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State water officials said water has begun flowing over the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam. Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources, said water started topping over the auxiliary spillway shortly before 8 a.m. at a rate of between 5,000 and 10,000 cubic feet per second.

"OROVILLE, Calif. - An immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered. A hazardous situation has developed with the Oroville Dam emergency spillway. Officials say that operation of the auxiliary spillway has lead to severe erosion that could lead to a failure of the structure. Failure of the emergency spillway structure will result in an uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville. ... Officials are anticipating a failure of the auxiliary spillway at Oroville Dam within the next 60 minutes ..."

Update, 7:15 p.m. Thursday: The situation surrounding the damaged spillway at Oroville Dam has escalated into a crisis, with state water managers hoping they can dump enough water down the badly compromised structure to prevent the state’s second-largest reservoir from pouring over an emergency release point that has never been used before. Flow rates down the collapsing spillway were increased late Thursday morning to 35,000 cubic feet per second. The result was a spectacle of churning mud and water and the further damage to the concrete structure. [snip] Officials at the media briefing repeated further reassurances that the integrity of...

If you have family and friends in this area please tell them to monitor the situation. So far, no Emergency Broadcast System alerts or anything.

The hackers are accused of hitting the banks with distributed-denial-of-service attacks on a near-weekly basis, a relatively unsophisticated way of knocking computer networks offline by overwhelming them with a flood of spammed traffic. “These attacks were relentless, they were systematic, and they were widespread,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a Washington news conference. The indictment from a federal grand jury in New York City said the attacks occurred from 2011 to 2013. Washington has previously accused military officers from China and the North Korean government of cyber attacks against U.S. businesses. The attack on the Bowman Avenue Dam in...

Iraqi engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse than reported. They pointed out that pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir, bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to relieve that pressure were jammed shut. The Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held...

Iraq's Mosul Dam Could Collapse, Causing 'Catastrophic' Destruction, Says U.S. General U.S. commander in Iraq warns of looming disaster if weak dam fails: 'In the U.S., we would have drained the lake behind it.' The top U.S. general in Iraq warned Thursday of the potential collapse of Mosul Dam in the country's north, saying such an event could prove "catastrophic." The U.S.-led coalition is still determining the likelihood the hydroelectric dam could collapse but has developed a contingency plan alongside the Iraqi government, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland.

California, Oregon and the federal government are working on a way around congressional barriers to the removal of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. The states, the U.S. Interior Department and the owner of the dams, PacifiCorp, announced Tuesday that they have agreed in principle to pursue removal through the federal dam relicensing process. The move comes after a complex deal to decommission four hydroelectric dams and restore portions of the historic salmon river fell apart when Congress failed to act on a crucial piece of the pact by a Dec. 31 deadline. Republican members of Congress and local elected...

Iranian hackers infiltrated the control system of a small dam less than 20 miles from New York City two years ago, sparking concerns that reached to the White House, according to former and current U.S. officials and experts familiar with the previously undisclosed incident. The breach came amid attacks by hackers linked to Iran's government against the websites of U.S. banks, and just a few years after American spies had damaged an Iranian nuclear facility with a sophisticated computer worm called Stuxnet. In October 2012, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called out Iran's hacking, prompting fears of cyberwar. The still-classified dam...

Beijing (AFP) - China has begun building a 314-metre (1,030-ft) high dam which will be among the world's tallest, officials said, as the country massively expands hydropower. The Shuangjiankou dam on a tributary of China's mighty Yangtze river will be completed in 2022, the environmental ministry said on its website Tuesday. The facility, costing 36 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), will be higher than the world's current tallest dam, the 305-metre Jinping-1, also in China. China has been expanding its hydropower electricity generating capacity as it seeks to reach a goal of obtaining 20 per cent of its power from non-fossil...

Islamic State (ISIS) group jihadists have closed the gates of a dam in the Iraqi city of Ramadi which they seized last month, posing a humanitarian and security threat, officials said Tuesday. ISIS fighters have repeatedly attempted to control dams in Iraq, in some cases reducing the flow of water to areas under government control or flooding swathes of land to impede military operations, reports AFP. Anbar provincial council chief Sabah Karhout said ISIS "closed all the gates" at a dam in Ramadi, capital of Iraq's largest province. The move lowered the level of the Euphrates River and cut water...

