Feinstein to seek funds

Senator views landslide damage and promises to look for federal money to restore Bluebird Canyon. ‘It breaks my heart to see this,’ she says.Seeing for herself the devastation wrought by the June 1 landslide gave Sen. Dianne Feinstein a new perspective on the monumental task the city faces.

Feinstein visited the site Tuesday. Already in support of an appeal of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s denial of financial assistance to the city, Feinstein promised to look into additional sources of funding.

“I am ready to get an amount in some appropriations bill,” said Feinstein, a member of the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee. “It breaks my heart to see this. If I had not been here and seen this, I wouldn’t have gone into this other track [seeking new sources of funding].”

Feinstein also said the federal Department Of Transportation might be tapped for certain matters, such as repairs to Flamingo Road.

“If the city goes ahead with its sales-tax increase, this could be a federal, state and local partnership,” Feinstein said.

“Try to get $5 million from the state,” she urged City Manager Ken Frank, “and I will try to get the rest.”

A special election is scheduled for Dec. 13 to ask voters to increase the sales tax by half a cent, which would raise $6 million to fund projects delayed or shelved due to the costs of repairs to infrastructure damaged by the slide and establish a disaster fund. The special tax will expire in six years, and no funds from the increase will be used to rebuild homes.

Feinstein was the first national political figure to visit the site since then-Rep. Christopher Cox came to Laguna in June.

“I am so glad you came,” Jill Lockhart, 35, whose home was destroyed in the slide, told the senator. “The governor never came. I voted for him and my husband voted for him, but he proved everyone who didn’t vote for him [to be] right.”

Lockhart told Feinstein that she escaped from her sliding home with her two sons, Trey, 4, and Tyson, 2, by scurrying down the hill that was crashing around her. The Lockharts have been living in a donated El Morro mobile home.

“We are so lucky to live in such a great town,” Lockhart said. “I don’t know of any other city that would come together like Laguna.”

Feinstein said the slide placed an inordinate burden on a small community like Laguna.

“The question is, how can we do what needs to be done?” Feinstein said.

Both Feinstein and Cox wrote letters in June recommending that the slide be included in FEMA declarations of disasters because of the unusually heavy winter storms.

The application was denied without explanation.

Feinstein, who also visited Laguna the morning after fire swept the town in 1993, said she found FEMA’s decision unfathomable.

“I am perplexed why FEMA has declined to provide public and individual assistance to Laguna Beach that it so clearly deserves,” Feinstein wrote in letter dated Oct. 3 to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Feinstein said state and city documents presented compelling information that links the slides to the storms President Bush had declared disasters. The information included substantiating data from independent geological firms, the United States Geological Survey, the California Coastal Commission and the California Geological Survey.

She said FEMA officials should view the site to better understand the magnitude of a disaster that no television or news photographs can convey.

“I will go to bat for you, but I can’t promise anything,” Feinstein told city officials Tuesday. “I can’t force FEMA to do anything. I had more influence in another administration than this one.”

Feinstein’s presence buoyed Lockhart.

“Just the fact that she came showed us we have support,” Lockhart said.

Mayor Elizabeth PearsonSchneider, who accompanied Feinstein on the tour of the site, said the senator had been supportive from the moment she heard about the slide.

“She sent her staff here the day after the landslide and called and gave me her home phone number,” Pearson-Schneider said.

The June 1 landslide affected about seven acres of Bluebird Canyon. In addition to damaging or destroying more than 20 homes, the slide caused about 500 feet of Flamingo Road to shift about 70 feet south of the original alignment. Sewer, water, gas, electricity and telephone services were disrupted, and residents of 345 homes in Bluebird Canyon were forced to evacuate.

City officials anticipate spending between $15 million and $18 million to stabilize the hill and drainage in the short run. In the long run, they hope to restore the infrastructure and the water course that drains the canyon, now buried by 50 or 60 feet of dislodged dirt.

“Whatever funding [Feinstein] can tap into, I want to tap into,” said Community Recovery Coordinator Bob Burnham. “This is expensive.”

Temporary fixes are underway to protect the area from further slides this winter. Permanent repairs will be completed next year. 20051014ioa4oqknCOURTENAY NEARBURG / COASTLINE PILOT(LA)Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks with Jill Lockhart and sons Tyson, 2, and Trey, 4. The Lockharts lost their Flamingo Road home in the Bluebird Canyon landslide.