The ground under this roadway is starting to wash away and the wall support is collapsing. Neighbors hope the City can repair it before the entire road slides down.
Enchanted Way Needs City’s Magic
Haldis Toppel, Area 3 representative on the Pacific Palisades Community Council, requested that Bureau of Street Services Executive Director Adel Hagekhalil come investigate a portion of her street, Enchanted Way, in Marquez Knolls.
At Thursday night’s meeting, she described a curve in that roadway that if preventative steps weren’t taken, the entire road could go out of service, trapping the residents of 21 homes on the dead end of that street—leaving no alternative road in that hilly area.
She explained that the street bed underneath the pavement is washing out in the 700 block, by the sharp L-turn curve.
In a March 1 follow-up email to Hagekhalil, Toppel said that during heavy rains, the downhill road becomes a river that spills over the side of the canyon at that curve, before it reaches the storm drain.
“This area has massive subterranean water, and at least three City-mandated sump pumps, located on private property above the turn, that pour water daily down the street and along the gutter,” Toppel wrote. This water also goes over the curb before it can reach the storm drain.
Toppel said weeds growing in the gutter and curb had been recently cleared out by City crews, but that when they grow back, this blocks the flow of water into the storm drain, breaks up the pavement and seeps under the street.
“The area is a serious slide area where three houses have slid down the hill not once, but, after new permits were issued, new homes slid again,” Toppel said. “The street has been lost both times and the berms holding it up have deteriorated.”
Hagekhalil promised that someone from his office would take a look at the situation.