In late April, Brad Hall was anxiously keeping an eye on his $500,000 home in Mountain Green, Morgan County, monitoring cracking foundations and a bowing back deck and wondering how far the ground supporting his foundation would slide during this year's wet season.
Just down Weber Canyon in South Weber, 4-year-old Kendell Keyes was recovering from a broken leg she suffered after a torrent of mud 80 feet wide swept down the hillside behind her family's home, crashing into the house and throwing the girl against a wall as she watched TV.
Farther south, in South Jordan's river bottoms, Andy and Jeanette Meisenbacher were at work cleaning up their soggy basement and filling their yard with wells and drainage channels to avoid a repeat of the floods that filled their basement and those of two nearby homes in March. The water came from rising groundwater as spring runoff seeped from the western reaches of the valley toward the Jordan River.
This year, the Utah Geological Survey is watching at least 50 landslides from Utah County to Morgan County, many of them near housing developments. The disasters are not just an anomaly due to this year's wet spring. After rain and snowmelt last May, a dramatic landslide in Cedar Hills, Utah County, crashed into some hillside townhouses, forcing four families to move. And in St. George in January 2005, helpless residents watched as homes washed away in the flooded Virgin and Santa Clara rivers.
For homeowners, such disasters are distressing and frustrating. "It was just like they were in a nightmare," said Trudy Keyes, Kendell Keyes' aunt.
As growth brings more and more families to Utah, new housing developments are popping up throughout the state — sometimes in places that once may have seemed off limits. From the homes perched atop Traverse Mountain in Draper's SunCrest neighborhood to east-bench homes straddling the Wasatch Fault, more and more Utahns are building homes in geologically unstable areas.
"A lot of our easily developed land is now developed," said Gary Christenson, geologic-hazards program manager at the Utah Geological Survey. "Our risk is increasing. We are building into riskier areas."
If it all comes tumbling down, fills with water or washes away, who is responsible?
Fair warning?
"They screwed up when they gave everybody permits down here to build basements," Jeanette Meisenbacher told the Deseret Morning News after shallow groundwater breached her South Jordan basement earlier this spring.
When she says "they," she's talking about South Jordan city officials — the people she and her husband say are primarily to blame for the flooding.
The river bottoms are a natural destination for runoff from the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountains. Sometimes that water trickles via above-ground streams, and sometimes it seeps underground and rushes downhill. It's that underground water that caught the Meisenbachers by surprise. They had thought they were prepared.
They had installed basement sump pumps and dug drainage channels around their yard after their city-issued building permit warned of the potential for groundwater flooding. The fact that those precautions weren't enough makes the Meisenbachers angry. Maybe the city shouldn't have given them a permit at all, they now say.
But South Jordan public services director Don Bruey said the building permit gave the homeowners plenty of warning and that ultimately it is the builder's responsibility to act on that warning.
Christenson said fluctuating weather patterns can contribute to such situations. "That's one of those problems when you build in a drought," he said. "The groundwater may be down, but the water table can fluctuate five to 10 feet in a year in some places."
Because geologic stability can vary so greatly depending on a given year's weather, cities regularly require developers or builders to commission geotechnical studies before they build next to hillsides, in river bottoms, on mountain benches or near fault lines. Some cities, such as Layton, have begun requiring such studies citywide.
The Highland View Estates neighborhood in South Weber, where the Keyes family once lived, was built in an area marked on the city's master plan as prone to landslides. But not everyone pays close attention to things like that.
"We never knew it was a landslide hazard," said Trudy Keyes, who lives in another house on the same street.
Cities' role
Depending on where you live, your city or county government may or may not have designated certain geologically hazardous areas off limits for developments. Your government may or may not be willing to negotiate when developers come knocking with plans for a new hillside neighborhood or river-front subdivision.
