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SAVE STRAWBERRY CANYON
Save Strawberry Canyon is a citizens’ group that seeks to preserve and protect the watershed lands and cultural landscape of Strawberry Canyon. Save Strawberry Canyon was formed out of the urgent need to take action in response to the threat of intrusive, inappropriate development on the Canyon lands. Strawberry Canyon, opposite the Golden Gate, is a unique link to the East Bay Regional Park District lands and, by its streams and views, to San Francisco Bay. The Canyon itself with its streamside vegetation, oak-bay woodlands, grasslands, and surrounding slopes, is arich repository of wildlife directly adjacent to the dense urban populations of the UC Berkeley Campus and the cities of Berkeley and Oakland. Save Strawberry Canyon seeks to inform the public about the impacts of proposed developments, to encourage location of such developments to more suitable sites, and to promote better public access to the beautiful Canyon with its wildlife and scenic resources. — Mission Statement
June 11, 2010
Jeff Philliber, Planning Coordinator
Re: Scoping Comments for Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Solar Energy Research Center (SERC) Dear Mr. Philliber: Thank you for the opportunity to submit written concerns before preparation of the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the proposed SERC project. Save Strawberry Canyon specifically asks that the EIR address the serious problems of the site, some revealed in landslides in 1967 at Buildings 76 and 78 just north of the proposed SERC site (our information does not include slides more recent than 1976). These indicate the weakness of the subsoil. Demolition will disturb the site, new and heavy buildings even more so. The core samples taken around Building 25 (for the proposed General Purpose Lab) again reveal claystone and siltstone characteristic of the entire LBNL campus. These, according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Earth (2000, p. 715) “are very reactive to physical disturbances of differential loading, and they slump and flow easily when subjected to stress… Muds and mudstones [i.e., siltsone, mud-shale, and claystone] give rise to many problems in civil engineering because they are weak and shrink or swell on being dried or wetted.” Placing SERC on a plinth may permit it to move integrally rather than being torn apart by piers in this mud, but any building adds to the dangers of this land in the event of a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault. Liquefaction of these mudstones is highly likely. The danger to human life on the site and below it must be addressed. Many more and deeper core samples will be needed to disprove these contentions.
cc: Kim Abbott, Environmental Program Manager, Department of Energy, Office of Science
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