LIVE BLOGGING – DAY 2: Court ruling day activities
(Written by kencraw)
(Starting at 10:00 AM)
So far no ruling. Nobody knows when to expect that it appears. I thought it would be posted first thing in the morning. It is not on the Alameda County court case webpage yet. I’ve also checked just about every news source I can think of: BearInsider, CalBears.com, SF Chron, CC Times, KCBS, KGO, KTVU, KGO-TV, KPIX, NBC11 and a bunch of blogs. So far all of the coverage, and it is substantial, just surrounds the activities at the grove and the tree sitters.
UPDATE as of 11:00 AM:
For the record, here are the latest news links, KTVU video, KGO-TV (two good videos), KPIX video, NBC11 article, KGO audio, KCBS article and podcast and SF Chronicle. Still no signs of a ruling. Word on the street is that it will be faxed to the lawyers. I’m sure it’ll be an hour or two between when they get it and when the first word of what it says leaks to the public (they need to read it first).
UPDATE as of 11:15 AM:
I haven’t been monitoring the Daily Cal this morning until now. Here is their latest article from last night.
UPDATE as of 11:45 AM:
The YouTuber bcitizen has posted a new video. In addition to the usual ramblings, it has video of the actual extraction of the tree-sitter and associated screaming.
UPDATE as of 1:30 PM:
Still nothing. We’re all waiting. I can’t understand how this wouldn’t have been released at 8:00 AM this morning. Is the judge really still working on this? Does it take the courts half a day to push send on a fax machine? What’s the story!?!
I’ll post as soon as I know anything.
UPDATE as of 3:30 PM:
Well, still no ruling, but there has been one notable update to come out of the media around a midday incident. The tree-sitters have built what looks like a new platform well above the tree-line that they’re calling the “God pod” and looks like a crud crows-nest in an old ship well above the sails. My guess is that it was done overnight. In any case, the point of this platform is to put the tree-sitter in a precarious position where any attempt to either compromise the platform or to remove the tree-sitter will likely result in a VERY long fall. There’s no other branches or ropes or anything to prevent a disasterous collapse/fall. With the arborists working in the vacinity the tree-sitter got very aggitated and started vigorously shaking her little platform. It’s a “no lose” situation for her. If it collapses, she can attempt blame her fall on them getting to close. It’s a bit like holding a gun to one’s head and saying “don’t come any closer”. Here is some video of the incident: KTVU has weak footage. ABC’s video has a better angle.
UPDATE as of 3:45 PM:
A small note, CBS says the expect the ruling “before 5:00 PM”. It’s not exactly coming from a very authoritative source (not being the judge or the courthouse), but at least something to keep our weakening hopes, as the day drags on, alive.
UPDATE as of 5:00 PM:
Still no word… the Alameda County Courthouse website has been brought to its knees. One can only assume that’s from all of us Bear fans.
UPDATE as of 5:30 PM:
Word on the street is that the University will be having a press conference at… take your finger off the big red button Mr. President… 7:00 PM tonight. The webpage for the court case has not been updated and it’s now well after closing hours for them, so I fully expect that IF we hear word today, it’s going to be via the University or the tree-sitter supporters. My guess is that we’ll hear from the tree-sitters first if the University really is going to wait until a press conference to say anything. The bad news there is the quality of the information received will be less than reliable.
UPDATE as of 6:30 PM:
The ruling has been released and it looks like it is a mixed decision, which means it is a loss as far as I’m concerned. I’m reading it and will post more shortly.
UPDATE as of 7:00 PM:
OK. It is indeed a mixed decision, but the VAST majority of it is favorable to Cal. I don’t know what this all means yet, but it seems like it will mean some sort of a delay, potentially a short one (although this is very unclear to me at this juncture) while Cal goes through the process of correcting the errors and getting the court to sign off on them. The big question, one I don’t have an answer to yet, is whether it will have to go through public comment again and whether the Regents will have to re-approve it. Those are the two things that would turn a short delay into a long delay.
