Oroville Dam Spillway Is Trashed

[45Doll 5,873]

ZeroHedge posted this article about the current state of the Oroville dam. Video was just released Monday taken after the water was shut off. Take a look at it; it's stunning.

 

To an amateur engineer like me, looks like the 'spillway' is gone! If they get hit with another round of rain and a full reservoir, they're in for BIG trouble.

 

[bhunted 887]

Wow! Like a bad movie coming to pass. Scary crap right there...

 

 

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[BlueLineFish 615]

Thats what they get for diverting civil funds to more liberal ideals

[oldguysrule649 397]

It is even more complicated.  I read yesterday that with the main spillway turned off, they will also use the coming days to remove the material that has been built up in the river at the base of the spillway.  Apparently that build up has caused the water to back up into the exhaust vents of the hydro-electric plant which is off camera to the right.   That plant is currently offline for that and other reasons.

 

So yes, a very delicate dance and precarious position they are still in.   If heavy rains return and that dam again reaches it's max capacity, things are going to downhill very quickly.  (Nice pun!).

[Malsua 1,422]

If just goes to show what 100,000 Cubic Feet of water per second can do.   It scoured that down to bedrock...anything that was built on fill got wasted.

 

Water is very pervasive and it will always find a way.

[Krdshrk 3,877]

Yeah that's really bad... amazing.  Wonder what happened with the planning on this?

[YankeeSC 1,204]

California can throw a whole bunch of their illegal immigrants to work on it and it will be fixed in no time.

[Malsua 1,422]

Yeah that's really bad... amazing.  Wonder what happened with the planning on this?

 

There's a couple things.  In theory, at least as of the 1960s, this was A-OK.

 

The problem is we've learned a lot about materials and structures since the 1960s.  

 

The fill under the main spillway was probably compacted poorly which lead to voids and once water gets it, it's just an issue of time.

 

These days, the fill has to be screened to a specific size and have 0% biomass, something not done in the 1960s.  It has to be compacted properly and in critical applications like this, they would probably add binders to prevent any erosion.

 

The concrete has to be a very specific mix(using Pozzolanic cement), and his has to have a very specific water content when poured.    

 

The problem with that massive emergency spillway was that they let trees grow up in it and they didn't have a hardened outlet for the water.   That was a recipe for disaster.  Spillways should never had organic debris in them.

 

Finally, they needed to have a bulkhead at the end of the emergency spillway.   What happened was that the lake was about 1 foot over the emergency spillway and the water just ran around the end.   That area is ALL dirt and it just started washing away.   Had a deep channel formed, it would have eroded to bedrock after 1 million acre feet of water went downstream.

[mipafox 438]

[Kevin125 4,772]

Looks really bad.

 

And looks like a bad design. i don't know much about dam spillways but that "emergency spillway", that is essentially a dirt slope, seems more like the..."We're totally screwed if we ever have to use this...spillway".

 

Didn't these guys ever watch those bad 50's dam disaster movies?

[mipafox 438]

[45Doll 5,873]

I'm still laughing. Jerry Brown told his entire state last year the 'drought would last forever', and maybe that's part of the reason he and his administration never got around to spending a few million to repair the spillway that they knew needed attention. Now the CA taxpayers get to pay for their mistake.

 

Whoa! I think they're going to get some Federal money, aren't they?

 

This year their budget is in over a $1B hole because of an 'accounting error', Brown is still spending upwards of $5B on his High Speed Rail To Nowhere, and the legislature wants to provide single payer health insurance to the entire state (including the illegals) which is estimated to cost over $40B.

 

It's good to be progressive!

[YankeeSC 1,204]

Whoa! I think they're going to get some Federal money, aren't they?

 

 

If they don't want to follow federal law, hopefully not!

[raz-0 1,259]

I'm still laughing. Jerry Brown told his entire state last year the 'drought would last forever', and maybe that's part of the reason he and his administration never got around to spending a few million to repair the spillway that they knew needed attention. 

 

 

Not spending on infrastructure is part of the policy of maximal neglect that most of our government operates on at this point. 

 

I am baffled about the eternal drought thinking though. It's like, hey we BELIEVE in global warming, so this must be it. Totally forgetting that even the most global warmiest of global warming scientists will show you the damn needle still goes back and forth, AND historically CA has two types of season. Wildfire season and mudslide season. Somehow millions of people forgot that. 

[jm1827 284]

Looking on the bright side...will continued erosion from that spillway speed up the process of California splitting off the main land and falling into the ocean?  One can only hope!

[Kaiser7 33]

I'm still laughing. Jerry Brown told his entire state last year the 'drought would last forever', and maybe that's part of the reason he and his administration never got around to spending a few million to repair the spillway that they knew needed attention. Now the CA taxpayers get to pay for their mistake.

 

Whoa! I think they're going to get some Federal money, aren't they?

 

This year their budget is in over a $1B hole because of an 'accounting error', Brown is still spending upwards of $5B on his High Speed Rail To Nowhere, and the legislature wants to provide single payer health insurance to the entire state (including the illegals) which is estimated to cost over $40B.

 

It's good to be progressive!

>SCREW DRUMPF, WE'RE GOING TO BE A SANCTUARY STATE WE DONT NEED THEIR MONEY.

 

>Please Drumpf, give us monies to fix our dam :'(

[45Doll 5,873]

Well there's no worries now, the State of California is on the job. Confidence is high.