California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed

OK great. Go to what is now page 182 on the Oroville dam thread and read the latest post by "Bardou". She lives up by the dam.

Then go backwards and read page 181, 180, just for anything that is 2019. It started back in 2017.

The water appears to be seeping under the gates where the lip of the spillway hits the gates. There also is a slab up lower probably from water under the spillway. That puzzles me because they supposedly anchored it very well into bedrock.

The main takeaway is that they are not saying what is really going on, whatever that is, and if you live below the dam, don't expect the truth.

OK great. Go to what is now page 182 on the Oroville dam thread and read the latest post by "Bardou". She lives up by the dam.

Then go backwards and read page 181, 180, just for anything that is 2019. It started back in 2017.

The water appears to be seeping under the gates where the lip of the spillway hits the gates. There also is a slab up lower probably from water under the spillway. That puzzles me because they supposedly anchored it very well into bedrock.

The main takeaway is that they are not saying what is really going on, whatever that is, and if you live below the dam, don't expect the truth.

from #7230

On the west side of the emergency spillway where the water flowed and took out everything in it's path is all now cemented over. I bet anything that the water is coming underneath that emergency spillway and seeping underneath that newly laid RCC. I had workers telling me this way back in 2017, and I saw pictures of it that they took on their phones. If they would have been caught taking pictures, they would have been fired. Some did get fired early in the spillway being replaced for taking pictures.

FEMA Details Why It Rejected State's Request for Oroville Spillway Funds

Mar 20
Updated 7:15 a.m. Wednesday, March 20

Federal emergency relief officials have provided new details on their decision to reject California's request to reimburse the state for work to rebuild and reinforce the badly damaged spillways at Oroville Dam.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced earlier this month that it would not reimburse the state for $306 million in construction on the spillways, which failed in February 2017 and prompted mandatory evacuation orders for 188,000 people living downstream of the nation's tallest dam.

In a brief statement March 8, a FEMA spokesperson said the agency was refusing to reimburse the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) for work on the upper portion of the dam's main concrete spillway.

The agency said the decision was based on earlier engineering reviews that found "a variety of problems existed at the dam" before the sequence of events that led to the spillway crisis. . .
[link to www.kqed.org (secure)]

Link to memo
[link to assets.documentcloud.org (secure)]

..THESE THINGS SAY...'HEY, WE'RE GONNA BLOW IT UP OR LET IT FUCKIN FAIL YA IDIOTS!..DIDN'T YOU GET THE FUCKIN MEMMO OR EMAIL?...WE'RE GONNA LET IT FAIL..OK?..DAT'S DA 'PLAN'....! GET IT?! NOW, GO 'WAY AN DUNT BODDUH ME NO MO

SAN LUIS TOOK 3 HOURS OFF FROM THE "SHIFTY" 546.80 TO THE 542.80...THEN WENT RIGHT BACK TO 546.80...THEY "SNUCK" IT IN THERE...REAL 'SNEAKY'..HOW THEY R DOIN THAT ...RIGHT IN FRONT OF U.S.!!..."SNEAKY SHIFTY...SHIFTY SNEAKY"

..SNEAKY.....

840.68 AND TWO 'TOIDS' JOEY...

SAN LUIS 'SNEAKY' HIGH NOON NUMBERS NOT OUT YET...

546.80 FOR 4 HOURS STRAIGHT NOW...IT 'WAS' 542.80 FOR THREE HOURS...B 4 THAT IT WAS 546.80 FOR MANY HOURS...SNEAKY SNEAK SNEAK....

Rain chances midweek and late Friday into Sat, but the setup for next wk (Tue/Wed) still bears watching for a moderate atmo river (yet possibly longer duration). If that’s the case, this is how the ECMWF model sees things in the 9 day precip total outlook #CAwx


[link to twitter.com (secure)]

Here’s a link to the National Weather Service page for Oroville Municipal Airport:

[link to forecast.weather.gov (secure)]

90% chance of showers today, precipitation amounts of one tenth of an inch of rain. Tonight 50%. chance for showers totaling another tenth of an inch. Thursday Sunny. Friday more showers. Saturday, morning showers. Sunday sunny. Monday rain. Tuesday rain. Wednesday showers. No estimated rain amounts for days after tonight.

Found a really good rain/moisture forecast resource:
[link to cw3e.ucsd.edu]
Next significant rain event is in 108 hours, or 4 and a half days. Possibly atmospheric river event. Would have to do more research first to say how much rain/precipitation is possible.

This Littlepixie just found this, I really really hope it is not true and I hope it links ok, here goes:

What was found and its not a gold report!