"There is pressure from the development community, but cities are trying to respond by developing ordinances," Utah League of Cities and Towns planning consultant Megan Ryan said. Some cities have created so-called sensitive-lands ordinances. Such regulations may prohibit developing on slopes of a particular grade. They may require developers to put certain precautions in place before building in river bottoms. Or they may declare wetlands off limits, among many other provisions.
"Often it's cities that have had problems in the past that are especially cognizant of it," Christenson said.
In St. George, development has long been prohibited in areas designated as floodplains by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. However, last year's rushing rivers swept away houses that weren't built in the floodplain. Instead of being flooded, they actually fell into the rising water as the ground around them eroded.
FEMA has since re-evaluated the Virgin and Santa Clara floodplains, which have changed as erosion altered the riverbeds. The agency has also designated "erosion zones," where high water could destabilize homes without ever flooding them. St. George has updated its ordinances to require special precautions for development in such zones. Even still, it's no guarantee.
"It's hard to know where those will occur," assistant city manager Marc Mortensen said. "We have an idea, but even now we're not 100 percent confident that that erosion zone won't grow over time."
Christenson said the UGS is willing to work closely with cities seeking to focus their planning on safely guiding future growth. Cities like Layton, Ogden and Provo have made use of that offer. Some other cities, Christenson said, have not.
"We certainly encourage all cities and counties to deal with geologic hazards," he said.
Cities have a number of tools to consider in their efforts to deal with those risks. In addition to sensitive-lands ordinances, some cities have turned to zoning to keep development away from certain areas. But zoning can be a sweeping designation of a huge chunk of land and can ignore the existence of undevelopable areas mere yards away from perfectly safe areas.
Tim Watkins, senior planner at quality-growth advocacy group Envision Utah, promotes the idea of purchasing or transferring development rights. A developer who owns land zoned to allow three homes per acre could buy the right to more density from a nearby landowner whose land is in the same zone but is more sensitive and less suitable for development. The overall density would remain the same — no more than three homes per acre in the entire zone — but the stable land would be developed more densely while the sensitive land would remain untouched.
The idea has been used recently to keep development out of Mapleton's foothills and canyons by driving density toward the valley floor.
But not everyone supports the idea of governments managing development to that degree. During the 2006 Legislature, several bills came up that would have restricted cities' ability to zone and manage land-use planning. Most of those bills were gutted, killed by committee or replaced by less-dramatic bills. But many involved in city government believe some legislators are trying to send a message: Let landowners have more control of how their land is developed.
"Cities are trying to do the right thing, and I'm not sure the Legislature supports that," Ryan said. "Maybe that's a message (lawmakers) need to hear from their constituents in the cities."
One group that has criticized so-called quality-growth planning and other land-use controls by city and county governments is the conservative Sutherland Institute. However, president Paul Mero said protecting homeowners from geologic instability is one of the instances when such controls might not be out of the question — as long as developers and builders are involved in the process.
"The role of local government in development is health and safety, so this certainly fits into that category," Mero said.
Doing your homework
UGS has created maps for areas throughout the state showing general geologic hazards — fault lines, historic landslides and the like. But usually those maps don't do the trick when it comes to planning a few acres here, a few more there.
On the local scale, more detailed studies are needed to look at soil types, groundwater levels, the potential for liquefaction during an earthquake and other risks. Those so-called geotechnical studies are sometimes done by cities, sometimes required of developers by city ordinance and sometimes left up to individual builders or homeowners.
Even when cities require geotechnical studies, and even when those studies lead officials to require certain precautions, the necessary follow-through isn't always there.
"Few cities actually have a process to make sure what is agreed to actually gets done," Christenson said. "There's quite a few places where the process breaks down. Local governments need to be vigilant in approving developments — vigilant and, basically, hard-nosed."
When the studies are done, they are often commissioned by developers — who want to be told their land is safe and stable and who might shop around until they find someone who will tell them that.
"There are certainly economic pressures on the consultants to say what the developers want to hear," Christenson said.
Taz Biesinger, a spokesman for the Home Builders Association of Utah, said developers must comply with cities' requirements and try to use the best information they have available when building.
