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SAVE STRAWBERRY CANYON P.O. BOX 1234 Berkeley, California 94701 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. The Strawberry Canyon watershed, 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
August 24, 2011
Jennifer McDougall, Principal Planner
Re: Comments on Recirculated Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) to the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects EIR for the California Memorial Stadium: Seismic Corrections and West Program Improvements Project (CMS West) Dear Ms. McDougall and Colleagues: Save Strawberry Canyon (SSC) is a non-profit organization specifically formed in 2008 to respond to a growing community interest in the preservation and protection of Strawberry Canyon. Because the CMS West project specifically proposes the “possibility” to develop Witter Field for permanent intensified use, SSC urges a reassessment. Witter Field, within the Strawberry Canyon Recreation Area, is located at the foot of Strawberry Canyon. The CMS West project, thus, not only raises substantial questions regarding the potential to further derogate the integrity of Strawberry Canyon, but it also raises questions regarding the potential for the Strawberry Creek watershed to suffer further distress, as well as compound the potential for environmental harm and risk. The DSEIR for the CMS West project has no discussion of Strawberry Canyon as an historical resource deserving of recognition for its “…association with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of California’s history and cultural heritage” (California Public Resources Code Sec. 5024.1(c)(1). First and foremost, it is due to the Canyon’s the year-round water, flowing from the mouth of Canyon, that the forefathers of the University elected in 1858 to establish the College of California in Berkeley. College founder Rev. Samuel H. Willey recalled in A History of the College of California: “…It was evident, on reflection, that the Berkeley site combined the chief merits of the best of the others in all respects except as to the quantity of water supply… Therefore the water question, the only thing that seemed to be in the way, was thoroughly investigated. The quantity of water in Strawberry Creek, was noted through the dry season. The springs in the hills were explored. Examination was made to ascertain whether there were other sources of water supply available in the hills. It was never intended to do so foolish a thing as to locate a College, in this State of long, rainless summers, on any site, without an abundance of pure, flowing water. During the year it was satisfactorily ascertained that a copious supply could be obtained, back in the higher hills. When this fact was finally settled, the opinion of the Trustees and friends of the College seemed to gravitate towards this spot as the permanent site of the College…To include both banks of Strawberry Creek, and their fine bordering of oaks, sycamores, bay-trees, and a plentiful growth of evergreen shrubbery.” In 1865, after being retained by the College to lay out the campus and the adjacent Piedmont Way (State Historical Landmark) residential district, it was Frederick Law Olmsted — considered the father of American landscape architecture — who presented a Report to the College including thoughts regarding the Canyon. Visualizing what is now Canyon Road (included in Panoramic Hill National Register District) he wrote: “…One of the neighborhood lanes is extended eastwardly to the mouth of the valley or gorge in the mountains, which is a part of the property of the College, but which it would be inconvenient to show upon the drawing. This lane is intended to be extended up the gorge, first, however crossing to the other side, not far beyond the point at which it terminates in the drawing. Thence it is intended to follow up the course of the brook as I have verbally explained to you, and as close upon its banks as is practicable…The lane within the gorge would have to be formed by excavation in the hill side, and a thick plantation should be carefully established on the upper slope so as to confine attention to the damp ravine below and the opposite bank, which to a considerable height is abundantly covered with native foliage of a very beautiful character. As this road follows a stream of water from the open landscape of the bay region into the midst of the mountains it offers a great change of scenery within a short distance, and will constitute a unique and most valuable appendage to the general local attractions of the neighborhood.” Ten years later, it was Frank Soulé, Jr., University Professor of Engineering, who created the definitive 1875 map of the Strawberry Canyon watershed lands, entitled Map of Strawberry Valley and Vicinity Showing the Natural sources of the Water Supply of the University of California, along with an accompanying narrative, Report on the Water Supply of the University of California, in which he wrote: “…It [University property] is an area 200 acres, is watered by numerous springs in the hills…With the spring water and surface water saved, the grounds [campus site] could be thoroughly irrigated throughout the year, and made to blossom as the rose…Beyond toward the Monte Diablo Range, the ground rises into hills, the highest of which is 884 feet above the base of the south college [building]…Strawberry Creek is for a large portion of the year a beautifully clear stream; during the winter it discharges an enormous quantity of water, and runs between the steep banks ten to fifteen feet in depth, and with a span from thirty to one hundred feet. Along it are found many shady, quiet nooks, gracious to the scholar, philosopher, and naturalist…On the hills there is a thin soil of decomposed shale rock, etc. It would be difficult to find within so small an area as the University site a spot with so many varieties and capabilities in the way of soils, irrigation, and exposure.”Soulé’s map, still useful today, and his narrative delineated the Canyon as integral to the University, yet distinctly separate defined by the complex nature of its watershed, its unique geography and terrain. Since the establishment of the University, Strawberry Canyon has been a place noted for its scenic beauty and natural wonders. Poets, painters, naturalists, thousands upon thousands