A roughly 4-foot boulder traveled over 2,200 linear feet, losing about 1,000 feet in elevation and somehow stopped mere feet from a Springville Utah resident’s front door! And people were watching it unfold from the […]
The couple owning a house up-slope from a massive 2014 landslide is accused of overwatering their lawn, leading to the landslide in a lawsuit filed by the developer. The developer also blames a natural gas […]
Dr. Dave has some financial analysis of the Bingham Canyon Mine Landslide in Utah. His interpretation of some of the financial data being thrown around is a financial loss of $770M, ouch! [Source: Read the […]
There is a great collection of aerial photos and other photos from last week’s Bingham Canyon Mine Landslide at Kennecott Utah Copper’s Flickr Photostream. Thanks to my colleague Wolfgang Knudson at Golder for sending the […]
DENVER, CO–(Marketwire – May 10, 2011) – ACH Foam Technologies supplied an estimated 2.1 million cubic feet of EPS Geofoam to the second largest Geofoam project in the US: the West Valley TRAX line. Utah Transit Authority (UTA) constructed the light rail line to a new hub in West Valley near Salt Lake City. Projected to cost $200 million and span 5.1 miles, the project required 639 truckloads or 750,000 cubic yards of the lightweight fill material. ACH Foam delivered the first truckloads in Febuary 2009; Geofoam installation was complete by January 2010. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from ACH Foam Technologies. [/Editor]
Various stakeholders are meeting at the site of the fatal landslide to discuss the various options for replacing or realigning the portion of the canal that failed. [Source: HJNews.com. Image: Landslides Under a Microscope Blog]
A large landslide has closed SR 14 east of Cedar City, Utah. UDOT expects that the road will be closed for up to 2 weeks for cleanup and to ensure that the slope is safe. Boulders up to an estimated 20 tons are now blocking the road and will likely need to be blasted down to a smaller size. A UDOT spokesman interviewed on the video shown after the break estimate the size of the slide at 700 to 800-ft long and 10 to 12-ft thick.
As I’ve reported previously, the State of Utah is in the process of adopting ordinances regulating the development of land that is susceptible to landslides and other geologic hazards. A new bill has been introduced in the Utah House that would give developers a recourse for appeal if they don’t like the decision of a local jurisdiction. More at the Salt Lake Tribune.
The Utah Geologic Survey has released a "Landslide Susceptibility Map of Utah". They apparently relied quite heavily on GIS based thresholding of existing slope angles but only after they had statistically analyzed failure angles for particular geologic units. So it sounds like they throw the known landslides, the geologic map of Utah and a DEM into the GIS a blend it all up. Perhaps a slight oversimplification!
As reported in a previous post, Utah has been considering adopting model legislation for local municipalities to make it more difficult for developers to develop in landslide prone areas. Apparently the Geologic Hazards working group […]
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