Redwood City Seismic Advisory Board (early 1970s)

In the early 1970s Redwood City appointed a special Seismic Advisory Board to review the engineering aspects of the Redwood Shores project. This board issued several reports and was comprised of: Prof. Richard H. Jahns, CEG (Stanford), Prof. Bruce A. Bolt, RGP (Berkeley), Prof Ray W. Clough, (Berkeley), Henry J. Degenkolb, SE (consultant), and Thomas M. Leps, PE (consultant). They reported to Jim Fales, the City Manager and the general improvement district project manager.

The Governor’s Earthquake Council was set up as part of the Seismic Safety Act of 1971, following the San Fernando earthquake. At the bequest of State Geologist Jim Slosson and others, Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. signed legislation establishing the California Seismic Safety Commission in August 1975. The first commission was chaired by Berkeley Professor H. Bolton Seed and included former State Geologist Dr. James E. Slosson, Berkeley seismologist Professor Bruce A. Bolt, Stanford Earth Science Dean Richard H. Jahns, and consulting geotechnical engineer L. Leroy Crandall of Los Angeles. From 1985-95 the board’s executive director was L. Thomas Tobin, PE (BSCE ’64 Berkeley; MS ‘72 SJSU). Jim Slosson served two terms on the commission, in 1975-78 and again, in 1991-99; while geologist Lloyd Cluff served 16 years on the commission, including terms as Vice Chairman and twice as Chairman (in 1988-90 and 1997-99).

Following the March 1977 M 5.7 Oroville Earthquake a five-member board appointed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in July 1976 to guide and review the investigations and findings. They included: Seismologist Professor Clarence R. Allen of Caltech; structural engineering Professor Ray Clough of Berkeley; Stanford Dean of Earth Sciences Richard H. Jahns; geophysics Professor Lane Johnson of Berkeley; and J. Laginha Serafim, former head of the Dams Section of the Studies of Structures at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) in Lisbon.

In response to heated criticism of the proposed doubly-curved thin arch design for the Auburn Dam site, the State Department of Water Resources established a six member board of consultants to analyze appropriate earthquake motions for the dam site by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. This board was chaired by Caltech earthquake engineering Professor George Housner, and included: Berkeley Professor H. Bolton Seed (geotechnical earthquake engineer), structural earthquake engineer Dr. John A. Blume, and engineering geologists Douglas D. Campbell (of Dolmage, Campbell & Associates in Vancouver, BC) and Alan L. O’Neill, CEG (former Chief, Project Geology Branch of DWR). This board reviewed all of the work performed by USBR and its consultant, Woodward Clyde Consultants, the USGS, as well as studies by the CDMG, DWR, State Department of Conservation, and the Division of Safety of Dams.

The DWR Consulting Board recommended that the proposed Auburn Dam be designed for a surface displacement of 13 cm. The displacement might occur on a single fault or be distributed over a zone of faulting. In the final design specified by the Secretary of Interior, 23 cm of normal-oblique displacement was selected for selected foundation features. In the event of a new dam, investigations for active faulting in the dam foundation would be mandatory.
Board of Consultants-Seismotectonic Evaluation of San Luis Dam (1981-83)

On September 14, 1981 approximately 1,300,000 cubic yards of the Zone 3 random fill in the upstream shell of the San Luis Dam began sliding into San Luis Reservoir (the dam is 18,600 ft long with a volume of 80 million yds³). The slide floored in colluvial deposits of lean to fat clay. Emergency repairs were initiated in December 1981, consisting of a 2,100 ft long stability berm, involving 1,670,000 yds³ of material. Three additional berms, comprising another 1,527,000 yds³, were placed in other areas to bolster the dam’s stability where the embankment was founded on thick deposits of colluviums. This corrective work was carried out by Peter Kiewit & Sons and completed in early 1983.

