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Construction to start soon on barrier wall near San Clemente tracks

June 27, 2023

A barrier wall made from steel beams and wood planks is being designed to protect trains that travel the tracks along the hillside that’s been sliding beneath Casa Romantica.

The wall will stretch along the tracks for as much as 300 feet and be possibly 15 feet tall. Construction could get started after the July 4 weekend.

The work will be done by the geotechnical firm Condon-Johnson & Associates Inc., which is the same company that did the emergency slope stabilization work further south along the tracks where 220 ground anchors had to be installed into the slope beneath the Cyprus Shores community because of movement.

The barrier project is a temporary fix to keep soil and debris from the slope above off the tracks and will help get passenger rail service running again, said Scott Johnson, a spokesman for Metrolink, which has trains using the tracks along with the Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner and freight trains.

Passenger service has been shut down since June 5 because land under the historic landmark began sliding again and landed on the tracks. Freight trains are the only rail service allowed to run and they must abide by strict rules, including slowing their speed in the area and having track inspectors on hand when passing by the location of the slide.

Passenger service has been halted multiple times in the last year. First for several months to make the repairs to the tracks further south and then again on April 27 after the initial landslide at Casa Romantica. Service was allowed to resume just before Memorial Day before being halted again.

The barrier project is expected to cost up to $6.5 million, Johnson said. The cost will be split between a $3 million allocation from the California Transportation Commission that was recently announced and local funding from the Orange County Transportation Authority.

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Efforts to reinforce the hillside below the 2.5 acre Casa Romantica estate, the home of the city’s founder that is now used as a cultural and events center, have struggled and, as recently as Monday, city officials say land movement has been observed.

Councilmember Steve Knoblock called the continuing movement “disappointing.”

The city-owned landmark is open to the public, but with limited access to parts of the estate. Its first post-landslide wedding was held two weeks ago.

Kiel Koger, the city’s public works director, said the City Council is expected to review more details at its July 18 meeting on next steps for the casa, including cost expectations and the scope of repair.

Those discussions could include anchoring bolts into the ground or spraying a sort of cement layer on the slope as support. The latter, Knoblock said, is what Southern California Edison did with an unstable slope under cliffs over Coast Highway at Capistrano Beach.

Knoblock said the concern now is that the “soil at the toe of the building is vertical,” which he said “is not an optimistic position.”

Nonetheless, motion detectors put into the soil around the actual building have not detected any movement.

“The casa is our crown jewel and culture center, ” Knoblock said. “And we will do everything we can to keep it.”

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Orange County Register

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Construction to start soon on barrier wall near San Clemente tracks

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