I will post a detailed analysis later tonight.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Thanks Ken,
As a bear football junkie I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your blog. Please keep it up.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I have a bad feeling about this delay. I’m thinking that the judge is going to wait until business closing hours and release the statement then (against the University), so that the most minimal amount of anger will be unleashed.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Something to consider…. most judges issue tentative rulings to the parties prior the actual ruling. Alameda judges usually do this one or two days prior to the issuing of the opinion in full. UC started its removal process a day or so before the date of the release of ruling. It makes sense to think they knew a favorable ruling was coming their way so they started the process a little early. This is quite excruciating to wait for. I should be studying for the bar exam right now, but have faith. Furthermore, backlash would most likely come from the hippies, so that might be the reason for the wait. This way, the UC can go in this evening and clear things out for further work tomorrow.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
One of the tree-sitter girls – the one who fell out of the tree and broke both her wrists last fall, I don’t remember her name – was in my Spanish 1A class at Berkeley City College. She was relatively pretty and was pleasant to talk to, but it was clear that she was mentally challenged. When she borrowed some paper to write on, she wrote in a tiny little scrawl in the upper left 30% of the page like maybe her mind didn’t see the rest of the page. This would be consistent with these people’s overall failure to see the big picture.
The big picture: Sustainable-living groups are gaining greater credibility as the public consciousness begins to realize that natural resources are becoming increasingly limited. Poo-flinging self-proclaimed “environmentalists” are actually HARMING the environment because the backlash from their irresponsible actions causes voters to withdraw their support for environmental activism.
Even on a micro-environmental scale, the university’s offer to plant three new trees for every tree it cuts down is a net benefit to the environment. These trees started out as landscaping planted by the university; they were never part of some wild, “old growth” forest.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
That’s the thing that kills me, Katprint: These trees were planted as a part of a stadium project. Now they are going to be cut down and replaced with 3x of trees as a part of a stadium project.
The guy who sits behind me at Memorial Stadium is convinced that this entire protest was engineered by stadium neighbors who are against any and all construction around the stadium neighborhood. That’s a bit too paranoid for my tastes, but I don’t think that the protestors are governed by logic. If they had their way the entire stadium would be bulldozed and replaced with more trees. And the more buildings bulldozed, the better.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
5pm… what the shit is going on. i have a life to return to. why is fandom so dehabilitating.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I agree with Katprint fully and wrote much the same thing for a sfgate article. I hope Shawn B is right. That’s what kills me about this whole thing. I would be among those protesting in one form or another if there was oil drilling about to happen off Monterrey or some legitimate threat to a legitimately important wilderness. I’m willing to bet there is not a single one of these protesters who has hiked as many miles as I have in the wilderness of California or who has educated as many people about environmental science. They are cloaking themselves in a cause I take seriously, and defacing it with their actions.
I never thought I would be one to hope the University acts strongly, but I truly believe the best thing for the University and the environmental movement would be for them to go in overnight, remove everyone absolutely, and make very public statements about this being a misguided PR stunt that should be focused on the multitude of serious environmental issues facing CA and our nation.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Thanks for live blogging this. One suggestion: instead of constantly checking all the news sources, why don’t you just go to the stadium and update us from there? That won’t help with the ruling but you will know more about what is going on at the grove.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
the ruling is up. hard to make sense of from what i read. however it is granted in part. which is bad news. news conference might help at 7.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
It’s on file at the court site now! “Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Petitions for Writ of Mandate” 129 pages long. Haven’t read it yet.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
further reading…. we won on the 2 big questions (1) we are not on a fault and (2)the SAHPC is not part of the stadium. But apparently some elements are.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
@Shawn B
The SAHPC is not part of the stadium although some of the planned improvements (a grade beam added to the stadium, alternations to existing staircases, and “ground floor slab penetrations” to install the SAHPC communications system) will be part of the stadium. Before those stadium components are completed, the improvement vs. replacement cost analysis must be done. However, “The University is Not Required to Determine The Cost of All Three Phases of the Stadium Project At This Time.”
