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Building Inspection Commission backs wider slope and landslide review for city projects
Summary
The commission voted to amend the San Francisco Building Code to require heightened soils and slope-stability review for projects within Bloom-report slope areas and state-mapped earthquake-induced landslide zones; the change expands review beyond previously designated neighborhoods and tasks staff with mapping and implementation details.
The San Francisco Building Inspection Commission on Sept. 24 approved an amendment to the building code that expands special soils and slope-stability review beyond two historically designated neighborhoods to include areas identified in the Bloom report and state-mapped earthquake-induced landslide zones.
Lawrence Kornfield, Acting Manager of Permit Services, told commissioners the change responds to concerns raised by the Code Advisory Committee and Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s office that the city’s earlier approach — which focused special soils review on named slope areas such as Edgehill and Northwest Mount Sutro — misses other parcels with landslide hazard because hazards can occur on areas of relatively low slope given local geology. Kornfield said a geotechnical peer review or, in some cases, the department’s structural-advisory panel could be required for projects in those zones.
Commissioners pressed staff on how the rule would apply to parcels that touch a mapped zone but are not themselves steep, and on thresholds for triggering additional review. Kornfield said the proposal would include any parcel that intersects the Bloom-report boundaries or the state’s earthquake‑induced landslide areas; he added that in practice a geotechnical letter could document the absence of a substantial landslide hazard for a particular parcel. The proposal also excludes small additions under roughly 1,000 square feet from the added requirements, to avoid imposing heavy reviews on minor home projects.
Commissioners asked staff to address serial permitting (whether repeated small additions could be treated cumulatively), to consider updating the 1974 Bloom map, and to clarify when a peer review should escalate to a formal structural-advisory panel. Commissioner discussion emphasized that the change is meant to prompt project‑level mitigation rather than a citywide hazard ranking study, though Kornfield said an update to the map would be a reasonable future step.
The commission moved and voted to approve sending the amended language forward with Kornfield’s recommended change; no opposition was recorded at the meeting.
