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Earth Technology Science

188,000 Evacuated As California's Massive Oroville Dam Threatens Catastrophic Floods (washingtonpost.com) 457

Mr D from 63 quotes a report from The Washington Post: About 188,000 residents near Oroville, Calif., were ordered to evacuate Sunday after a hole in an emergency spillway in the Oroville Dam threatened to flood the surrounding area. Thousands clogged highways leading out of the area headed south, north and west, and arteries major and minor remained jammed as midnight approached on the West Coast -- though by early Monday, Lake Oroville's water level had dropped to a point at which water was no longer spilling over. The lake level reached its peak of 902.59 feet at about 3 a.m. Sunday and dropped to 898 feet by 4 a.m. Monday, according to the Sacramento Bee. Water flows over the emergency spillway at 901 feet. "The drop in the lake level was early evidence that the Department of Water Resources' desperate attempt to prevent a catastrophic failure of the dam's emergency spillway appeared to be paying dividends," the Bee reported Monday. Officials doubled the flow of water out of the nearly mile-long primary spillway to 100,000 cubic feet per second. The normal flow is about half as much, but increased flows are common at this time of year, during peak rain season, officials said. But water officials warned that damaged infrastructure could create further dangers as storms approach in the week ahead, and it remained unclear when residents might be able to return to their homes.
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188,000 Evacuated As California's Massive Oroville Dam Threatens Catastrophic Floods

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  • When I walked into a coffee shop in Palo Alto before 7AM this morning, people were sitting down or standing up while watching the local news about the dam.
    • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:29PM (#53860175)
      3 Groups filed briefs as far back as 2005 requesting that California update the overflow spillway as part of the re certification process. The overflow was found not to meet standards and caused risk. California put 0 money into the issue and ignored it. But hey, we got more welfare and crony projects like the Bullet-CrazyTrain. http://abc7news.com/news/repor... [abc7news.com]
      • But hey, we got more welfare and crony projects like the Bullet-CrazyTrain.

        New and shiny will always attract funding. Old and boring, not so much.

        • New and shiny will always attract funding. Old and boring, not so much.^W^W^W^W^W^W^W Corrupt politicians don't care about people once elected, they care about more power.

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        But hey, we got more welfare and crony projects like the Bullet-CrazyTrain.

        Yes, the train that will cost $68.4 billion and fulfill the same transportation demand as spending $119.0 billion on 4,295 new lane-miles of highway plus $38.6 billion on 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways ($158 billion total). Let's not build it because we need that $68.4 billion for other things, right?

        • by s.petry ( 762400 )

          Every claim you just repeated by the State has been proven _False_ by other agencies who did not "fluff" numbers and use hyperbole to determine usage. To be cost effective the train will need to cost more money than an airline ticket and the overall commute time cuts small percentages off of driving. Usage of the train will be minimal, just like Amtrack who requires massive federal funds each year to operate.

          Every penny of that train is deficit spending by the Government with minimal private investment be

          • by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @05:51PM (#53861017) Journal

            Every claim you just repeated by the State has been proven _False_ by other agencies

            That's false. The Legislative Analyst's Office questioned the assumptions but did not find anything in the CAHSR's numbers that were factually incorrect. The State Auditor found some risks and weak oversight but again could not disprove the numbers. We see the same thing over and over again, and each time it helps California improve its planning and oversight.

            Meanwhile, every HSR line in the world that's at least a few years old is already making a profit.

            Every.

            Last.

            One.

            Even Amtrak's Acela Express makes a profit [businessinsider.com]. So why would California's HSR be any different?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Would they have drowned if they were lying down?
      • Would they have drowned if they were lying down?

        Oh, no. The dam is 185 miles away from Silicon Valley. We would be safe from the imminent collapse of the dam. However, a 30-foot-tall wall of water would eventually end up in the delta and flush out the endangered smelt fish. That would be a tragedy.

  • by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @03:52PM (#53859719)
    considering the state is in a drought half the time. If only there was a way to build a wall or something to hold the water until it was needed.
    • considering the state is in a drought half the time. If only there was a way to build a wall or something to hold the water until it was needed.

      You forgot the part about: if only there was some way to move the excess water about 500 miles south to where the drought problem is centered.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cirby ( 2599 )

        There have been multiple proposals to do just that, but between the environmental lobbyists and the people who would rather use the money for a train they're going to ride about once, it's just not happening.

