Berkeley Hills Residents Worried About Landslide Near The Caldecott Tunnel

By / CBS San Francisco, CBS San Francisco

BERKELEY, CA — The recent heavier rains have residents living in the hills above the Caldecott Tunnel growing increasingly concerned as they watch more and more of the hillside slide down into the canyon.

They say it's getting close to disaster and someone needs to do something to fix it.

Ken Berrick loves walking his dog Sky along a hillside path in Caldecott Canyon, and it easy to see why. The view is simply breathtaking.

"When you go out this way, you get to a promontory that looks out all over the Bay Area. It's just a spectacular spot," he said.

But Berrick said it's a view that most people have not seen for a long time.

"Can't get there from here anymore," he explained.

That's because the path he takes — and a nearby fire road — both end at a locked gate. Beyond it lies a massive landslide that has been growing over the better part of the last decade. It started with a major water pipe break that Berrick said occurred sometime eight or ten years ago.

"I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of gallons. It went on for a couple days, I think," Berrick remembered. "And it's been deteriorating ever since then. They did a makeshift fix for a while and that didn't hold. So it just keeps coming back, further and further, every time we have a winter with some rain."

The original slide happened about halfway down the canyon. Over time, it has moved steadily up the hill. The black plastic sheets laid down to stabilize the cliff has long since rotted away. Cracks forming in the ground are easily visible, showing the instability of the hillside.

"You know, when we're coming through and the dog walks to the edge of that, it scares me to death," Berrick said. "Because you just don't know when it's going to give."

But now, the slide has moved so far up the cliff that it is perilously close to a giant, concrete EBMUD water tank at the top of the hill.

"I don't know the function of the particular water facility, but it kind of doesn't matter," said Berrick. "It just, intuitively, seems like a bad idea to allow this to continue."

An EBMUD spokesperson said it's called the "Swainland tank" and has been empty and out of service for seven years. But the official also said they were unaware of the landslide approaching it and would send engineers up to look at it immediately. PG&E has an easement on the property, for overhead transmission lines, but they, too, said they were unaware of the slide.

It turns out the water pipe that burst was the property of the city of Oakland, and there is reportedly a "project in design" to replace the pipe and stabilize the hillside. But it has been a long time coming.

"First, in terms of this being a hiking trail and this being an area that should be an asset, it's just a shame that it's completely closed off," said Berrick. "And then, secondly, it seems to me it's probably an important fire road to have access from both directions. So...it's hard to understand."

He said he is concerned that the fire road being cut off could prevent or delay access in case of a wildfire. Caldecott Canyon was one of the areas severely burned during the Oakland Hills Fire in 1991.

Berrick said he has tried to get people's attention about the slide for years. But now that both EBMUD and PG&E are looking into it, the city may have more incentive to take action, before a huge water tank ends up at the bottom of Caldecott Canyon.

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