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

I just posted this as a stand alone thread, hope ya'll don't mind.
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Greetings all.

Scott Cahill is at Watershed Services of Ohio, along with his wife who is also an expert in dam safety. He has three decades of dam safety teaching and experience under his belt.

[link to www.linkedin.com (secure)]

The phone number is online, so I called to ask about the spillway. I never expected a call back, but within a few hours he and his wife called me back. I asked him several questions and we spoke for over half an hour.

I want to add my general impression of the man. He is very gracious and kind and answered every question, and is not by any means a "doomer", but a realistic sounding person who wants to hope for the best and cares about lives below a troubled dam. He said I could repeat anything he said- ie, not worried about a lawsuit- but there are some things I won't repeat in case I didn't remember the exact details perfectly and I don't want to misquote him.

He gave me the disclaimer that he has not been out on the dam this spring, nor party to DWR secret information. He does have some CA contacts inc. engineers who have told him things the past couple years, but are afraid to go public because they will lose their jobs.

The new billion dollar spillway has failed. Too much water is coming up from underneath. They bolted it down to the underlying rock, but it had been bolted down in 2017 and we saw what happened. They are afraid to use it now lest a slab be pushed up from the water pressure. They are hoping that there is no more major rain, and the Hyatt Power Plant discharge (approx 10,000 cfs) can handle the snow melt enough to not make the spillway necessary this year.

The new emergency spillway would fail from erosion cutback, same as last time. No question. They need excess water to go down the primary spillway, not the emergency spillway.

I asked him, if the 2017 "canyon" did not cut back to the lake, and the spillway failed again this year, could it cut back to the lake this time? He said maybe.

He said the information about the underlying rock and all the geology has been made a national security item, so the public is not to be told anything. I asked about grouting the voids. He said that if the rains stop and they don't need to use the spillway, they could take maybe six months and try to grout all the voids where the water is moving underneath. I asked if they could definitely seal the places where water is moving and he said maybe.

Lots of maybes with this dam.

He told me that some years ago he was asked to be on a panel to assess the California dams. He did his investigation, wrote up a report of all the problems, and made recommendations. This what he does- dam safety. The panel report finally came out and they had eliminated every single thing he had written, and basically said the dams were fine.

I asked why- I mean, it is just so wrong- and he said CA is bankrupt and they don't want to face all the work that needs to be done on their dams.

Cahill said that in 2017 when the spillway broke and carved that nasty canyon in the hill, it was visually awful but not a threat to the dam itself. However, the gates are the big threat. He said they should not have tried to fix the spillway yet but made the gates the top priority the last two years. (all sorts of cracks).

I asked about Juan Brown ( Blancolirio). He said Juan was a good guy who started out reporting on the dam and flying his plane over, but he is a pilot and not a dam safety person. Juan is pretty much the same as DWR now when it comes to what you will hear presented. Cahill wasn't critical or bitter, (he knows they say nasty things about him at the Blancolirio site), but Juan believes what DWR says and DWR is not honest.

He then told me some possible insider knowledge about conflicts of interest and shady business dealings within the CA govt structure as it relates to dams. No surprise, and I think I'll let it go at that.

He said a hundred thousand people may have to die in a dam failure before CA does what has to be done.

He talked about the loss of Oroville dam to Central Valley agriculture and the S CA water supply. It would be disastrous.

He made a big effort to contact responsible persons and agencies about his concerns but nobody official writes or calls back.

If you pray to the Lord, you can pray for mercy that it doesn't rain and that when the water levels drop they can grout all the voids so well that there are no more water leaks. And that they fix the gates. Or else accept that this dam may fail and pray the people below can get out safely. I can't tell you how to pray, but it is not a good situation.

Thanks for reading.

Gates closed, they are messed up and leak a bit, supposed to be fixed over the next several years if that hunk of junk is still standing.

I was shocked they held together through the 2017 mess.

Reservoir Data Tracking is back online!