        • The folks who live in the North don't want to have our rivers run dry and to be in unending drought because our water is going to Southern California, where they have made a lot of desert from what was historically marshland, and having made it a desert continue to try to farm it.

      • Yes oddly enough, it's still cheaper for the electricity to pump water to SoCal (from Colorado) than desalination plants.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I was watching last week when the bad cracks in primary spillway gave way and limited its use. Of course, that didn't stop Governor Moonbeam last night, who finally addressed the issue at 11pm over a week after we knew this was going to be a problem, from playing politics and blaming global warming. The requirements for the dam were created in the late 1950's, and this hasn't exceeded the design capacity of the dam. The problem is that the damaged spillway can't be used at full capacity because of bad ma

  • Political fallout (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @03:58PM (#53859791) Journal

    It's interesting that everyone's trying to put a political spin on this, and finger pointing is starting.

    First, T supporters say T should only give emergency assistance if CA swears away from "sanctuary cities". CA's response is that CA has always paid into the fed just like every other state, and that one political issue shouldn't be used as a threat against another.

    Second, is the reason for not preventing this. There was concern of weakness in the dam's overflow systems going back years. Different experts gave different opinions. It seems it was on the borderline of being problematic, at least on paper. If it's only on the borderline of being a problem, then expensive fixes tend to get ignored.

    It may also be a case of "cascading failure" whereby the backup (overflow handling) failed, and then the secondary backup also failed. Sometimes bleep just happens under extreme weather. Other CA damns and water systems held up; the chance of all them working perfectly is slim. If you have hundreds of water systems, at least a few will have notable problems during heavy rains just out of shear probability.

    Large dams are probably a thing of the past, in part because they are a single big point of failure, and in part because they screw up the existing state of nature. Smaller sub-dams are the preferred way now, if any. But we still have to maintain the big old ones because many existing dwellings and roads rely on them to work.

  • Another Katrina (Score:5, Informative)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:03PM (#53859849) Homepage Journal

    I just wanted to post some info before everyone spins this as a partisan failure of one sort or another.

    1) The dam was built and is owned by California.
    2) California was warned about the potential problem (the one we are currently seeing) in 2005.
    3) In 2005, as part of the federal re-licensing procedure for the dam, several groups urged federal officials to require that the dam’s [earthwork] emergency spillway be upgraded to concrete. The federal government declined.
    4) The dam was built at a time when requirements were less strict in comparison to today's standards. The dam foundations were dug down to "weathered" rock, which is less structurally sound than "bedrock".

    And finally,

    5) As much as people feel the need for karma or justice or revenge or whatever, we DO NOT punish people's lives and homes over partisan bullshit. The federal government should (and most probably will) assist in any way that they can to help avoid a disaster.

    As has been pointed out by many people, California spent several billions of dollars on the hyperloop while letting this particular bit of infrastructure upgrade get ignored. Both California and the Federal government (viz: the licensing mentioned above) can share the blame for this.

    It's another Katrina-like situation: both governments (Cali and Federal) were warned, did nothing, and now it's an emergency.

    Also of note, and I'm trying to look at the big picture here and not point fingers, it's been pointed out that the infrastructure in our country has been neglected for a long time (especially roads, bridges, and the electrical grid), and we really need to start fixing up things.

    Fixing our infrastructure was one of the campaign promises of the party in power, perhaps this will galvanize them to action.

    • Re:Another Katrina (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mean pun ( 717227 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:17PM (#53860007)

      Summary: life is more complicated than the current tribal cold war has people believe.

      But I'm pretty sure CA has not spent billion dollars on a hyperloop project.

    • Re:Another Katrina (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:53PM (#53860439)

      As has been pointed out by many people, California spent several billions of dollars on the hyperloop while letting this particular bit of infrastructure upgrade get ignored.

      Perhaps you mean the California high speed rail, which was paid for (so far) by a bond measure, the money for which cannot legally be designated for something else?

    • California spent several billions of dollars on the hyperloop...

      Can I see a citation for that?

    • Re:Another Katrina (Score:5, Informative)

      by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @05:22PM (#53860743)

      As has been pointed out by many people, California spent several billions of dollars on the hyperloop

      This would be what's known as a lie, but it's convenient so it's repeated frequently.

      CA passed a measure to sell bonds for high-speed rail between (roughly) LA and (roughly) SF. The money can only be used on that rail project. It isn't hyperloop or anything else with technical risk. It's a straightforward electrically-driven train like you see everywhere else on the planet.

