Hey now, I was on top of issue from the start. Now where are my Doughnuts?
Posted on 02/13/2017 5:48:06 AM PST by Sons of Union Vets
Looks like the left is covering their rear ends.
Better get the weather machine away from Bush...he is runnning huckleybuck again like Katrina
Hey now, I was on top of issue from the start. Now where are my Doughnuts?
Whose idea was it to build a 700+ foot high dam out of dirt?
Concrete is cheap compare to a dam collapse.
Maybe it’s time for BPA, TVA, a private entity, or the corp of engineers to take over the dam. Somebody with some experience in operating and maintaining them.
way too many guys on this thread want to kick california out of the union. this is wrong.
california needs to reformed. the illegals need to kicked out.
This dam is being eroded away in many directions all a potential point of disaster.
This disaster should be placed solely on the state and those in charge of maintaining this dam.
That was at the height of the enviros screaming they wanted to get rid of all dams and let the environment return to its natural state. The so called concern was voiced to get the dam destroyed
“The controlled spillway was designed for 250k cfs. Only yesterday did they bump the outflow from 60k to 100k.”
Really? Judging from the stadium sized crater in the spillway, I’d say some calculations were off. That spillway fell apart at half capacity?
I do agree that the real culprit are those managing the outflows. I bet I know what’s happening today at every other dam in California - drawing down.
In 1993 they had a similar problem at a reservoir (Tuttle Creek) in Kansas. The Corps of Engineers refused to release water, because it might damage St Louis (500 miles away). By the time they figure out their mistake, they were opening up the emergency gates...for the first time (sound familiar)...and wiping out some houses downstream.
I agree. California is not only beautiful, but the central valley keeps our grocery stores stocked with produce. I’ve only been there a few times, but it was great. A few looney metro areas ruin it for the rest of the state, but there are a lot of wonderful people there.
They knew that spillway would fail if they ever had to use it because concrete in the section that failed was a mess and tons of water would break it apart if it ever had to be used. There was never any doubt what would happen if they every had to use it. They had years of great dry conditions to harden this structure and the problem areas. This was just criminal.
I had a close family member that was part of TVA dam safety and thus FEMA. There are several dams in the US built on the wrong type of rock and many that have not been maintained well and they all know which ones....this is no surprise.
It does seem there’s been criminal negligence of this dam, and likely others.
I grasp only the simplest of engineering principles, so I am speaking from ignorance here, but as bad as it may get, it still is unlikely they’ll lose the dam, right?
..and the latest 6 year drought is the new “normal” we will base all further decisions on. It will probably never rain again in California.
Actually if this next storm coming through is as big as the last two....the danger just begins.
They need it dry for a while, so they can shore this structure up. Even if they had that dry spell, there is a ton of pressure on this weakened dam. They will not be able to tell how damaged this dam is until they can see it without the water flowing over it and down the spillway. They need to see if any hole, no matter how small, has been made where water might be coming through lower down the walls now.
I care; as should everyone.
Here in Oregon AGW was policy saying there would no longer be snow packs on Mt Hood which furnishes the drinking water for Portland.
They have drilled wells and focused on pumping and cleaning the water from the main river. Legislators in these states assumed there would be no snow in the mountains due to Global Warming.
Thank you. I’ve been following this pretty closely and as you kmow, there are mixed messages from various interests. Add to that, diverse opinions about how to prepare and solve, short and long term...it’s a mess.
Triage first, but even that is fraught with division.
As someone with plenty of experience noted recently that the earth (dirt) moves around for all sorts of reasons (water saturation to bone dry cycling) over the years. The spillway has been there for a while and its subsoil foundation apparently developed some problems that made some of the weighted slabs drop into a void.
It would be interesting to know what the downstream flood stage water flow capacity (including the irrigation diversion channels) is. I'll bet that it is less than 100k cfs.
Seems confident, but they were confident in the spillway, too.
Http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-92562898/
Offcials emphasized that although erosion had carved a massive hole in the Oroville Dam’s main spillway, the dam itself is structurally sound.
“Believe me, in the last several days there have been a lot of eyes on it,” said Bill Croyle, acting director of the California Department of Water Resources. “Oroville Dam is not in any way a part of the damage that occurred.”
I saw a clip from a helicopter view this morning. Not far downstream is another dam with gates, which diverts water to the west, towards what appears to be a giant man-made holding pond. I’m sure that thing is getting full. And the diversion dam...looked about to get over-topped. That was this morning - who knows how bad that got during the night.
Then they showed the town of Oroville. The water still had around 15 feet before if took out the bridges, but the river was either way up on its banks, or even out of it. Who knows what happens when the land flattens out further downstream.
I’ve designed a few (much, nuch smaller) dams, and know a little about hydrology. The thing that struck me was the massive water surface ‘jump’ immediately downstream of where the spillway structure met the flume. I think this is what ripped apart the east sidewall of the flume and caused the water to rip at the flume from the side - and that is what caused the void...but the initial failure was the sidewall falling apart. The stuff people are talking about with rapid draw down or fill up usually deals with the water side of the reservoir - not the dry side of the dam.
In 1961 (when they designed the dam), predicting that jump would have been a paper exercise...and you could probably get whatever answer you wanted. I’m amazed that sometime in the last 50 years, the spillway flume was never re-modeled using computers, etc.
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