Posted on 02/14/2017 4:05:52 PM PST by CedarDave
Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure.
Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of Google, Hollywood, and Napa Valley wineries.
California’s politicians and pundits in recent years of drought swore the state was entering a cycle of permanent drought (and thus saw no need to start construction on a single dam to store the rain and snow that supposedly would not return). Instead, they warned of the “settled science” of climate change and the need for permanent conservation and restrictions—even as near record storms this year have pushed California’s snow and rain levels in many places to over 200 percent of normal, well beyond the ability of our now ossified water projects to store the deluge that heads out to sea.
Oroville, along with its twin Shasta dam, anchors California's vast water transfer system, the largest and most ingeniously designed in the world. But Oroville’s half-century-old and now damaged spillways were in dire need of maintenance, especially given that auxiliary dams in the region envisioned to alleviate the pressure on Oroville were long ago cancelled. Indeed, the entire California Water Project and federal Central Valley Project were never finished, even as California’s population more than doubled.
After the early 1980s, the state’s politicians and courts decided that dams, as one critic put it, were “a relic of the Industrial Age, a brute-force solution to water scarcity.” They forget that they had been a staple of civilization since the Mycenaean Greeks built them to ward off flood and drought.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I saw a show on PBS where they were studying the layers of dirt on the coastal areas and in the known fault lines of California.
Mostly for indicators of weather patterns.
The conclusion was absolute and unarguable. California has been built up (some would say overbuilt) in the last 200-250 years, and the weather for that period of time has been unusual, almost remarkably serene.
Quiet.
When it returns to normal... well, I’ll let you think about that!
The people who really should suffer, won’t.
Though I suspect about now the people of Oroville would like to put Moonbeam on a rail.
100 years ago California was run by adults who believed in planning for the future. Today it’s run by adult adolescents who believe that whatever they want should be theirs whenever they demand it, without any thought or planning, since they don’t believe in cause and effect.
I suspect 90% of the people heading south with their pets and kids and pictures and a half tank of gas voted for a liberal moron who in turn voted with the rest of the herd to give the money meant for the dam to loud mouth illegal Mexicans led by LaRaza.
Liberals ONLY learn by brute force! The water behind that dam will be some unparalleled brute force if that dam breaks.
I doubt very much they ever voted for him in the first place - the Sierra foothills are very conservative.
You’d be wrong in your suspicion. Butte County is red, they voted Trump.
"Californians have become squatters of sorts on an infrastructure that others built"
So, Hussein was right. Californians DIDN’T build that.
I saw the same thing. The people doing the studies all agreed that we are in a medium period of settled weather and it will turn quickly and violently like it always has in the past.
I suspect 90% of the people heading south with their pets and kids and pictures and a half tank of gas voted for a liberal moron who in turn voted with the rest of the herd to give the money meant for the dam to loud mouth illegal Mexicans led by LaRaza.
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I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure this is the conservative part of the state. Unfortunately for them, they are the ones that will suffer the most for policies of the left.
Most, if not all, of California’s rural counties are red. You should have seen the anti clinton signs along highway 5 during the clinton years. There were also several “where is the birth certificate” signs during the obama years.
Good point, but to the mind of the liberal politician, infrastructure doesn’t vote.
The emergency spillway was intended to serve this purpose. And, it’s “dam,” not “damn,” dammit.
I really don’t want to leave the state (in Silicon Valley, CA), but I can’t wait for the $500/mo water bills just for basic usage. At least in No. California. So. California will, as usual, waste a ton of money keeping a desert green.
Did we passed to build 3 dams few years ago? Where is the money?
People should protest at Capital hill.
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