The Board of Regents of UC Berkeley just voted unanimously to approve the plans to build a brand new structure near the Stadium. It will cost $120 million and will include, among other things, a 4-story underground parking facility -- which will be located very near the Hayward faultline. In order to build this new structure, they will have to tear down a grove of oak trees -- about 3 dozen of them. They propose planting 3 baby oaks (saplings?) elsewhere to replace each grown oak. The city of Berkeley and a neighborhood group plans to file a lawsuit against the university.
I wholeheartedly agree. There are so many issues at stake here: the danger of sitting right on top of a faultline; the parking and traffic congestion that will increase 100% after such a monstrosity is built; the killing of an entire ecosystem, to be replaced by a bunch of little saplings; the money spent to build a sports stadium (!)...
Does this makes any sense to anyone? There are a few things I don't understand:
1) who in their right mind would choose to uproot a bunch of grown oak trees, thinking that a bunch of little ones planted in 2006 will do the same work achieved by an ecosystem
2) who in their right mind would choose a faultline as the ideal place to build an underground (geez, peoples!) facility to park cars -- I don't know which is scarier, the fact that the UG thing can crush you from bottom up or from top down. Ughh.
3) who in their right mind would want to allocate that much more money to enhance sports facilities when so much can be done to create better arts and literature programs
I, for one, would have loved to join the treesitters. At least they were able to speak out and stand up (climb up!) in solidarity with the Green effort. No, I do not want the 3 for 1 deal. Not this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment