California Drought

[California]

Actually - and I'm digging around in memory, somebody correct this if you have the real facts - February 2017 was the SECOND time Oroville Reservoir experienced extraordinary input necessitating emergency measures.

The first time for extraordinary, unanticipated input was some 25 years ago. They opened the regular spillway and dumped huge outflows, avoiding overtopping the emergency spillway but causing havoc downstream. This probably ran at maximum rated capacity for all the levees downstream all the way to San Francisco Bay. A few minor levees failed.

I remember this because I had occasion to visit Caltrans' District 3 Equipment Shop downstream from Marysville a couple of months later. The levee behind the shop had suddenly collapsed, submerging all the equipment parked there. Pickups, dump trucks, loaders, towed compressors for jackhammers, snowplows, farm-type tractors set up for mowing next to highways, well-drilling rigs, portable power and lighting plants, campers and trailers for portable jobsite offices, pretty much the same fleet you would expect in a huge rentals yard. Plus the equipment maintenance shop itself and its parts inventory. (Also a shopping mall and semi-rural neighborhood nearby.)

The guy I went to see told me he had been the only one in the building in the early evening. He suddenly realized there was water rising out back and got the heck out of there.

I asked what they did with all the submerged equipment. He said they simply pressure washed them, replaced all fluids, then put them back in service. It would be too costly to replace everything at once and they had no budget to do that. They expected that the lifetime for some units would be much shorter due to the contamination, an acceptable cost. I got the impression that the cleanup cost them substantial labor but it wasn't nearly as expensive as I had expected to hear.

I had never tied together my memory of that event, to its causes upstream, until I recently read some background related to the recent event.

 

[California]

Here's what is upstream from Oroville Dam. This author obviously loves this remote area.

We love it too. Grandpa was a mining engineer and we heard stories of his work all over the region. We have spent a lot of time way up the canyons feeding the Feather River, playing around at gold panning in its tributaries 20 miles beyond the end of the pavement. Our mining claim feels like 'home' as much as the ranch or house in the city. Perhaps more like a home because of the profound sense that it is natural and unchanging.

 

[npalen]

Oroville 21 March Update "Rockbolts and Repairs" - YouTube
Recent video.

 

[houstonscott]

Here's what is upstream from Oroville Dam. This author obviously loves this remote area. We love it too. Grandpa was a mining engineer and we heard stories of his work all over the region. We have spent a lot of time way up the canyons feeding the Feather River, playing around at gold panning in its tributaries 20 miles beyond the end of the pavement. Our mining claim feels like 'home' as much as the ranch or house in the city. Perhaps more like a home because of the profound sense that it is natural and unchanging.

I fly fished it as kid before the dam. Fished the lake after.

 

[houstonscott]

California may face 'significant risk' from dam California may face 'significant risk' from dam | Fox News

 

[NoTrespassing]

More rainstorms prompt the reopening of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway

More rainstorms prompt the reopening of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway - LA Times

 

[houstonscott]

More rainstorms prompt the reopening of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway More rainstorms prompt the reopening of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway - LA Times

Let's hope the quick water proofing helps.

 

[California]

Oroville Dam Spillway - Update April 23.

Nothing much to report on-scene.
Blasting to be used around Oroville Dam spillway

A technical inquiry concluded this [and many other public works here] are ageing and will need big investments to re-engineer, strengthen, and maintain them.
Expert performed autopsy on Oroville spillway collapse. Here’s what he found. | The Sacramento Bee

 

[houstonscott]

Oroville Dam Spillway - Update April 23. Nothing much to report on-scene. Blasting to be used around Oroville Dam spillway A technical inquiry concluded this [and many other public works here] are ageing and will need big investments to re-engineer, strengthen, and maintain them. Expert performed autopsy on Oroville spillway collapse. Here’s what he found. | The Sacramento Bee

I think federal funds for infrastructure should be withheld until it's clear California will not secede, and comes into compliance with federal laws.

 

[TomSeller]

I think federal funds for infrastructure should be withheld until it's clear California will not secede, and comes into compliance with federal laws.

Better watch what you wish for if CA is a giver state as is often declared (as does TX). No takey, no givey.

 

[California]

Oroville spillway repairs:

Bee article today on Who Pays?
Who will pay for Oroville Dam spillway work? | The Sacramento Bee
(This has some of the best photos I have seen).

The federal government has put up some disaster-relief money. Nobody knows who will pay the rest of the emergency repair costs, or for the needed improvements.

The system's primary purpose (and cost) is to send water to Southern California. The water contractors who re-sell the water to agribusiness and to entire cities have powerful lobbyists so I expect it will be hard to get money out of them. Another purpose of the dam is flood protection for residents nearby, presumably paid from the State treasury but there's no budgetary process or source of funds to buy the very expensive needed improvements.

 

[coldsteelva]

Tell the people to move. Let nature have it's way...if/when the dam fails, let the floodplain return to floodplain - no houses

 

[California]

Tell the people to move. Let nature have it's way...if/when the dam fails, let the floodplain return to floodplain - no houses

Not acceptable to the tens of millions of people in SoCal who need the water sent down there. Or to the powerful agribusiness interests along the way who operate on cheap subsidized water. Flood protection for the locals is just an afterthought.

 

[coldsteelva]

I'm just saying perhaps we should stop paying billions to make inhospitable, dry, desert environments suitable for habitation or farming. Attempting to alter nature is a futile endeavor. Oroville and the others are likely one major quake away from failure anyway since the original 'science' used to engineer them was faulty. no pun intended.

 

[houstonscott]

Not acceptable to the tens of millions of people in SoCal who need the water sent down there. Or to the powerful agribusiness interests along the way who operate on cheap subsidized water. Flood protection for the locals is just an afterthought.

Let them pay the bill if they benefit.

 

[houstonscott]

Gov. Jerry Brown keeps Oroville Dam repair costs hidden, state lawmakers say Gov. Jerry Brown keeps Oroville Dam repair costs hidden, state lawmakers say | Fox News

 

[flusher]

Figure that the repair will cost twice the winning bid. After all this is government contracting.

 

[California]

And four times the original estimate. We (internal audit branch) in a California Large Public Agency were asked to investigate why project development never got the cost estimates right. I finally included in the report, with examples, that final costs measured post-construction equaled 4 x the initial proposed cost at the initial, conceptual stage of selecting among possible projects that had taken place many years before. Your Tax Dollars At Work. But this is the case across nearly anything at huge scale. Military procurement, space program, and the most recent I can think of was ATT promised, and got taxpayer funding for, fiber to everywhere in the US. They got the money, now years later little of that ever got built or turned on.

Some projects are so large they are beyond the ability of humans to anticipate everything. Then add, in this case, the recent generation of managers there who probably aren't as bright as those who designed the Oroville complex, and the results we saw are inevitable.

 

[orezok]

Some people say that we shouldn't farm in the desert. Perhaps we should go to areas with abundant rain fall and plow under some cities to make room for farms :laughing:

 

[kloudbuster]

I agree, plow those cities