Crews to start drilling into Rattlesnake Ridge to add more equipment
RATTLESNAKE RIDGE, Wash.- It's been more than a year since a landslide started making its way down Rattlesnake Ridge.
The large chunk of earth has moved quite a bit, but teams monitoring the slide say it's slowed down to a crawl.
“The most recent surveys indicate that the fastest moving point is about .85 feet per week and the slowest moving point is about .20 feet per week,” senior emergency planner Horace Ward said.
Which is much slower than the fastest moving point recorded at the beginning of the year, at about a foot and a half a week.
And just under the fastest point recorded in August, at just over a foot a week.
But to get even more data, Columbia Asphalt paid for contractors to start drilling into the hill near the landslide.
The goal is to add more monitoring equipment to the dozens of instruments already on the ridge.
Management teams said the added items will keep track of things like groundwater levels underneath the slide, as well as movement of land.
“That work will include three to four bore holes that will be installed on the hill side near the landslide and that work will go from next week through the first week of January,” Ward said.
It might look scary to see activity on the hill as you drive by it on I-82, but the Department of Natural Resources said you have nothing to work about.
They said the drilling will be very minimal compared to all the equipment that has already been put on the ridge.
“The department of natural resources does not believe this work will impact the landslide due to the small size of the bore holes, which will only be a few inches in diameter and they will not be directly on the landslide,” Ward said.
The Department of Transportation doesn't expect this work to affect travel on I-82 or the people living near Thorp Road.