[link to thedailycoin.org (secure)]

Just read it. From 2017. Hum. Wonder if true. It would make some sense that for good reasons they might have planned in the 60s to have a built in demolition mechanism in case it became necessary to tear down the dam for some reason. Say an earthquake cracked it during low waters, and they thought it was better to bring it down, than let it fill and burst when high. They did know they were near fault lines. I can see the sense of having built in back up demo.

I am not alone in thinking that it made no sense the past two years to build a new spillway without fixing the gates. Scott Cahill said the water going down the hill was not an immediate problem ie, it wasn't cutting back through the bedrock to the dam. It did cause a debris pile that affected the power plant when water backed up, but it wasn't life threatening. On the other hand, if a gate with a broken anchor tendon gets stuck open, the threat of erosion under the gates as the intake channel empties all the way to the bottom of the gates is pretty serious. Cahill said you have to fix the gates first, no debate. But they didn't.

We know that there are people who do want to see it all returned to wilderness, despite that fact that it is the greatest agricultural region in the world. Would they spend a billion just to look good, while secretly wanting the dam to fail? It is possible. With some, it is certain.

Remember Robert Bea from Berkley? The guy who wrote the engineering report? This is 2017, but it hasn't changed.

[link to alumni.berkeley.edu (secure)]

"There are very serious problems with the headgates [the structures that control water releases from the dam]. There is a lot of corrosion, and there are large cracks in two gate control tendons. Some of the gates don’t even open and close all the way. They’re like refrigerator doors that just stay ajar.

Also, we were alarmed by green grass growing on the abutments. That’s because the grass shouldn’t be green in that part of California during the summer and fall. It should be brown, so when you see lush green grass, it indicates there’s seepage through the dam face. What’s particularly worrisome is evidence we found indicating this seepage has been going on for about 50 years. DWR says that it’s just some ‘natural springs,’ and that’s it’s no cause for worry. But a ‘natural spring’ in that area would have to flow uphill, which runs counter to the laws of physics. And understand this: Any seepage through an earth-fill dam is extremely worrisome."

Seems a bit of a stretch. More likely they didn’t want to mess with gates until they had the spillway completed. As long as the spillway is functional, they can just open the gates and release water until it gets below the spillway. Then, they could use any problems with the gates as justification for more federal funds.

No, they cant run water to the level of the gate bottom, or below the spillway. The intake channel is erodable rock. They have to keep the water level higher and just use the power plant. If they erode the intake and there are any cracks or seeping under the gates, the dam is done.

Ok, now they just sound like idiots. Is it possible the’re raising the water to find the weak spots? Or maybe not. Sounds like me sheer incompetence now. Also, can anyone direct me to a link about the “green” spots I keep reading about? Or a thread page number? Thanks!

bumping this link for myself.

bump. This is a must read article.

they don't want to open them gates, watch em run it up to 880-890

[link to oroville.lakesonline.com]


click on 2016, the last "normal" year, lotta water, they ran it up high

Just took some time to check out this thread again. Honestly there are some ominous signs of massive incompetence. They didn't install a floating log barrier and piles of logs are accumulating by the gates. Then there is all the weirdness on the new spillway itself. One can only hope they don't need to use it this year at all, but with the snow melt coming I don't know if that is possible.

Just took some time to check out this thread again. Honestly there are some ominous signs of massive incompetence. They didn't install a floating log barrier and piles of logs are accumulating by the gates. Then there is all the weirdness on the new spillway itself. One can only hope they don't need to use it this year at all, but with the snow melt coming I don't know if that is possible.

At 9 am today the dam is up to 841.28 feet ; intake up to 15,180 CFS ;



[link to cdec.water.ca.gov]

10 AM: Outflow: 517 CFS, Inflow: 12,531 CFS LL: 841.34

Thank you;
Reminds me of the made up numbers with another disaster in 2011;
( The intake numbers down with higher temperatures, sunny days , above freezing temperatures at night)

Entire situation is precarious with lack of info from DWR.

A portion of Oroville Dam Blvd. East will be closed on Friday due to construction blasting.

Posted: Mar. 21, 2019 3:04 PM


BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - A portion of Oroville Dam Blvd. East will be closed on Friday due to construction blasting.

The road will be closed for approximately 30 minutes from 3:45 - 4:15 p.m. on Friday, March 22.

To avoid the area, drivers can bypass the closed potion via Canyon Drive to Olive Highway or Glen Drive to Oro-Quincy Highway to Olive Highway.

The short blasting is part of the work around the main spillway to improve hillside safety.
[link to www.actionnewsnow.com (secure)]

Sounds like they still have a long way to go to bring this dam up to snuff.. Getting the spillway rebuilt was just the most immediate and visible issue.