of 19th, 20th, and 21st century students, founders of the Sierra Club, California Conservation Corps (CCC) youth camp workers, botanists, scientists, and regular folks of all stripes have benefited daily because of its accessible natural setting, close to the “towns” of Berkeley and Oakland, and connected to the greater Bay Area by its vistas out beyond the Golden Gate. Accordingly, in 1930, the Olmsted Brothers, landscape architects following in the footsteps of Frederick Law Olmsted, and Ansel F. Hall, of the National Park Service, prepared the Olmsted-Hall Report on Proposed Park Reservations for East Bay Cities in which the University Campus and Strawberry Canyon were identified as already being parkland resources forming a natural gateway into the lands that were ultimately to comprise the East Bay Regional Park District. The record is full of materials to substantiate Strawberry Canyon’s associations with events, lives of important persons, information important in prehistory and history, habitat and wildlife resources, and important, distinct natural feature(s), all contributing significantly to the greater Bay Area and the State. While Strawberry Canyon is categorized as being in the Hill Campus area for planning purposes and while it contains designated Ecological Study Areas, Natural Areas, and the University Botanical Garden for the important purposes of study, reserve, and public enjoyment, these designations segment the wider context. It is, therefore, instructive to refer to the 1976 report written for the University Office of Architect & Engineers by American landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, Strawberry Canyon, A Canyon, A Land Use and Vegetative Management Study, which concludes: “...The larger question, which is central in these recommendations, is that whoever uses the Canyon area, for whatever purposes and in whatever part of it; and whoever looks at or into the Canyon from outside, or passes through or over it; are all experiencing it as a total landscape structure or complex, a total people/nature artifact. Its impact on all of these experiences, visually and through the other senses, is one of its primary functions. Therefore we have viewed the Canyon as a potential work of landscape art, including and transcending all of its multiple technical, functional and cultural aspects. We believe that the comprehensive view will enhance relations between all of these component aspects, and improve each one. Institutional uses cannot expand much beyond their current areas...” Comprehensively the environmental impacts of the CMS West project regarding the Stadium construction and its future uses should fully consider the substantial effects upon Strawberry Canyon as a separate, distinct regional entity of significance, enhancing the “game day experience.” (Could it not be that the unavoidable adverse environmental impacts of the Stadium project itself might be mitigated with a restoration plan for the Strawberry Canyon area, specifically to reduce impacts upon the Strawberry Canyon Recreation Area, including reduce parking usage and recognition of the unsafe Hass Pavilion structure and failing facilities?). Likewise, the DSEIR should fully analyze the environmental impacts of the proposed change to Witter Field (note: the current physical change is not certified). Again, the Field deserves recognition as a prominent, distinct feature at the foot of Strawberry Canyon, significantly enhancing the larger historic area, or not. CMS West’s proposal to alter the Field to become an industrial landscape, necessitating high intensity electrical systems, introducing unnatural levels of noise, surfacing the landscape with synthetic turf, and demanding continual maintenance of Strawberry Creek’s sub-surface water flows, deserves further scrutiny. The alternative analysis in the DSEIR (what about Underhill Parking and Field site?) presumes that the University Athletic Program takes priority over the historic values shared by the University and the community-at-large. Such a choice of priorities deserves full and adequate review through the CEQA process. Thus, SSC urges the University to identify Strawberry Canyon as a California Historical Resource. The DSEIR CMS West would appear to be fundamentally inadequate until such a determination is undertaken so as to ensure that the area be protected, “to the extent prudent and feasible, from further substantial adverse change.” The CMS West proposal that Witter Field be permanently surfaced with synthetic turf raises questions not discussed sufficiently in the DSEIR. Synthetic turf, as commonly understood, would potentially cause the Strawberry Creek drainage system to become further overwhelmed by drainage problems. It would also incrementally further degrade the riparian habitat by displacing plant cover. While the DSEIR environmental review suggests that periodic review of water flows by University officials will occur in the future, such a review does not appear to be adequate or responsible for the public understanding. For a multitude of reasons resulting from cumulative projects it seems critical that the head of Strawberry Creek at Witter Field not be degraded further by a paved surface, including: that Strawberry Creek is already pressured by a culvert under the Stadium, subject to the Hayward Fault where it makes a slight bend in a subduction zone, that the Strawberry Canyon Recreation Area has been subject to previous flood damage (closure of upper pool), that Witter Field was recently subject to flooding due to synthetic surfacing (not discussed in DSEIR), that the Strawberry Canyon area is defined by zones of land slippage or potential liquid faction, especially at the immediately adjacent Chicken Creek site, and that it is now common knowledge the Bay Area is due to suffer from unpredictable strong storms. In light of the fact that much of Strawberry Creek’s watershed is now culverted, like the Stadium, SSC respectfully requests a current mapping of the area (as covered by Soulé’s mapping) showing the full extent of the multiple culverts throughout the watershed. Such information is basic to an understanding of the cumulative changes affecting all aspects of the CMS West project. Thank you for your attention given to the concerns expressed in this letter.
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