The operator was required to build a containment/back up dam in case that ever happened. There is a road that was built between the two dams, hate to be there if the earthen dam had a catastrophic failure!
Posted on 02/16/2017 12:20:11 PM PST by nickcarraway
Rising water filling up Santa Clara County's Anderson Reservoir, which was 99.3 percent full as of Wednesday, is expected to flow over the dam's spillway as a result of this week's impending storms.
Unlike the potentially catastrophic situation with Lake Oroville's emergency spillway, the Anderson Reservoir's operational spillway is not at risk of failure, according to Santa Clara Valley Water District officials.
Despite that good news, officials in Santa Clara County are warning residents living along Coyote Creek and near Kelley Park to be on the lookout for potential flooding. Water officials for the past month have been releasing water from the reservoir at 400 cubic feet per second, but that rate is not fast enough to create enough room for the incoming rain.
Approaching storms are not the only reason why officials are trying to drain the reservoir. Per government regulations, the body of water is not supposed to exceed 68 percent capacity. That's because the reservoir sits in an earthquake zone and the dam, which was built in 1950 when seismic standards were not as strict as they are today, could be damaged by a 7.25 magnitude or greated earthquake, according to water district spokesperson Marty Grimes.
Officials have been developing a plan to retrofit the dam since 2009, but the soonest the water district would commence construction would be in 2020.
"It's going to be a bigger project than we initially thought and that's part of the process," Grimes said. "As you go through the design process, you learn more about how the structure of the dam was built, how it's compacted, what kind of materials are in the dam. To make sure that we build an appropriate project that's going to be safe long into the future, we're taking the time, the due diligence to design it correctly. Nobody is more eager than we are to get that project completed." The $400 million seismic retrofit project, which would partially be paid for by a parcel tax and increased water rates spread out over 30 years, would likely take at least four years to complete, according to Grimes.
That estimated completion date is years away, raising concerns about what would happen if a major earthquake struck the region before that time. Water district officials countered that fear by saying that the dam survived the Loma Prieta earthquake.
In the meantime, officials will continue to release water from the reservoir until water levels drop below the 68 percent mark, according to water district board chair John L. Valera. That process could take four to nine weeks.
Unfortunately for those concerned about California's recent drought, the water that is being released from the Anderson Reservoir is not being collected. "It's not water we can use," Grimes said last week. "There are just the physical realities. Unfortunately, we can't keep the reservoir full."
The Anderson Dam is under the regulatory jurisdiction of the California Division of Safety of Dams and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It's the largest of the 10 Santa Clara Valley Water District reservoirs and was named after a key founder of the district, Leroy Anderson. It is a long, deep natural gorge located three miles east of U.S. Highway 101 in Morgan Hill.
“Unfortunately for those concerned about California’s recent drought, the water that is being released from the Anderson Reservoir is not being collected. ‘It’s not water we can use,’ Grimes said last week. “There are just the physical realities. Unfortunately, we can’t keep the reservoir full.”
So, G-d FINALLY gives them the water they so desperately need...and they p*ss it all away?
(I lived in San Diego from ‘80-’82, a previous period of drought.)
Sure, eleven years of "developing a plan" is a great idea.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, they're moving hundreds of millions of tons of sea-bottom sand more than one hundred miles to make a huge artificial land mass.
And no EPA to stop them.
The operator was required to build a containment/back up dam in case that ever happened. There is a road that was built between the two dams, hate to be there if the earthen dam had a catastrophic failure!
Amazing, isn’t it ? Droughts are nothing new in CA and yet we keep spending money on educating illegals and handing out welfare instead of building a real state-wide water network. Mono Lake is still basically empty after Los Angeles used it all up decades ago. Other lakes and reservoirs in San Luis Obisbo County and Kern County and Imperial County remain very low because there is no waterway to make use of all this NorCal excess.
It just kills me how dry the western states are when we have rivers flowing out to sea and throwing away desperately needed fresh water. Damming the Mississippi would green Texas and New Mexico. Damming the Columbia and Sacramento rivers would green California. If we built canals to move water where we need it.
“Officials have been developing a plan to retrofit the dam since 2009, but the soonest the water district would commence construction would be in 2020.”
This sentence explains why government screws up everything they touch.
People who vote for more government are idiots.
I lived in Morgan Hill for 11- years in the 80s and 90s. Had one year that I remember when the spillway was needed. I figured the Big One would wash my house away. Glad I left in 1994 and sold in 1995.
Nothing I dropped in California that I need to go back for.
You should have waited longer to sell.
Having grown up on The Great Lakes and living where I have a creek and a pond of my own, I’ll tell you my thoughts on damning up everything to provide water to areas that don’t NATURALLY have water:
Those living WEST of the Mississippi are not welcome to the water in The Great Lakes or the Mississippi or any of the other major waterways that you listed, for ANY reason.
You want water to live, survive and provide food via fish, wildlife to hunt, and agriculture? Stake your teepee where the water is, NOT in the middle of a damn desert!
(I’m mean that way.) *SMILE*
But - I TOTALLY see your point on how CA mismanages its water - along with just about everything else. And it’s a damn shame.
How soon before you leave CA? You can (temporarily) stake your teepee by my pond, but you’ll have to share it with the heifer cows in the summer months, LOL!
We need to start developing technology to put flood water back into our aquifers. It would be similar to fracking.
It is just stupid to let water flow out into the ocean where it is useless to anyone. The Mississippi allows 20 times as much water to flow out into the Gulf — after everybody you like has already made their own use of it — as the entire flow of the Colorado river. Damming a river does not reduce the water available to anyone upstream, it simply make more water available for people over a wider area.
We are not animals, limited to whatever resources are lying around. We are PEOPLE who have the ability to change our environment to suit ourselves.
I don’t plan to leave CA. I don’t run away from problems.
They completed a major flood mitigation project on Guadalupe River through San Jose way back in 2008. At least that part of San Jose isn’t going underwater even with the heavy rains and runoff due next week.
They’ve known about the seismic issues for 17 years and they have nothing about it.
I’ve wondered if concern over seismicity is behind such a huge earthen dam to begin with, that’s highly unusual in the east. Sure, you see big earthen dams but in length, not in height. I’d be scared to death to live below that thing no matter if it had been perfectly maintained.
“I don’t plan to leave CA. I don’t run away from problems.”
I didn’t leave Wisconsin, either. We flipped it to RED for President Trump - now THAT was a miracle in and of itself! :)
Bad water basin in Death Valley is almost 300 feet below sea level. There was a time when it did have water. https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/geology.htm
I say, fill it back up. Why not build pumping stations to carry water back to the basin?
It’s a scientific fact that every time California elects Jerry Brown they have a drought.
You act as if west of the Mississippi there is no water. You must not travel much
There are many areas that suffer momumental flood damage fairly often. I think of the Romans who built vast miles of aqueducts. If these flood prone areas built huge reservoirs with aqueducts to dry areas then they could sell excess water and help stave off some flood damage. Getting past mountains, if needed, may be a greater problem, though.
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