The CRT Menace

The revised plans for the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT), reduced from 6 (in 2009) to 3 stories, sites the 140.000 gross square foot monster on a strip of steep and fragile hillside within the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Hazard Zone, right above Foothill Housing. There will also be 5 to 9 cooling towers for the four super computers intended for it, collected from the current downtown Oakland site, as well as a number of offices and personnel from other hill buildings.

The map to the right (from page 4.0-27 of LBNL's Draft Environmental Assessment) indicates noise measurement locations and the "sensitive receptors" of that noise — it points to the Nyingama Institute and Foothill, so keep your windows closed! But that's not the real danger.

More important is that the Hayward Fault runs just a few hundred feet above behind or even under the upper Foothill dorms, under Bowles, and behind Stern hall. With a high probability that the Fault will experience a magnitude 6.8 to 7.0 (read devastating) quake in the next 22 years, the likelihood that the hillside, overloaded with new construction, will descend all the way onto the dorms is HIGH. (The probability lies between 31% and 67%, depending upon what you read.)

The University, co-sponsor of the CRT, has erected a web of concrete blocks across the back of Foothill parking. Check it out; it is already shifting. This is an area that has slid in the recent past, and the University knows it. What were they thinking when they erected 3-story dorms clad in shingle, fire-traps, so close to the Fault? And the CRT? They hide the report and bury what is in it. Few will read it.

For the draft environmental assessment (EA) report and especially the geotech reports, go to www.lbl.gov/Community/CRT/index.html. (The PDF version of the EA is divided into a number of files at this webpage.) Do not be confused by the 2009 reports elsewhere.

Then, before the deadline of 5 PM on October 15, 2010, write kim.abbott@bso.science.doe.gov with subject line "EA for CRT" and tell him NO! Not over your heads!