La Conchita residents lose $24 million landslide suit
Ranch irrigation practices didn't cause 1995 slide, judge rules.

Irrigation of 300 acres of avocado and lemon trees on a blufftop ranch above La Conchita didn't cause the massive March 1995 landslide that buried nine homes in the seaside hamlet, a Ventura County judge ruled Friday.

1/16/99

By CHUCK SCHULTZ
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Irrigation of 300 acres of avocado and lemon trees on a blufftop ranch above La Conchita didn't cause the massive March 1995 landslide that buried nine homes in the seaside hamlet, a Ventura County judge ruled Friday. The six-page decision by Superior Court Judge Henry J.  Walsh brought to a close a two-month civil trial centering on whether the mudslide was a natural disaster or resulted from excessive irrigation on La Conchita Ranch. The ruling left 146 current and former town residents empty-handed. They had sued the ranch and its dozens of investor-owners for up to $24 million in damages. "We're very disappointed," said Hank Alviani, 71, a retired purchasing agent who has lived in La Conchita for 15 years.  "We still feel like the (property) loss is here and they're not doing anything about it. Now, the judge has ruled they don't have to do anything about it."

On the afternoon of March 4, 1995 - during a winter with periods of record rainfall - about 600,000 tons of mud and silt rumbled 600 feet down a steep slope below the ranch, onto the back of La Conchita. The slide destroyed nine houses and forced evacuation of about 100 residences for anywhere from a few days to two months.

Most of the soil and rock mass that slid downhill then is still precariously perched above the town, 14 miles south of Santa Barbara. The continuing threat of another landslide has decimated property values there, residents contend. Donna Hubbard, a 20-year resident of La Conchita whose home is about 60 feet away from the slide, sat through every day of the lengthy trial. "I'm really in shock," she said Friday, after the ruling. "It makes me very nervous now because the ranch can continue watering as much as it wants." Her Fillmore Street home, formerly valued at $340,000, now is considered worthless by county assessors, she said. "The county has put (its value) at zero," she said. Alviani's home is one block from the base of the slide. His property, assessed by Ventura County at $240,000 before the disaster, now is valued at $29,000, he said. In addition to laying the blame for the landslide on agricultural irrigation, the residents' attorneys had hoped Walsh would order the ranch to either stabilize the slope or stop watering its orchards. The stabilization cost had been estimated at $30 million. "I feel sorry for the town," Rusty Brace, one of the residents' lawyers, said Friday afternoon. "It's going to be a real blow to the community, knowing there is no fix (solution)." After listening to the lawyers' closing arguments on Jan. 8, Walsh warned that some people were bound to be displeased with any ruling. "There is no way to cut the baby in half," he remarked figuratively. Walsh ruled that "the activities and the conduct of" the ranch and its employees "were not a substantial factor in causing the earth movement at issue in this case."

Most of the trial was testimony by geological and hydrological experts, yet "there is no method by which the two (opposing) theories of what happened ... can be reconciled," Walsh wrote. Testimony and evidence presented on behalf of the ranch "has the greater convincing force," he concluded. That was music to the ears of Frank Sabaitas of Los Angeles, the principal trial attorney for the ranch. "I'm elated," Sabaitas said late Friday afternoon. "We feel the judge absolutely did the right thing." During the nonjury trial, Sabaitis noted that landslides have been a historic fact of life on the hillsides above La Conchita. Brace said no decision has yet been made on whether to appeal the verdict.

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