Update on SAHPC hearing
(Written by kencraw)
Chris Avery has posted another one of his excellent articles about the hearing, this one on the 5th day of the hearing on October 3rd. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get a full article from Chris on the bomb scare abreviated day 3 (still no word on who did it) on the Friday of the first week (9/21) or the full day 4 on Tuesday (10/2) although he did have partial reports in the scout.com bulliten boards. Today is of course the site visits by the judge.
As for some personal analysis:
It seems that the UC lawyers are bringing out the big guns and there’s a reason the big guns are called the big guns. John Sanger is well know in laywer circles and is one of those guys who just commands respect in the court room. You can see the different in Chris Avery’s articles by how much the reporting sounds less muddled with lots of points being stated more clearly. This is likely because he was listening to a lawyer who can present things with just that extra bit more clearly and the points drive home.
Also, the more I read, the more confidence I have that the University will prevail. It seems that the pivotal issue is whether the two structures, the stadium and the SAHPC are two separate structures. Before the most recent article it seemed to lean in the University’s favor but there was some doubt in my mind. It is clear that Mr. Sanger has done an excellent job of refuting that contention leaving little doubt in my mind that the University will win on this point.
In addition when looking at the questions the judge is asking, they’re all questions that question the city, not the University:
- Does Alquist-Priolo even apply to state agencies (like UC)?
- Does the cost of seismic retrofitting count toward the 50% limit on renovation costs imposed by Alquist-Priolo?
Both of those questions are ones that put the city on the defensive because at worst they keep the status quo for the University (they were planning to abide by APZ and if the retrofit doesn’t count towards APZ limits then the SAHPC would easily fit within 50% by itself).
The lone bad news is that the hearing continues to drag on, with final arguments now coming next Thursday (10/11) with what looks like a minimum of two weeks for a ruling. That puts the earliest ruling at just over two weeks before the last home game, so less than 3 weeks before construction was due to start. If the judge takes the full 90 days to rule, however unlikely that may be, there could conceivably be no ruling until after the BCS has crowned a national champion.
Along those lines, can anyone imagine the press-situation should the trees come down the week of the USC game, with a potential #1 vs. #2? It would be so WAAAAAY over the top in the amount of coverage that I can’t imagine the university would go through with it. They’d wait until the following week after everyone has gone home.
October 5th, 2007 at 2:49 am
ken… any thoughts on Judge Miller’s visit to the site and the alternate site near the water?… does her visiting help us or hurt us… i saw the news broadcast of her visiting the site on the bay too…
how do we explain to her that its too far a distance between classes and the training center when there’s a bus line…
plus i don’t think it would help our cause to explain that the wind would make it basically impossible for football to be played there at all… that’s not really the type of argument that football novices really understand.
any encouraging thoughts?
October 5th, 2007 at 2:54 am
by the way… our #10 womens volleyball team just beoch slapped the duckettes in Eugene last night!! …. duckettes were ranked #19 (but not for long)… looks like both our girls and our boys are owning them in their own house, in the same week… ouch!
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=26293
October 5th, 2007 at 8:30 am
At what point do geologists get to inform the judge and the public that a hypothetical stadium site near the bay would be MORE dangerous than Strawberry Canyon during most earthquakes, not less? Think 1989 and the Cypress Structure, Marina District, downtown Santa Cruz…that’s loose sediment and fill down there by the Berkeley Marina, not solid bedrock. The maps located at the following website tells you all you need to know:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/alameda/
Note how the hazard is actually LESS along the fault trace at the foot of the hills, and much greater down by the bay.
The principal hazard associated with being directly on top of the surface fault trace is dealing with steady, annual fault creep, which is currently about 5 mm/year along the Hayward Fault–hence the west half of Memorial moving northward past the east half. While an engineering challenge (obviously), this creep does not significantly impact the overall earthquake hazard. Unfortunately, there is widespread public misunderstanding about earthquakes that gives far too much weight to location “on” a fault line. Rather than reflecting cutting-edge scientific understanding of earthquakes, the old A-P law was a knee-jerk reaction to 1971’s San Fernando quake down here in L.A.. Earthquake safety is very important, don’t get me wrong; it just doesn’t have all that much to do with whether or not your building sits on or near the surface trace of a fault.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Ken – Is there a way to export results provided by your Head-to-Head Comparison Stats tool in an .xls or .csv format?
I’m trying to crunch some numbers in order to deal with this bye weekend.
Thanks!
October 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am
RollOnYouBears… no, I don’t have an export feature. However, a simple cut and paste from your web-browser to Excel will work… at least it did for me with IE 6.0 and Excel 2003.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Thanks for the tip Ken!