β Scribed by S.D. Wilson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
As Scott mentioned, I was engaged {along with Dr. Casagrande) by the Standard Oil Company of California to assist them in their defense of the lawsuit that was instigated by the insurance carriers against the Standard Oil Company. Now it is inevitable that when you are engaged by a client you do your best to help him out and I am sure that my objectivity was somewhat colored by that relationship, but, as Ron Scott also mentioned, after the lawsuit was settled out of court my relationship with Standard Oil Company was terminated. I certainly at this point feel no obligation to the Standard Oil Company to defend their position, and I hope that my viewpoint at this time is a little more objective, perhaps, than it was at the time. Scott says that it was too bad the case was settled out of court, that we have no written legal opinion as to the responsibility for the failure. I am not so sure that I agree with that statement. It is very difficult to reach a decision, a legal decision, based solely on technical matters. And I am not sure that legal decisions are always based upon the correct interpretation of technical facts. I personally was somewhat relieved when the case was settled out of court. I was not looking forward to a long and difficult interrogation on the witness stand.
There are, of course, a number of areas of disagreement between the various principal investigators of the failure of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir, yet certain things are quite clear. It is clear that the failure of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir resulted from vertical offsets across the pre-existing faults which underlay the reservoir. These vertical offsets not only destroyed the integrity of the underdrain system but also eventually permitted water to seep through the ruptured zone of the clay lining and eventually to pressurize the underdrain in the faulted zones with water under full reservoir pressure. It is also clear that these vertical offsets at the faults started to develop during the first filling of the reservoir and that they continued to develop throughout the life of the project. It is also clear that during the life of the project there was areal subsidence, tilting and stretching of the ground surface in an east/west direction. These phenomena were the direct result of oil-recovery operations from the adjacent Inglewood oil field and there is no disputing that. It is also clear that starting in 1957 flooding and repressurization of the oil producing strata not only slowed down the rate of settlement, but eventually led to episodes of upward movement of the ground surface. *Oral presentation.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
I think it would be a good idea if I start by describing what my affiliation with Baldwin Hills was. The failure happened, as we know, in December 1963. Within a day or so after the failure the mayor of Los Angeles under (as you might understand) certain pressures formed what was called locally, "a
The paper by has been reviewed by the present writer with the benefit of unusually detailed acquaintance with the documented design, construction and performance, but no original involvement in the design and construction of the reservoir. This review also has the tempering benefit of over 20 years