Over 130,000 urged to evacuate as california dam could fail

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Reba

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Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago

More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 130,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.

Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.

The groups filed the motion with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They said that the dam, built and owned by the state of California, and finished in 1968, did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as “loss of crest control.”

“A loss of crest control could not only cause additional damage to project lands and facilities but also cause damages and threaten lives in the protected floodplain downstream,” the groups wrote.

The Bush administration rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary. Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, and the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water from the state of California through the State Water Project.

More in the link: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/...tate-officials-ignored-warnings-12-years-ago/
 
According to the state officials the dam is not in danger of failure, but the two spillways, the main and the emergency both have holes in them. The main spillway was earthen covered with concrete, the emergency spillway is just basically a dirt spillway. The one problem with the government in CA is they do nothing to infrastructure until it becomes and emergency and they had been warned about this as well as other dams and have done nothing to them.
 
I have seen the picture of the damage, it is larger than you think.


3D0BE7C200000578-4218388-Located_about_150_miles_northeast_of_San_Francisco_Oroville_Lake-a-67_1486954448410.jpg


3CFB9D7D00000578-4217910-Water_trickles_down_as_workers_inspect_part_of_the_Lake_Oroville-a-5_1486941088711.jpg
 
My dad used to work that area for soil surveys, erosion control and farmers and ranchers like that. Mentioned the problem is very serious because it is an earthen dam. If it would stop raining, they would be able to patch it. They should have monitored it and other dams better. With dry years, they didn't bother to do it. Dad warned that they may have more problems in the Spring when the snow starts to melt.

Let's hope the rains on the way won't make it worse further.
 
Barbaro said:
My dad used to work that area for soil surveys, erosion control and farmers and ranchers like that. Mentioned the problem is very serious because it is an earthen dam. If it would stop raining, they would be able to patch it. They should have monitored it and other dams better. With dry years, they didn't bother to do it. Dad warned that they may have more problems in the Spring when the snow starts to melt.

Let's hope the rains on the way won't make it worse further.
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Earth > Humans (engineers). I think they will fail.
 
authentic said:
Earth > Humans (engineers). I think they will fail.
Click to expand...


Same thing with the New Orleans levee breaches. Before Katrina, enginneers warned the government officials that a big storm could cause the breach in them but werent taken seriously (if I remember correctly) and look what happened.
 
Barbaro said:
My dad used to work that area for soil surveys, erosion control and farmers and ranchers like that. Mentioned the problem is very serious because it is an earthen dam. If it would stop raining, they would be able to patch it. They should have monitored it and other dams better. With dry years, they didn't bother to do it. Dad warned that they may have more problems in the Spring when the snow starts to melt.

Let's hope the rains on the way won't make it worse further.
Click to expand...
They will have problems when the snow melts! Hopefully they will have the time to draw down the water level before it melts.
 
shel90 said:
Same thing with the New Orleans levee breaches. Before Katrina, enginneers warned the government officials that a big storm could cause the breach in them but werent taken seriously (if I remember correctly) and look what happened.
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Your memory is correct. Like most governments they do nothing until an emergency arises! It's like the old bridges back east that the federal government as well as the state governments have been told are in imminent danger of failure, they have done very little to fix the problem. The SF Bay Bridge took 20 years before they replaced the part that collapsed in the '89 quake. Perhaps we need to get Larry the Cable Guy in charge so he can "get er done!"
 
Two of my cousins were ironworkers in CA back then. When one of our aunts and I went to visit in the mid 1970's one of them took me to the Oroville Dam and one of the others (I can't remember the name of the other one — it is in notes with slides from the trip). I am not sure which one it was from but there was the talk of the possibility of there being some gold in the fill. He said one of the guys on the crew took a sample and had it tested and they did find some gold in it.
 
I can't help but wonder if how dry all of the ground had gotten during the drought didn't make a difference in how the water infiltrated it when so much came at once.
 
shel90 said:
Same thing with the New Orleans levee breaches. Before Katrina, enginneers warned the government officials that a big storm could cause the breach in them but werent taken seriously (if I remember correctly) and look what happened.
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Yes, I'm disappointed our president won't come to Oroville, New Orleans and Florida/Georgia soon. :(
 
Jane B. said:
Two of my cousins were ironworkers in CA back then. When one of our aunts and I went to visit in the mid 1970's one of them took me to the Oroville Dam and one of the others (I can't remember the name of the other one — it is in notes with slides from the trip). I am not sure which one it was from but there was the talk of the possibility of there being some gold in the fill. He said one of the guys on the crew took a sample and had it tested and they did find some gold in it.
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Oroville is famous for Gold Rush. In Spanish, Oro means gold. Actually, gold deposits still are there. You need to get a permit to look for gold. California used to be at the bottom of the sea. California is famous for volcanoes. So, they are combined together and it became gold.
 
authentic said:
Earth > Humans (engineers). I think they will fail.
Click to expand...

They will not fail if the government steps in. California NEEDS dams and reservoirs. It cannot catch up with out of control population, farmers and ranchers or food prices will go up. California already depends on water from out of states and Baja California.
 
seb said:
They will have problems when the snow melts! Hopefully they will have the time to draw down the water level before it melts.
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They're already draining it as we speak. It is just that they are overwhelmed with heavy rains.
 
I hope Trump needs to do something about aquifers immediately. It's very serious. Many tech companies use aquifers to keep servers cool. It's in high demand.
 
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