Changes to Building Ban Rejected in Rancho P.V. : Government: The City Council’s action is a setback for proposed development in the Portuguese Bend-Abalone Cove landslide area.

The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council has rejected a proposed modification of a building moratorium in the Portuguese Bend-Abalone Cove landslide area that would have made it easier to develop golf courses and other non-residential projects there.

After a two-hour, standing-room-only public hearing Tuesday, the council’s unanimous vote put to rest this one controversy affecting the two-square-mile landslide zone. However, the council failed to entirely alleviate the fears of some that developers could still find ways to circumvent the moratorium and build projects that might trigger future slides.

The ban on any kind of building was imposed in 1978 after the Abalone Cove landslide destroyed or damaged dozens of homes along Palos Verdes Drive South. Some parts of the 1,100-acre moratorium area are still moving, creeping along a few feet a year, experts report.

There is general agreement that complex and sometimes contradictory sections of the moratorium ordinance hinder efforts by homeowners in the area to repair or rebuild homes damaged or destroyed by slides or other disasters, city officials said.

For weeks the council and city staffers have been rewriting these sections in an attempt to streamline the law and make it easier for residents to rebuild their homes. There was no opposition to the approval of these changes at Tuesday’s meeting.

But the council has also been tinkering with the language that precluded new development in the landslide zone. And it was this that sparked strong opposition from people who oppose any kind of development in the area.

Perry Ehlig, the city’s geologist, said earlier this year that some new construction might be feasible in parts of the moratorium zone if these sites proved to be geologically stable. That seemed like good news to some administrators of this cash-poor city.

Faced with a $1.25-million budget shortfall next year, city officials are frantically looking for new sources of revenue. If some use could be made of the undeveloped lands in the moratorium area, it would generate more tax revenue, officials explained.

Orange County developer Barry Hon has asked the city to exclude a big chunk of the zone, near Peacock Hill, from the moratorium restrictions so he can develop 25 luxury homes and a 27-hole golf course. By city policy, land in the zone can be excluded from the moratorium, but only if the developer can prove the sites are geologically stable.

This exclusion policy is the focus of the controversy, with the main issue being the process the city uses to review a developer’s geology reports. Ehlig, the city’s primary judge of these reports, touched off a storm of protest from a group called Peninsula Preservation when he said it might be possible to build on some of the land in the landslide zone.

Led by Christopher Manning, a Loyola Marymount professor from Rolling Hills, the group claims the whole two-square-mile area is geologically unstable. Manning’s expensive home is on a bluff immediately above the slide area.

When the council and the city staff began redrafting the moratorium ordinance, they included a section that would have made it easier for the development of non-residential uses like a golf course. Reacting to a storm of protest Tuesday, the council rejected that idea on a 4-0 vote.

Manning also asked the council to appoint an independent panel of five geologists to review the geology reports by Hon and other developers wanting to build in the slide area. Manning contends Ehlig and some of the council members are biased in favor of developers.

The council took no action on the request.