As part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Safety Evaluation of Existing Dams Program, a comprehensive seismotectonic investigation was conducted in late 1981 to re-evaluate the earthquake loads on the dam and the dam’s ability to withstand these loads. The Bureau of Reclamation’s Engineering & Research Center in Denver appointed a board of consultants to examine these issues: Professors H. Bolton Seed and Bruce A. Bolt of U.C. Berkeley, and William F. Marcuson, III, PE, Director of the Geotechnical Laboratory at the USACE WES in Vicksburg.
Technical Advisory Group on the Santa Cruz Geologic Hazard Investigation (1990-91)

Shortly after the October 17, 1989 M 6.9 Loma Preita Earthquake a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) was created to evaluate whether building permits should be issued to residemnts in the Santa Cruz Mointains underlain by “anciuent landslides,” many of which partiaally reactivated during the quake. The group was established with $1.35 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide “technical input” to FEMA, operating under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District. The effort was requested by Santa Cruz County, who noted that ovber $100 million worth of properties were at-risk for landslide related issues.

The group was originally comprised of: Brian Walls, geological engineer with the Corps of Engineers (manager); Gary B. Griggs, CEG, Professor of Geology at UC Santa Cruz; David K. Keefer (report editor), Ray C. Wilson, and Edwin L. Harp of the US Geological Survey, engineering geologist Gerald E. Weber, CEG of Weber & Associates, Corps of Engineers geologist Colin C. McAneny, geologist Paia Levine with the Santa Cruz County Planning Department, and engineering geologist Thomas E. Spittler, CEG with the California Division of Mines & Geology. The group met in closed sessions, which angered many of the Santa Cruz Mountains residents, who hired their own geologist to sit in on the board meetings for a time. Because of these political pressures, Brian Walls and Ray Wilson resigned from the group, and Walls’ role as the group’s manager was assumed by Arijs Rakstins of the Corps of Engineers.

In the fall of 1991 the advisory group co-authored a 405-page report titled “Geologic Hazards in the Summit Ridge Area of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Cruz County, California, evaluated in response to the October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta Earthquake: Report of the Technical Advisory Group,” prepared for FEMA and published as U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report-91-618. Other contributors to this report included John M. Andersen, Mary Ellen Hynes, and H. M. Taylor of the Corps of Engineers WES in Vicksburg, MS, and Jeffrey M. Nolan of Weber and Associates.

Independent panel chaired Dr. Gerald E. Galloway Jr., PE of the University of Maryland, Dr. John J. Boland, PE, Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Raymond J. Burby, FAICP, of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Christopher B. Groves, GE, Shannon & Wilson Inc., St. Louis, MO, Susan Lien Longville, Water Resources Institute at Cal State San Bernardino, Dr. Lewis E. Link, Jr., University of Maryland, Dr. Jeffrey F. Mount, U. C. Davis, Dr. Jeff Opperman of The Nature Conservancy, Dr. Raymond B. Seed of U. C. Berkeley, George L. Sills, PE, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center-Vicksburg, James J. Smyth, PE, Smyth Water Planning Solutions, Raleigh, NC, Ronald Stork of Friends of the River, and Edward A. Thomas, Esq., Association of State Floodplain Managers.

The panel was assisted by Joseph D. Countryman, PE of MBK Engineers in Sacramento, Peter C. Wijsman of MSC, The Netherlands Water Partnership in Rotterdam, Larry Larson, PE, CFM and Doug Plasencia, PE, CFM of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, Piet T.M. Dircke, Msc of the University of Rotterdam, and three people from PBS&J: Jennifer Marcy, CFM, Senior Scientist, Michael DePue, PE, CFM, D. WRE, Senior Program Manager, William Hinsley, Associate Vice President, Senior Project Director.

This group prepared a comprehensive report titled: A California Challenge-Flooding in the Central Valley, A Report to the Department of Water Resources, State of California, dated October 15, 2007. This report was intended to serve as the blueprint for the desired provision of flood protection for California’s Central Valley Region in the 21^st Century.

In 2008 an independent review board was named by the California Department of Water Resources to provide expert review of geotechnical policies and procedures with regard to safety, performance, state-of-practice, and economy. Members are Christopher B. Groves, GE of Shannon & Wilson (Chair), Prof. Raymond B. Seed of U.C. Berkeley, and George L. Sills, PE, retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ERDC-Vicksburg.