Posted on 01/11/2018 9:52:11 AM PST by bkopto
California’s Department of Water Resources was blasted in an independent report for having a culture of complacency and incompetence that contributed to last year’s near-disaster at Oroville Dam.
The full 584 page independent forensic team report is here.
The agency’s largest water storage site and the nation’s tallest dam at Lake Oroville fell into disrepair. In February, pounding rain and large water releases caused the reservoir’s spillway to collapse. A back-up spillway also failed. Fears that water would pour uncontrollably downstream prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.
The independent panel of safety experts said the dam was badly built from the start in the 1960s. The principal designer of the spillway told the dam-safety team that he had just completed post-graduate work at the time he worked on the Oroville project decades ago, had had no previous engineering employment beyond two summer stints, and had never designed a spillway before.
Fifty years of incompetence and complancency
The seriousness of the weak as-constructed conditions and lack of repair durability was not recognized during numerous inspections and review processes over the almost 50-year history of the project. Over time, chute flows and temperature variations led to progressive deterioration of the concrete and corrosion of steel reinforcing bars and anchors, with likely loss of slab strength and anchor capacity. There was likely also some shallow underslab erosion and some loss of underdrain system effectiveness, which contributed to increased slab uplift forces. The particularly poor foundation conditions at the initial service spillway chute failure location contributed to likely low anchor capacity and shallow underslab erosion.
(Excerpt) Read more at nextbigfuture.com ...
These are the same CA gov employees who get hundreds of thousand of dollars of guaranteed retirement pay but whom are absolved of any personal legal responsibility and accountability for their mistakes.
No name?
How many more are there out there?....................
Geez, the blame is on his supervisors.
7 years to build a wall. Time, money, consequence, urgency are all concepts that are invisible to the bureaucrat and politician.
Manana is their favorite word.
I heard that woman that is now secretary of homeland security yesterday say, after Trump told her to please not say she estimates it will take 7 years to build a wall, “we can only do our best. we will try.” I’d fire her scrawny ass so fast it would make her head spin.
Initial bid for the repairs was approx. $ 250 M, the actual costs paid to date exceed $ 550 K - Moonbeam failed to mention this in his recent address.
About a decade ago, a book came out by a California math teacher who came to admit....somewhere in his late 30’s...that he couldn’t read.
His story was simple. He grew up in the 50s/60s...decent high school baseball player...simply got passed every single year but could not read. Graduated high school and was offered a baseball scholarship at a college. Accepted, and mostly all math courses, which he had some knack for understanding. Graduated college, and then got a job with the state teaching math for high school kids.
For over a decade, he made it through the system and someone finally realized his problem and got him into a reading course for adults.
My guess is that there are hundreds like him, and the system allows them to get hired and no one goes back to ask questions.
There were many opportunities to intervene and prevent the incident, but the overall system of interconnected factors operated in a way that these opportunities were missed.
Translation. For 50 years, no one bothered to *actually* inspect the dam. They just phoned in the reports.
"just completed post-graduate work at the time he worked on the Oroville project"
There was a difference (even back then) between a grad student and a person who had "completed post-graduate work"!
Of more concern are the Report's statements:
The same source reported to the IFT that this engineer’s design work was not overseen or directed by any engineer within DWR who was experienced in design of spillways.There were FUBARs all over the place.
It was also reported that there no significant literature review or comparison with the designs of other large chute spillways built in the years and decades prior to the construction of Oroville Dam.
Another contributing factor to the design vulnerabilities is that there was an apparent lack of communication between the designer(s) and geologists during the design.
It appears that the DWR construction team was making decisions regarding chute design and construction without any significant consultation with the principal spillway designer.
Actually...
A grad student that designed a dam spillway that lasted almost 60 FREAKING YEARS deserves an A++++++++
Bet that post-graduate student didn’t let anyone in his family build their homes down-stream from the dam!
It lasted over 50 years, what more do they want?
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>> There was a difference (even back then) between a grad student and a person who had “completed post-graduate work”! <<
Irrelevent!
The only thing to look at in any engineering applicant is time on the job!
You cannot learn the practical elements of engineering from any “professor!”
You can plug the holes in their formal education in a short time in the real environment, but experience cannot be faked!
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It sat unused for half a century, but it didn’t last even a few hours when it had to be used.
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I went to HS in the 70’s with a guy like this. Athletic, lettered in FB, wrestling and baseball. Got a special award at graduation because he literally never missed a day of school in 12 years. Went to college and became a phys-ed teacher and returned to his home town school to coach.
Married a former cheer leader who helped him learn to read and go public with his story
He was a really great, smart, energetic guy. I always think that if he had actually learned to read in grade school, he would have been a major mover and shaker in the business world because he went pretty damn far on just personality and perseverance alone.
Skimped on the concrete because “less is more”...
As a bare minimum, this grad student should have been under the direct supervision of a licensed professional engineer. The PE would have been obligated to check his work, especially since the PE’s stamp would be going on the drawings.
In civil engineering, the involvement of a licensed professional engineer is universal practice. If no PE was involved, then there is a serious liability problem.
Then again (help me out, California PE’s), was there a time when one could get a California PE license without taking an exam?
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The blame in any design environment falls on the guy with his initials in the “Checked BY” box!
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“Less is more”
Very good!
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>> “If no PE was involved, then there is a serious liability problem.” <<
Unless it was the government. The rules don’t apply to them, literally!
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