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Geology officials say Rattlesnake Hills Landslide isn't getting worse, despite concerns


Photo from the first day DNR visited the site after hearing about the landslide, Rian Skov was able to be in the photo for scale.{ }
Photo from the first day DNR visited the site after hearing about the landslide, Rian Skov was able to be in the photo for scale.
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YAKIMA -- Some people who live near the Rattlesnake Hills Landslide have voiced concerns over it possibly getting worse.

Local experts say as of now there is no cause for concern,

When this landslide started in 2017, it was moving around four feet per week.

Now, five years later, geology officials say it's moving less than a tenth of a foot each week.

In fact, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) put up shipping containers filled with a bunch of concrete blocks to protect the freeway, but the landslide is moving so slow, no rocks have even made across the street, officials say.

Rian Skov, Chief Reclamation Geologist at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), says they have surveyed the landslide every day for the past five years, "That survey takes data on the hour, every hour, every day, non-stop."

WSDOT monitors the site frequently too.

"Our crews go out about every month to take pictures and kind of look at it. We also meet with DNR and some other local agencies once a month to go over the findings to determine if there's any major movement or any substantial concern, which there hasn't been of late," Meagan Lott, spokesperson for WSDOT, said.

Neighbors fear that may not be enough though, saying it looks like it's getting worse.

However, experts confirm it's not getting worse, and it actually looks like it's improving on It's own.

"By kind of piling up rocks and stuff as it moves down the hill into that flat mine area. all the rocks at the front of the landslide are kind of buttressing it and almost fixing itself to an extent," Skov said.

Officials are thinking about moving rocks around to create a buttress that will make it come to a complete stop faster than it would naturally, but as it is now, they say it's moving extremely slowly and poses no threats to the public.

"As long as you're not trespassing onto the mine site and interacting in the landslide itself, i don't see or perceive and kind of a threat to the public on this. it's an unfortunate scar on the hill side there but that's what hopefully the reclamation of the mine site will be addressing as that comes online," Skov said.

Skov says if they allowed it to stop moving by itself it may take about 20 years, which is far longer than they're comfortable with.

He says he hopes they can make it come to a complete stop soon so that they can work on ways to rectify the split on the hill side.

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