June 18th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Katprint…. right on. i just found the pages. it looks really good for us i think.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
@Dan: I know because we blog about Cal Football you think we are like the Phantom of the Opera, and live in a cave beneath the stadium. 🙂 But the truth is, Ken lives in Sacramento, so he can’t hop on his bike and head down to the stadium. I live in the Bay Area, but as a public-transit commuter (ooh, shouldn’t I be for saving the trees?) there’s no actual way for me to get over there and actually get home at night, even if I did want to leave my job early.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Still reading…
It was OK to delegate the EIR. OK for the University to set aside the money to build the SAHPC before the EIR was completed. OK not to have recirculated the EIR. EIR was supported by substantial evidence, and no significant omitted impacts, and University adopted feasible mitigation measures. NOTE: “… the record contains substantial evidence that the area in which Memorial Grove exists does not contain sensitive biological resources.”
Half way done…
June 18th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
@Jason: Ok that’s cool. I just figured you lived in Berkeley.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
EIR adequately addresses impact on potential archaeological resources (fpr example if they find any human burial sites.) No evidence of any burial sites or other archaeological resources in the project area.
.
OK to treat 7 integrated projects as one project for CEQA purposes; the EIR’s description of the 7 projects is sufficiently detailed. Objectives and reasonable alternatives to the 7 projects were adequately identified and analyzed.
.
EIR adequately analyzes geological and seismic impacts. In a nutshell, the SAHPC won’t make the existing risks any worse. EIR analyzed emergency access, which will improve in some ways and University will pay City of Berkeley some money to mitigate adverse impacts. Cultural impacts were analyzed and mitigated.
Still reading…
June 18th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I’m trying to generate a PDF so that people can read at their leisure without Java. Stay tuned.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
EIR identified 14 significant unavoidable impacts for aesthetics, cultural resources, geology/seimicity, noise, traffic and utilities. EIR analyzed possible alternatives that would address 13 out of 14 of these impacts, which alternatives were all rejected. EIR’s Findings were supported by substantial evidence. “The Court concludes that The Regents’ Statement of Overriding Considerations both appropriately identifies the impacts which remain significant and unavoidable, and explains why the Integrated Projects should proceed despite those impacts.”
However, the EIR fails to explain why it is UNAVOIDABLE that the number of capacity events at the stadium must double. “Since the University has not explained why maintaining the existing number of events is infeasible or unreasonable in light of the objectives of this project, it cannot point to any evidence that would support a finding that the earthquake risks, additional noise and traffic impacts associated with the additional events are unavoidable.
EIR discusses trees, light stanchions,
.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Katprint. Thanks for taking up the banner of reviewing the ruling quickly and commenting on it in this thread. It gave some much needed info to readers of this blog before Jason and I could get up our thoughts on it.
Dan, no worries on the ‘why don’t you head down to the grove?’ question. As Jason said I live in Sacramento (Roseville to be precise). Nevertheless, I was seriously considering heading down to the grove. Two things stopped me:
1. I didn’t know where I was going to be able to get a power source to keep my laptop up nor an internet connection to post from.
2. I wasn’t sure when stuff was going to go down. It would have sucked to drive the 4 hours round-trip only to have been there either before or after anything meaningful happened.
If I still lived in the East Bay, I’m pretty sure I would have taken a couple of 1/2 days off work and headed down there both Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m going to be in the Bay Area this weekend for a sailing regatta and I’m hopeful I can get down to the stadium to take some pictures at some point. The issue will be that I’m carpooling with another sailor (you know, because I hate the environment) so I will have to convince him that the circus is worth his time for a side-trip.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
[…] As the ruling approached, things got dicey at the Oak Grove, as seen by these two days (day 1, day 2) of live-blogging of the […]