2005, the city installed 60 of the horizontal pipes to give the water inside the hill a path of escape.

"The point of that was to dry out the hillside and slow down the movement," Mullen said.

In April 2005, the city declared that the hill had stopped sliding.

In addition to the city's efforts, it appears that earlier attempts had been made to drain water from the slope.

An older set of black plastic pipes still extends from the hillside directly into the gutters at the base of Comanche and also up top on Arroyo Avenue. These pipes, many neighbors say, remain from the previous landslide that damaged homes in the same neighborhood in 1983. It's unclear who installed them.

Most of the residents who live at the base of the slide on Comanche say that the new pipes, the ones installed in 2005 by the city, have largely quit gushing water.

But the old pipes, the ones that have been in the hillside since 1983, continue to send water into the gutters.

Antonio "Tony" Arellano, who lives next to the long vacant lot formed when the city removed the wrecked homes, said he regularly sees water come shooting out of a plastic pipe that empties into the gutter near his driveway.

"It comes out all the way to here," he said, pointing to an arc of the asphalt roadway washed clean by the regular discharge.

Back on Comanche, McKenzie said she sees the water and simply wonders.

"I just want to know what's going to happen. Is it going to be fixed? Is it safe? There's just no answers," she said.

-- Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.