Rancho Palos Verdes landslides have residents seeking science
… Rancho Palos Verdes is caught in a series of slow-moving landslides that are wreaking havoc in this coastal community—roads are buckling, utilities are being shut off, and some people have been forced to leave their homes. … The culprit, most researchers believe, is water underground: Record-setting levels of rain fell over much of California in 2022 and 2023. As all that precipitation infiltrated into the ground, it raised the water table. Subsurface water exerts pressure upward and can predispose the ground to moving. “Those back-to-back wet years caused the majority of this big acceleration that we’ve seen,” said Mike Phipps, a geologist employed by the consulting firm Cotton, Shires and Associates Inc. and a contractor for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.