Features

The wisdom of siting new laboratory facilities proposed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in the “pristine” Strawberry Creek Canyon area was strongly questioned by members of the public and several councilmembers at the Tuesday evening Berkeley City Council meeting. 

After lengthy discussion, the council put off action around the issue, calling for a special council meeting at 7 p.m., Monday, May 12. The meeting will be held in the council chambers in the Maudelle Shirek building. 

At issue is the certification by the UC Regents, which manages the labs, of final environmental documents for two buildings. The final environmental impact reports (FEIR) for the certification of the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT) and the Helios Energy Research Facility are on the agenda for the Regents’ May 13-14 meeting. The documents were released April 28. 

Concerned about possible environmental degradation to the canyon and wildlife there and encouraged by the 100 or so members of the Save Strawberry Creek group, Councilmember Betty Olds put forward the recommendation that was considered by the council: to have the city manager request that the Regents delay certification for 30 days to allow the city further time to review the environmental documents. 

Olds recommended that the council oppose certification of the FEIRs if the Regents refused. 

Instead of making a decision, the council voted unanimously to schedule the special council meeting, at which time the planning director will report to the council on the environmental documents. In the interim, the mayor will be able to speak with lab managers, encouraging them to pressure the Regents for the delay. 

“The redesign of the buildings [changes subsequent to the draft EIR] is good, but we don’t know exactly what they are. It takes a while to read these things,” Olds told the council, speaking in favor of her recommendation. 

Public speakers pointed to some 88 redwoods that the projects would remove and said the canyons are home to endangered species, including the Alameda whipsnake. Further, Berkeley resident Jean Bernardi pointed out that if the nearby proposed training facility adjacent to Memorial Stadium is approved by the courts, the impact on the area will be heightened. 

One of the proposed buildings the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT), is a 126,000 square-foot building that would house 300 offices.  

The second, the Helios Energy Research Facility, will include the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership among UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois and funded by BP, to research biofuels. It is to be built just below the Molecular Foundry, another new building at the lab site.  

Speaking for the labs, Helios project manager Joe Harkin noted that the proposed building had been reduced from 160,000 to 145,000 gross square feet and the roadway was reconfigured to “minimize” the removal of mature redwood trees. In response to calls to locate the facility at the university’s Richmond Field Station, Harkin said siting the facility next to the Molecular Foundry, a recently built structure, “is critical to its mission.” The Molecular Foundry is involved with nanotechnology research. 

“The lab has overbuilt this site already—I guess they’ve decided to cover every blade of grass,” Councilmember Dona Spring told the council. Pointing to earthquake and fire danger, Spring called the project, “a disaster waiting to happen,” and added, “It destroys one of the most beautiful canyons we have.” 

Spring said the reason it is being built is “it’s a gravy train—there’s money to be made. Money from the feds keeps rolling in. This is bad corporate welfare—part of the industrial-war complex.” 

Spring further chastised the labs—and the university, by extension—for “not paying their fair share” of costs such as the roads leading up to the labs and for storm drains. “We’re subsidizing you millions of dollars per year,” she said. 

Jerry O’Hearn, Planning Design & Construction Department head in the Facilities Division of LBNL, told the council that the distance between the Richmond Field Station and the LBNL made the project impractical to locate in Richmond. “The distance would not meet our objective of cross collaboration with the campus.” 

It needs to be in Berkeley “to continue our collaboration with the campus and  

to provide cross-disciplinary research,” O’Hearn said. 

CRT is now located in Oakland, but O’Hearn said the site there is constrained by size and availability of electrical power.  

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, a retired LBNL employee, defended the proposed projects, saying it was a plus that development was concentrated in research parks, leaving much of the area open space.  

“I heard people saying that Strawberry Canyon is a beautiful pristine place. The reason it is undeveloped is that UC, to a large degree, owns it and will continue to maintain it that way,” he said, contrasting the canyon to the developed hillsides around it, such as the Panoramic Hill neighborhood.  

The labs “are concentrating development,” he said. 

Wozniak added that the research to be carried out in the buildings is consistent with the city’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

“CRT will do climate modeling, so they can see regional impacts” of climate change, he said. “Helios is also directed at climate change. It is to generate liquid fuels from biological projects and the sun. You can’t think of better projects. To delay it on technicalities is not a good strategy.” 

Further championing the project, Wozniak pointed to the “good jobs, green jobs” the project would create, as well as “spin-offs” for Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond from the project.  

Asked to support a 30-day delay, O’Hearn pointed out that the Regents meet only every two months. If they were to delay certifying the FEIR at the May meeting, they would not be able to consider it again until July. Construction delays cost around $600,000-$700,000 per month, he said.  

“I’m dismayed that we have so little time,” said Mayor Tom Bates, adding that he didn’t want “to go down the path” to a lawsuit.  

“It’s a mistake to jam us,” he said, calling for the special meeting on Monday “It will be infinitely better to give us the time” than to go to court, he said. 

Asked to weigh in on the projects, Planning Director Dan Marks said he had time only to read the CRT FEIR and had yet to look at the Helios document. He said he needed more time to say whether he thought the environmental documents should be recirculated. 

The CRT is a completely redesigned, better project, he said, noting, that while the new design makes the building less intrusive, it is “still a very large, very bulky building.” 

Moreover, he said, “The fundamental question has not been answered—what are the alternatives?” 

Marks concluded, “It’s not a great site for the continued expansion of the lab.”  

Further reading: the reaction to the draft EIR: www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2007-12-21/article/28764. 

On the environment of the proposed site: 

www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2008-04-22/article/29809.