Walls

Moving ahead with a boundary change approved late last year, the City Council agreed this week to pay $13,500 to exclude the crumbling Rossmoor Wall from Los Alamitos' city limits. The council has hired Sara F. Anderson, former executive director of the government agency that approves such adjustments, to prepare the paperwork and negotiate with the county to move the city's boundaries 18 inches to the east.

A groundbreaking ceremony July 15 will mark the beginning of long-awaited repairs to the Signature Wall. The Board of Supervisors this month approved a $871,000 contract for the work. Each homeowner must pay about $24 a year for 20 years to cover the costs. Repairs will replace the mile-long brick wall with one that is taller and better equipped to withstand earthquakes. Workers plan to tear down the bricks and set them aside.

The City Council's longtime wish to exclude the crumbling Rossmoor wall from Los Alamitos' city limits may finally come true. The council on Monday is set to vote on a resolution that would transfer ownership of the wall to Rossmoor Community Services District. Officials said such a move would end a long dispute over who should pay the estimated $100,000 needed to repair the wall, which was damaged in the Landers and Northridge earthquakes.

Confronted by about 30 Anaheim residents who demanded a much-delayed sound wall along the Riverside Freeway, the Orange County Transportation Commission on Monday voted to spend $550,000 for a temporary structure. "It's better than nothing," said Bob Lowe, whose home is 150 feet from the freeway. "We want something as soon as possible." Work on the sound wall, which will extend from Placentia Avenue to Sunkist Street, is to begin July 1.

All 10 officers on the town's police force quit today, complaining of poor working conditions at department headquarters--a converted ice house where prisoners must be manacled to the walls. The officers also cited a dispute with the new police chief, W. James Lyons, and submitted a list of 36 grievances. The town of 7,768 will be protected temporarily by the Vermont State Police, officials said.

Despite public attention to the issue, city officials predict that it will be months before a decision is made on what to do with 295 oceanfront walls that have been illegally erected on public space. For decades, residents who live on the beaches between the Santa Ana River entrance and the end of the Balboa Peninsula have built walls between the water and their property lines to protect their yards from blowing sand.

Along the San Fernando Valley's freeways, the clamor for sound walls is getting louder. Dozens of neighborhoods are pressuring and pleading for the block walls that overnight can turn a rumbling residential area into sylvan silence. On the theory that the walls are allocated at least partly on the basis of political clout, some groups are seeking to generate as much heat and noise as possible as they push and pull for a wall.

More than half a mile of tunnel walls constructed earlier this year along the Vermont Avenue subway line are thinner than originally designed, transit officials disclosed Friday, but a review team has concluded that the walls can still withstand a major earthquake. The undersized walls span nearly 12% of the twin tunnels that run north-south from Hollywood down to Koreatown, a figure that alarmed some critics of the $5.8-billion subway.

Springsteen's behind is settled in for the year. Garfield and Odie have found comfortable quarters. Tom and Kelly, riding the fame of the summer's hottest movie, appear set for a ubiquitous autumn. Classes at San Diego State University begin Tuesday, but the business of turning 15-by-12-foot rooms into yearlong homes for two people was under way Sunday for many of the 2,493 students who will occupy spaces in SDSU's eight dormitories.

There have been several famous walls in history: the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Wailing Wall. Now comes the $360,000 K-Rat Wall in Riverside. It gets its name from the Stephens' kangaroo rat--a nocturnal, burrow-dwelling, chipmunk-like rodent that propels itself kangaroo-style on powerful hind legs. Those powerful legs have gotten the species into powerful trouble.