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Councilwoman Zapf dodges financial hardship

One seemingly insignificant elephant in the room here is the crack in the slab. "Structural" fill slopes should be outlawed. If one reads a geotechnical report even casually (but attentively) one will find that they are festooned with qualifiers, such as "guaranteeing" the stability of the fill at the moment it passes inspection, but not one second afterward (and the inspections are a joke--very few samples are tested and quality control is, shall we say, "highly variable?") There have been notable (yet un-noted) failures that have been explained away by "experts" that are questionable but go unquestioned. Soledad Mountain? (Even the natural geology there is not unquestionably safe.) The legal costs and judgments come out of your pocket and mine, but the politicians who approve and the agency attorneys who defend such cases not only don't have to pay, they get rich. The real creators of the problem and those who approve of the "structural" fills never have to pay (but boy, do they PROFIT!), usually being long gone or long dead by the time the failure is dramatic enough to get anyone's attention. The time line could be decades or even centuries, but more likely closer to the former. Structural fills are not designed for leaky pipes, irrigation, precipitation, overland flow, or any combination thereof (they are prohibited) that causes an accumulation of water in the fill, from which there is only one escape--sliding down. The vertical displacement is the vertical (settling) component, and the size (width) of the crack is the lateral movement component. For those whose houses (or any part thereof) are built on "structural" fills, I would pray for you if I thought it would do any good, and that goes for the sequence of buyers until and including the time when that Giant Crackin' Sound is heard. I'd put my bed and anything else I treasure upslope from the fill. If there is no natural ground under it and it is entirely on fill, that Giant Crackin' Sound might not be heard until the structure is at the bottom of the hill, canyon, or mountain. A lot of structural fill slopes that are now very old now exist. Depending upon how much water has accumulated, the time will come when the "tipping point" is reached. But you'd rather not think about it, no?
— August 30, 2017 5:07 p.m.

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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
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