Latest news with #landmovement
CBS News
3 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Wayfarers Chapel announces prospective campus in Rancho Palos Verdes
After the ongoing land movement in Palos Verdes forced its closure last year, the Wayfarers Chapel may have found a new hilltop to call home. The National Historic Landmark's prospective campus is located on Battery Barnes next to Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall, above Point Vicente Lighthouse and Golden Cove. It's roughly 1.7 miles away from the shuttered Portuguese Bend location. The National Historic Landmark's prospective campus is located on Battery Barnes next to Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall, above Point Vicente Lighthouse and Golden Cove. It's roughly 1.7 miles away from the shuttered Portuguese Bend location. Wayfarers Chapel Over the last two years, land movement has severely damaged roads, homes and utilities in Rancho Palos Verdes, eventually leading the region's major natural gas and electricity providers to shut off their services to hundreds of residents. Since August, the Portuguese Bend slide has impacted about 650 homes. The ongoing natural disaster prompted FEMA and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services to implement a $42 million voluntary buyout program, allowing residents to sell their homes at "fair market value." In October, geologists gave residents a small glimmer of hope after confirming that the slide had decelerated from an average of 13 inches a week to 8 inches, a roughly 38% decrease. Further studies conducted by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed that the movement slowed to about 4 inches a week in the fall of 2024. Once rebuilt, the Wayfarers Chapel campus would include a visitors center, a museum, a cafe and gardens. The 100-seat, glass chapel designed by famous architect Lloyd Wright originally opened in 1951. Wayfarers Chapel gained its National Landmark status in 2023. However, the decades-long Portuguese Bend landslide forced it to close in February 2024. In July 2024, construction crews fully disassembled the historic church while it waited for a new location. "We look forward to rebuilding and serving the community for another 75+ years," Wayfarers Chapel wrote on its website.
Washington Post
08-05-2025
- Science
- Washington Post
Land under the country's largest cities is sinking. Here's where — and why.
The land underneath the largest cities in the United States is sinking, a phenomenon threatening buildings, roads and rail lines, according to new research. But that sinking, known as subsidence, is not happening in the same way in each place, or even the same way across one city. Researchers mapped out how land is moving vertically across the 28 most populous U.S. cities and found all the cities were compressing like a deflated air mattress. Twenty-five of them are dropping across two-thirds of their land. About 34 million people — about 10 percent of the U.S. population — live in the subsiding areas, according to the study published Thursday in Nature Cities.
