Walls Come Tumbling Down:
Landslide Finally Leveling 3 Homes
By Charley Able
News Staff Writer
GOLDEN- Three houses left contorted and uninhabitable by a slow-moving landslide on Green Mountain will be no more than a memory by Saturday.
Crews from Gomez Contract Services are leveling the three houses most severely damaged by the landslide in the West Sixth Avenue Estates subdivision.
A worker at the site said all three of the houses should be demolished by week’s end, but other work at the site will continue.
Two homeowners contacted Wednesday declined comment, and the third could not be reached.
A settlement in a lawsuit filed by homeowners against developers, builders, geological consultants, excavators and others were settled earlier this month, but terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
Attorney Scott Sullan filed the lawsuit in 1998 on behalf of the owners of eight homes affected by the slide. A notice of claim filed with Jefferson County, which originally was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, estimated damages at $8 million.
Jefferson County was dismissed from the lawsuit in May.
Confidential settlements with two other families whose homes also were damaged by the landslide were reached in September.
The creeping landslide on the north slop of Green Mountain first came to public attention in early 1998. The three homes being demolished on West Bayaud were left uninhabitable by the landslide and were declared a public nuisance by county health officials.
Mitigation work completed last year appears to have halted the landslide.
Homes in the area are valued at $600,000.
County commissioners in 1990 approved Midway Development’s proposal to build in the area- including a 12-acre parcel on which development previously had been forbidden because of landslide risk- despite warnings from its staff and state geologists that the area was unstable.
The county set a number of requirements on development of the segment of the subdivision adjacent to the north slope of Green Mountain.
The requirements were not met and a subsequent county investigation revealed a failure in its administrative process.
Dan Brindle, Jefferson County’s director of Public Works, said it might be possible to build other houses on the site, but only under stringent conditions.
Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News, February 24, 2000
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