[link to cdec.water.ca.gov]

DATE / TIME
PDT RES ELE
FEET STORAGE
AF OUTFLOW
CFS INFLOW
CFS RIV REL
CFS RAIN
INCHES BAT VOL

04/15/2019 12:00 859.99 2,944,610 7,895 18,301 10,009 41.84 13.3
04/15/2019 13:00 864.39 3,006,076 7,951 18,301 10,009 41.84 13.4
04/15/2019 14:00 864.43 3,006,639 7,921 16,405 10,009 41.84 13.4
04/15/2019 15:00 864.49 3,007,483 8,051 15,615 9,987 41.84 13.4
04/15/2019 16:00 864.55 3,008,328 7,950 18,361 9,966 41.84 13.4

Jumped up 4.5 feet and 60000 acre-feet since the monitoring went down!

Gates closed, water coming down the spillway on the left side (facing up) making splashes and waves. Flow rate has been increasing since this morning.

Holy Shit!

Spillway Fucked


[link to twitter.com (secure)]

IT'S GOOD 2 B THE KING...

85% FULL

108 % OF HISTORICAL AVERAGE...AND RISING...

PS. SPILLWAY IS 'FUCT'...1 BILLION DOLLAH BONER...

UPDATE: SPILLWAY ACTUALLY NOT FUCKED. MISREPORTS ATTRIBUTED TO TARDS ON GLP. CARRY ON.

any fool can build a ramp. i find it hard to believe
that the Engineers fucked it up.

Riled allies
Supervisor, Oroville group challenge dam relicensure

This article was published on 04.11.19.


. . .They’re pressing their case with a united front. Last Friday (April 5), during the county’s annual legislative trip to Washington, D.C., Connelly hand-delivered a letter and documentation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) expressing opposition to the dam’s relicensure. That followed an electronic filing by the alliance.

In submitting this notice of protest, which also indicates their intent to intervene in the proceedings, the local parties informed FERC and the dam’s operator, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), that the agencies could face a formal challenge if concerns aren’t addressed. Connelly’s letter cites a petition signed by nearly 9,500 people.

DWR, contacted by email, declined to comment.

Oroville Dam’s 50-year license expired in 2006. Since 2007, DWR has operated the facility on a series of one-year extensions. Butte County has taken the state to court, most recently for damages from the spillway incident (see “DA sues DWR over dam,” Downstroke, Feb. 18, 2018).

In this action, Connelly isn’t acting as a county official per se. He told the CN&R that “the county’s official position is parallel” to his—that is, the lack of recreational tourism opportunities exacerbates the financial drain on local government—but he’s waging his fight “out of a passion to help the local people.”

In the FERC filing, which he’s posted online (see infobox), Connelly excerpted state and federal documents dating as far back as 1961, when construction began. Work finished in 1967, with the dam opening in 1968.

“It’s a little bit boring reading,” he told the CN&R, “but anyone who reads the history of the facility will understand, from the beginning, how they boondoggled us. ‘Hey, if you vote for this [project’s water bonds], you’ll have Disneyland, you’ll have all these tourists, you’ll make all this money.’. . .
[link to www.newsreview.com (secure)]

”

January 15 2018 independent Forensic Team Report Oroville DamSpillway Incident
[link to drive.google.com (secure)]

ancient history.

Oroville is obviously in a New Stage of Its Existence right now.

865 AND A 'TOID'...JOEY...9 AM

How much longer until the collapse?

10 AM NUMBERS SHOON....

865.36

AND...STORM COMING 4/20 TO 4/21...SAT/SUN

[link to www.godlikeproductions.com]

865.FIDDY-TWEE....JOEY

1PM PST

2PM 865.FIDDY-NINE...JOEY..

More great stuff from Jack in VA. Dont miss it.

[link to twitter.com (secure)]

865.64

ALMOST TWO TOIDZ...JOEY....

A FINGER ON THE PULSE..

865.71 4PM

Jack is really on a roll today. Love the guy.

This Littlepixie thought this link was interesting enough to post here.

It has a short video(3 min) about the condition of the current spillway following its opening the other day.

[link to www.godlikeproductions.com]