Fremont (KRON) — Fremont police say vandals attacked an inflatable dam on Alameda Creek that resulted in the loss of nearly 50 million gallons of water. Police believe that those responsible entered a restricted area sometime on Thursday morning and intentionally damaged the dam. “The dam, which is instrumental to the Alameda County Water District’s water supply operations, suffered irreversible damage,” police said. According to police, more than 150 acre-feet of water – or 49 million gallons – washed past the destroyed dam and into the San Francisco Bay. With California enduring a crippling four-year drought and no signs of...

“Dam [thumbs up]… Train [thumbs down]… Governor, put our water before your train,” reads a billboard message erected by Fresno City Councilman Steve Brandau, revealed this week in California’s Central Valley. “We don’t have a train shortage, we have a water shortage,” Brandau told Breitbart California. His message comes as California is in serious, extended drought, while Governor Jerry Brown has made it his priority to push forward the troubled high-speed rail project. The “Dam” references the proposed Temperance Flat Dam. In 2014, Californians were sold on passing the Proposition 1 water bond on the premise that funds would be...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. official says American fighter jets and drones conducted nearly a dozen airstrikes in Iraq since Tuesday, even as Islamic State militants threatened to kill a second American captive in retribution for any continued strikes. The militants released a video Tuesday showing U.S. journalist James Foley being beheaded. The official says the airstrikes were in the area of the Mosul Dam and were aimed at helping Iraqi and Kurdish forces create a buffer zone at the key facility. The strikes have helped Iraqi and Kurdish troops reclaim the dam from the insurgents.

President Obama announced Monday that Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, have recaptured the vital Mosul Dam -- calling it a "major step forward" in the fight against Islamic State militants who seized the dam earlier this month. "If that dam was breached, it could have proven catastrophic," Obama said, speaking from the White House briefing room. The joint military campaign lasted for hours, as U.S. airstrikes pounded Islamic militant positions while Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters battled on the ground to retake the infrastructure. Obama, who spoke during a brief pause in D.C. from...

The latest round of US airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State extremist group includes the first reported use of land-based bombers in the military campaign. Kurdish security officials say Kurdish forces, aided by US and Iraqi airstrikes, have now taken over parts of the dam. Militants had captured control of the dam less than two weeks ago. The US military says US forces conducted nine strikes yesterday and another 16 today. The second round of strikes damaged or destroyed 10 armed vehicles, seven Humvees, two armored personnel carriers, and one checkpoint, the US said.

Last week, the barbaric Islamic State (IS) seized the vitally important Mosul dam, dramatically impacting tactical options against them and potentially changing the future of the Middle East. * snip * Since the dam was completed in the mid-1980’s it has required continuous (daily) maintenance, because it was built on top of gypsum, a soft mineral which dissolves when in contact with water. More than 50,000 tons of materials have been injected into the dam since 1986. The ‘sink hole’ type of cavities that constantly form have to be expeditiously plugged with “grout”, a liquefied mixture of cement and other...

Fighters with the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria reached the triangle border between Iraq, Syria and Turkey, it said in a message posted on Twitter on Sunday. ISIS took control of Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam on Iraq's Tigris River, which provides power to the city of Mosul about 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the south, the commander of the Peshmerga Kurdish fighters who had been defending the facility said Sunday. The dam workers remained inside the facility, which fell after a 24-hour battle, Lt. Col. Herash said. SNIP----- "If you control the Mosul Dam, you can...

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security officials said Wednesday that fighters with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were advancing on the Haditha Dam, the second-largest in Iraq, raising the possibility of catastrophic damage and flooding. Worries about the dam came as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki criticized his political rivals but did not reject entreaties by Western leaders, including a personal visit by Secretary of State John Kerry, to help defuse the crisis by forming a new government with more equitable power sharing among competing groups. The ISIS militants advancing on the Euphrates River dam, about 120 miles northwest of...

The California drought is stoking a congressional appetite for additional water storage, with new and larger dams back on competing menus.