Thanks to the Gentile editor of the Beverly Hills Courier, Mr. Clif Smith, the Blood of Jewish Children shall not be sacrificed at Beverly Hills High School to satisfy the Century City real estate interests of Chicago-based JMB Realty, a firm which is close friends of President Obama and a closer friend of L.A. County Supervisor Zev (Wolf) Yaroslavsky.
Los Angeles Times Editor-in-Chief Davan Maharaj's coverage of the Subway to the Sea routing story reeks of anti-Semitism.
(However, please remember that it is a politically-incorrect sin to offer proof of anti-Semitism if the anti-Semite happens to also be a minority member…such as Mr. Maharaj.)
Is Los Angeles Times transportation reporter, Mr. Ari Bloomekatz, a self-hater?
How else can you explain his failure to cover this earthquake fault study that refutes previous MTA Beverly Hills seismic studies!
Please examine the details in the Beverly Hills Courier story below that was posted late last evening:
What Happened to Metro’s Claim of Quake Faults?
By Matt Lopez
Courier staff writer
The California Geological Survey, the ultimate authority of the state of California responsible for evaluating geological information in the state, last Friday in a letter to the Beverly Hills Unified School District, affirmed that there are no active earthquake faults at or adjacent to Beverly Hills High School.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority hit Beverly Hills Unified School District below the belt when it alleged that earthquake faults ran underneath Beverly Hills High School. If that was true, existing buildings could be declared seismically unsafe and new construction blocked.
That precise threat, according to sources, was conveyed through “back channels” to Beverly Hills Unified Board members by at least one Beverly Hills City Councilmember for much of the past two years
In response, the Board decided to challenge the alleged “scientific evidence” with evidence of its own. District experts, led by noted engineer Tim Buresh, considered Metro’s data faulty and its research superficial at best. The only way to get a definitive answer was to dig trenches — very expensive but the gold standard in geologic investigations of this kind. Buresh was chief engineer for the multi-billion dollar Alameda Corridor Transportation Project, was an engineer on the Metro Red Line and former chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Unified School District, responsible for building over a dozen public schools.
“We had no choice,” Board member Lisa Korbatov told The Courier at the time. Immediate past president and current Board member Brian David Goldberg, Ph.D., told The Courier the same thing. “We could not send kids to school unless we knew the campus was safe. There was no other choice. Metro told us there were faults under the high school. We had to find out.”
The Board then hired Leighton Consulting, Inc., to trench, core and evaluate. The trenching and coring showed no active faults underneath the Beverly High campus.
Armed with this information, Beverly Hills Unified, joined by the City of Beverly Hills, asked Metro to delay a final decision so that it could consider the new data.
Metro refused. The alleged existence of these faults — the West Beverly Hills Lineament and the Santa Monica Fault — formed the sole scientific basis for Metro’s rejection of a Santa Monica Boulevard station and its selection of the corner of Constellation and Avenue of the Stars. This location requires tunneling underneath Beverly High for the Westside Subway Extension.
In response, the Beverly Hills Board of Education asked the CGS to review the trenching, coring, sampling and analysis.
Now, the state of California confirms Beverly Hills Unified’s position of “no faults”:
“The consultants [hired by the Beverly Hills Board of Education] performed a thorough fault investigation program at the subject site and it appears evidence of active faulting related to the west Beverly Hills Lineament or the Santa Monica Fault Zone was not encountered within the limits of this investigation . . . CGS has reviewed the interpretations and much of the original data provided by the consultants and finds that their conclusions are consistent with the available data.”
CGS professionals visited the Beverly High site and observed Leighton’s work in progress. CGS also observed trenching north of the Beverly High campus on the 10000 Santa Monica Boulevard property.
CGS confirmed that fractures and other geological features identified by Metro “are not related to active faulting.” CGS reported, “[Leighton Consulting] conclude there are no active faults along [the campus]. This interpretation appears reasonable based on the data and explanations provided in the referenced reports and no additional information is requested.”
Metro has used the alleged existence of these non-existent faults not only to justify the routing of the tunnels underneath the high school, but also to assert in its budgets that Metro would owe Beverly Hills Unified nearly nothing for taking the land underneath the high school for its campus. Metro’s argument has essentially been, “You have faults under your campus, so there is nothing you can build. Because you cannot build anything, your land is worth nothing.”
The CGS report further calls into question Metro’s methodology on Santa Monica Boulevard and the proposed Constellation station location.
A copy of the CGS letter can be found at
http://bhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Beverly-Hills-HS-03-CGS0960-Fault-Study-Second-Review.pdf
Mr. Walsh may be contacted at hollywoodhighlands.org
