NORTH SALT LAKE, Utah -- North Salt Lake residents were given new information about a hillside that showed signs of movement in the same area where a landslide destroyed one home and threatened others in 2014.
During a city council meeting Tuesday evening, a geo technical engineer addressed residents about the hill. Hiram Alba, engineer with Geo Strata, said while the hill is moving, no homes are currently being and the city has options on how to further stabilize the area.
While there are visible cracks in the slide area, Alba said he doesn’t think the failures are very deep.
The slide area was regraded last fall in an effort to prevent another landslide that destroyed a home on Aug. 5, 2014.
The overall slide area is safe and secure, but Alba told the city council and resident that more needs to be done to keep it that way.
Improvements include upgrading drainage toward the top of hill and adding more soil to the bottom of the slope, close to an existing home and a damaged tennis court. These improvements would cost about $35,000.
“You could call it a Band-Aid. It doesn't really fix it. We recommended a buttress to fix this and until the buttress is installed, you’re still going to be doing something of a Band-Aid fix on a lot of this stuff,” Alba said.
A buttress or retaining wall capable of stabilizing the hill would cost over $100,000 to build. An earlier design was scrapped by affected land owners.
A resident at the meeting asked if there had been discussion about where the money would come.
City officials say close to a $560,000 has been spent stabilizing the hill so far.
City officials know more work needs to be done and how to pay for that work needs to be discussed.
No decisions about how to proceed were made.