"Do bad things happen? Unfortunately they do," he said. "But I don't think anyone tries to do anything intentionally wrong."
Because hazards monitoring and planning vary from city to city, Christenson recommends anyone looking to buy or build a home do a little of their own homework first. Homebuyers "need to realize that when they're looking at a home, there is no guarantee that it was permitted with geologic hazards in mind," he said.
The extent of the legwork that would-be homeowners should do depends on several factors: where they plan to build or buy; how comfortable they are with the information they have received from developers, builders and real-estate agents; and, ultimately, their gut instincts.
There are warning signs. For example, low-lying valley and river-bottoms areas are at a greater risk for groundwater flooding, though such floods can occur in foothills as well.
Landslides are most likely to occur on steep natural or construction-related slopes, areas in or at the mouths of drainages or canyons, slopes below leaking canals or ponds, developed hillsides where septic-tank soil-absorption systems are used and landscapes are irrigated, or below cliffs or hills with outcrops of fractured rock, according to the UGS.
High-risk areas become more landslide-prone once development starts as hillsides are cut away and become more unstable. Landscaping with thirsty plants also increases hazards as hillsides quickly see five or six times the water they normally would.
First and foremost, Christenson said, homeowners need to pay close attention to zoning maps, city master plans and building permits. If a permit application says an area may be prone to landslides or groundwater flooding, he said, more research is in order.
When cities have carried out geotechnical studies of a certain area, those studies are available to anyone who wants to see them, and Christenson recommended checking them out before building or buying. The Deseret Morning News visited several city offices to explore the availability of such studies. In every case, studies were available — although in some cities, it took a lot of asking and being sent to different departments before someone was able to help.
Sometimes, however, it might be wiser to hire your own geologist or engineer to visit your property, do a study and offer advice. "It could cost a lot, but it could cost a lot more not to know," Christenson said.
Picking up the pieces
Christenson stresses individual responsibility in checking out a homesite's safety because, ultimately, legal and financial responsibility will probably lie with the homeowner. Once disaster strikes, you may or may not get any help from local, state or federal governments.
In South Jordan and elsewhere, victims of natural disasters have discussed seeking financial help from their cities. In the case of Mountain Green's slow-moving landslide, some homeowners are discussing filing lawsuits, though it is unclear whether the target would be developers, builders or the city. But proving the city is to blame can be a tough legal process.
"Cities generally think that if we don't cause the disaster, we're not legally responsible for it," said David Church, general counsel for the Utah League of Cities and Towns and attorney for several Utah cities. "If someone builds in a disaster area, they do that of their own choice."
It can be especially hard to get money in cases like South Jordan's flooding or South Weber's landslide, where the city provided warning about the hazards, Church said.
The best way to be poised to recover as quickly and easily as possible, experts say, is to have a comprehensive insurance policy. Gus Miranda, a spokesman for State Farm Insurance, said flood insurance is an often-overlooked need.
Miranda said floods are the most common natural disaster in the United States, and about 20 percent to 25 percent of those floods occur in areas considered at low or moderate flood risk. A home has a 26 percent chance of being flooded during the life of a 30-year mortgage, compared with a 4 percent chance of fire, Miranda said.
Of course insurance coverage has its limitations, too.
 | Deseret Morning News graphic Landslides and flooding in UtahRequires Adobe Acrobat. |
"Most insurance policies do not cover earth movement," Miranda said, meaning responsibility for damage from landslides, mudslides and debris flow often falls in the lap of the victims.
And even when homes have flood insurance, it doesn't cover everything. Many of the homes destroyed by the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers, for example, weren't technically flooded. The water didn't come to the homes so much as the homes fell into the water.
In the end, the best protection against costly, possibly life-threatening natural disasters may be staying away from the most dangerous places in the first place.
Building in geologically unstable areas "can be done safely, but sometimes it can be expensive," Christenson said. "Sometimes it may not be worth it."
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com