Posted on 03/04/2017 8:44:51 AM PST by WayneLusvardi
“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt” – Mark Twain
“Consider a narrow river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a considerable distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam’s bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam.
Surprisingly, though … the concern falls off to zero as you approach closer to the dam! That is, the people living immediately under the dam, the ones most certain to be drowned in a dam burst, profess unconcern. That’s because of psychological denial: the only way to preserve one’s sanity while looking up everyday at the dam is to deny the possibility that it could burst.”
– Jared Diamond, “Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed”
“Seems it never rains in Southern California / Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before / It never rains in California, but girl don’t they warn ya? / It pours, man, it pours” – Song lyrics by Albert Hammond, 1972.
The recent near catastrophic failure of the spillways at Oroville Dam in California is more than a story of unpreventable “stuff happens”, as explained by Gov. Jerry Brown. To the contrary, Oroville is an apt metaphor and symbol for California government that continues to be in denial about its dysfunctional water and energy infrastructure policies and priorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at masterresource.org ...
Democrats are in complete control of California government. All constitutional statewide elected officials are Democrats, from governor on down. The Democrats have a 2/3 majority in both state Senate and state Assembly.
And since the enviro extreme types have such pull on all these Democrats, objections about hurting the snail darter or delta smelt, will override any ideas of new dams or water storage. To the extent that government approval or oversight is needed on such projects, it’s quite likely they just won’t happen, because the political will among Democrats isn’t there to do anything.
Maybe they need to build an upstream dam to act as a capacitor for inflow regulation to Oroville (as the water storage facility).
NO. It won’t spark a spate of new dam building. Whatever has to be fixed on this one will be paid for by taxpayers just like all the other bad things that happens which government in California always screws up because they are Democrats.
They will blame, tax and keep on spending, and California can expect billions and billions more on a train that nobody wants, needs, and going nowhere. Democrats in action.
Why does the MSM always want something that didn't happen to appear as though it did...almost. It is just to sell papers?
LA needs to be limited to water from its watershed and whatever they can desalinize from the ocean. THAT would be sustainable and ecologically sound.
No dams!
I want to watch the Spotted Owls swim upstream to spawn!
If these fish need a place to spawn, then I say we dump some old cars into the river and they can spawn in the backseat like high school kids do.
Where’s the poll asking California citizens / occupiers whether they would rather have water or a high speed train?
***That’s because of psychological denial:***
Reminds me of Katrina when so many of the people, when told to leave New Orleans, chose to stay.
As one person said..
“It’s always gon round befoa, and we thought dis one would jes go around too!”
But it didn’t.
No place to build an upstream dam but there are two downstream facilities that do the same thing. One is the Thermalito Afterbay and the other is Don Pedro Dam. Oroville serves as the upstream capacitor for the lower dams.
They really need to put up a small flood control dam on the Consumes River south of Sacramento, CA. Every time we have above normal rains, the Consumes River overflows and causes a lot of damage.
California will have to go the way of United Airlines. Eliminate the pension system and give one half to those already retired. Retired cops? Tough to swallow.
Debasement is right down the stairs.
Don’t forget that it isn’t just about snail
darters and smelt. The enviro whack jobs also get their
panties in a twist over the loss of squirrel
and other animal habitat, not to mention
spawning possibilities for salmon. In addition,
more dams mean more recreation opportunities
for masses of evil humans who don’t happen to
be fellow enviro whack jobs.
I'm not sure where the connection to send water to LA is.
The Feather River channel through Oroville is apparently well below a 100K cfs release.
The most recent significant event had a ~250k cfs inflow to Oroville. If they want to store max. water in Oroville, they need to have, perhaps, multiple structures upstream to keep the inflow within the outflow capability over a day or two.
Not sure what happens during Spring melt.
There will never be a poll like that because everyone knows the answer.
At the very least, they’re going to build a new spillway.
It could still fail if a big warm storm coms through and melts a bunch of the record snow pack.
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