      Oh, and the alternative was massive upgrades to the Interstates, airports and other transportation infrastructure for double the price. How foolish to go for the cheaper, proven option.

    • Re:Another Katrina (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday February 13, 2017 @05:26PM (#53860773) Homepage Journal

      I was at this reservoir less than a year ago, and it was nearly empty. It filled to the brim in two months. This probably corresponds to a 400-year flood (one not expected to occur more than once in 400 years) if anyone even thought about such a thing happening.

      Although there was a filing by a number of ecological groups (one of which I used to volunteer for extensively), those groups did not know that there was a structural problem in the dam spillway. The state was very definitely not warned about that by those groups or anyone else. The groups felt that the spillway capacity could be overrun. That has not happened. The spillway failed due to a construction issue. Had it not failed, its capacity would have been adequate.

      California hasn't spent on the hyperloop. Caliifornia has spent on a high-speed rail, which it desperately needs dispite the whining of farmers who wish the public to build yet more free water storage for them so that they can continue to farm what they have already made into a desert.

      California's central valley was swampland before the farmers came. The removal of that hydrological buffer makes the long droughts that we suffer much worse.

    • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @07:11PM (#53861603) Homepage Journal

      There's actually 2 things going on.

      The existing spillway is made of concrete, and suffered some structural damage.

      Here is an image [htvapps.com] of the damage, from a couple of days ago, and here is that same spillway today [hdnux.com].

      The lower half of the spillway is probably completely gone. The raging water might erode up to the level of the dam, but that's not likely.

      The actual problem was the emergency spillway, which is an earthen bank to the left (looking up to the dam) of the regular spillway.

      You can see the damage in this image [htvapps.com]. Note that one of the eroded canyons reaches almost up to the level of the water.

      If the erosion had reached the emergency spillway it would have burst, releasing a whole lot of water downstream.

      Here's a closeup [hdnux.com], and note the middle lower portion of the image. We were that close to a breech.

      That didn't happen, and the waters are now below emergency levels.

      However, the situation is rather precarious and the emergency spillway could still burst. There's still a lot of water still coming in to the reservoir, which is being frantically lowered.

      (And yes, I wrote "Hyperloop" when I meant "High Speed Rail" above.)

  • by BoRegardless ( 721219 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:18PM (#53860027)

    Guess how many of these quickly build damn dams exist in California.

    The next 160 year cycle of Pineapple Express mega-floods is due in 2022. Geologists know the cycles from core sediments, which are indisputable.

    Can they retrofit dams in time? Will they even try? Will it make any difference if they do retrofit? Will any bureaucrat get fired? I am betting NO.

    Do the dam and water engineers already acknowledge this and the bureaucracy keep quiet on it, just like at Oriville Dam?

  • by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:24PM (#53860111)

    I have an idea!

    Why don't we put all the water back into the aquifers we've been taking it out of, instead of letting it out, and down to the pacific?

    What a lamentable situation! If only someone could invent something to do that!

    Oh. Wait. They did. In 1992.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    1992, though, was 25 years ago.

    What a lamentable situation! If only a millennial could reinvent old technology in ignorance, thinking it was new, to do that!

    • You want to pump water under high pressure into the ground.

      We already know what happens when you do that in non-earthquake-prone geology thanks to fracking. Oklahoma now has frequent earthquakes.

      You think it's a good idea to do the same thing in a place that is prone to earthquakes and has (estimated) tens of thousands of unknown fault lines.

  • by Bodhammer ( 559311 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @04:32PM (#53860213)
    If the levee breaks and washes away the legislature in Sacramento is that carbon positive, neutral, or negative? What about the snail darter and silvery minnow?
  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Monday February 13, 2017 @05:00PM (#53860517)

    When the Banqiao dam system failed in 1975, killing 230,000, the hydro lobby's excuse was that because Chinese dams were built to different design standards from the US, such an accident could never happen here
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    But this failure of a modern American design means that the hydro lobby has finally run out of excuses. No matter how up-to-date the design, no dam is walkaway safe. No large project can be built without the possibility of corner-cutting by some person at some time. Some of this country's largest dams are approaching 80 years of age, and there are no provisions for dealing with the costs of eventual decommissioning. And after all these years, nobody knows how to deal with the increasing amount of leftover silt.

  • At least the people of Oroville got a warning.... :P

Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs. -- N. Alexander.

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