Its performing “fine” because they haven’t been running it anywhere near the maximum flow its supposed to be able to handle.
I believe it is performing fine - for now. It is brand new, smooth. Wait a few years, toss in some neglect because CA has all those other higher priorities like taking care of illegals and cleaning human feces, drug paraphernalia off the streets, sex ed for preschoolers, etc. When there are imperfections and discontinuities...then they start flowing some serious water... That’s when the low pressure cavitation starts, hammers the structure, starts breaking up concrete. Then there will be a lot of finger pointing at the designer, the contractor, maintenance, politicians... Who knows, maybe next time there will be a catastrophic failure. I’m fairly certain there will be some kind of serious issue with the dam or spillway within my lifetime.
Alleged 'governor' Jerry Brown's legacy is the once-and-former (ha ha) High Speed Rail at the expense of legitimate public safety projects such as maintenance of the Oroville Dam spillway.
As bad as the 'bullet train' was (and it's beyond horrible), please consider (and IIRC) Mister Brown's VETO of a bipartisan bill to thin the massive forest fuel overgrowth, including the area of Paradise in which a subsequent 2018 wildfire claimed 85 (eighty five) wonderful, innocent, trusting people were burned alive.
Mister Brown has expressed zero remorse or conscience issues about the horrific result of his veto.
I think the feather river below will only allow for about half the flow the spillway was designed for anyway.
They have operated it at high flows - performed just fine. This nut job is just doom porn.