The Cal Football Fan

Study: no active faults under HPC site

According to Cal’s official website, a study has confirmed that there are no active faults on the proposed site for the Student-Athlete High Performance Center:

The new explorations turned up no active fault traces in the planned construction area, confirming the company’s earlier conclusions. Geomatrix’s conclusions were also supported by the seismic consulting firm William Lettis & Associates Inc., which conducted peer reviews of the 2006 and the 2007 studies. …

Professor Gregory L. Fenves, chair of UC Berkeley’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, reviewed both Geomatrix reports and has concluded that the design is in complete compliance with the Alquist-Priolo act. The building will be built with the most modern structural engineering technology to protect UC Berkeley athletes from the ground motion expected during a large magnitude Hayward Fault earthquake, he said.

“Seismologists and engineers know from studies of past earthquakes that the level of ground shaking is approximately the same right next to a fault as it is anywhere else within two miles of the fault,” Fenves said. “Thus, the new student-athlete center is unlikely to experience ground motion higher than any other building on campus or in downtown Berkeley should a major earthquake occur on the Hayward Fault.”

EDIT 2007-06-01: In addition, Professor Fenves has written a very nice article published in the SF Chronicle about the matter. An excerpt:

With top geologists now reaffirming that there are no active faults under the proposed center, the city’s allegation is unfounded from our perspective as earthquake engineers. In fact, the city’s lawsuit, filed last December, has the potential to jeopardize the safety of Cal athletes by delaying and possibly derailing the first step of a critical project to seismically retrofit the 83-year-old Memorial Stadium.

This is a major step forward for the stadium construction project, as it addresses the Alquist-Priolo objections completely. Still, Cal must fight the City of Berkeley’s public access claims and the bogus Save the Oaks tree issue.

However, this finding should contribute greatly to overcoming the preliminary court injunction issued early this year that is preventing the project’s progress towards stadium modernization and safety.