[lacrew]

The reporting on this has been criminally bad.

There are two spillways, and the media seems to have been referencing them interchangeably, causing much confusion.

As far as I can tell, the concrete, or primary, spillway is the one that initially had a hole form in it.

So, they shut it down and let the water fill and overtop the emergency (often called auxillary in the reporting too) spillway. This spillway appears to consist of a 30 ft tall concrete wall, and discharges to an earthen channel.

Well, when this was overtopped, it was chaos because it started ripping the ground apart...and the real concern is that this concrete wall could get undercut, allowing a 30 ft tall wall of water to blast through.

So, when the media says “The spillway has a hole in it and could fail”, they are conflating the two spillways.

The dam operators have decided that the hole in the concrete spillway is really not a danger to the dam, and letting that rip - and that is what we see in this video. It looks awful, but it seems to have carved a nice channel down to the rock, and isn’t hurting anything.

Now, if it rains again, and again goes over the emergency spillway...which could blow out all at once, well then they’re in trouble again.

But for now, the dam operators appear to be honest - the emergency spillway is dry again. And, as always, reporters have shown themselves to be idiots in their reporting.

[txhurl]

Criminally bad! Are the evacuees allowed to come back yet?

[txhurl]

Criminally bad! Are the evacuees allowed to come back yet?

[Lady Heron]

That is because that emergency or auxiliary spillway was to close to the dam and goes down a hill, not spread out to a flat areas to then go down hill at a much slower rate well away from the dam, thus cutting into the foundation. They also built a parking lot next to it that was lower than the emergency spillway which has cut into its wall.

They knew this whole thing needed redoing and shoring up, years and years ago as dam engineering got better, but did not spend money here which is criminal.