I suspect that somewhere between what he says and what they say lies the truth. It’s easy to discern that they have something to hide beyond the “critical infrastructure”, given the years of issues that have been appearing since this event began. Time will tell if they’re being less than honest and hiding behind the designation or not.
I like what Juan’s been doing so far, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here for now.
Chico-ER also has noted a history of other issues where they cannot get straight answers.
DWR again proved to be "politics first" in their answer to a photograph showing the initial cavitation damage at a seam spall at the blowout failure.
In watching a long interview with the editor describing all of these incidents & seeing the DWR responses in the news, there is a true history of distrust with DWR.
First and foremost, the Engineering responsibilities on the Dam is in a space where there are no excuses. There must be demonstrated responsibility, accountability, and honesty. I noticed a "change" when the FERC recommended experts entered the equation. The first public "correction" occurred directly from the BOC experts engineering statement(s) that blew up DWR's position/statement on a key engineering point.
Being in failure analysis for 30 years as a consultant/engineer/scientist to go in and fix the problems at major corporations that the top scientists/engineers couldn't, you immediately recognize any "politics" at play as the truth of science/engineering/physics you cannot hide. In trying it eventually reveals any culture of incompetency, poor engineering judgement, or outright machiavellian intent.
I've seen the "cut" editing points in the DWR drone videos, I know what I'm looking for. You can figure out what they don't want to be seen.
To me, the warnings of Stagnation Pressure Failures were in the dam specialist expert community with papers & magazines publishing this information including expert tools to analyze if a spillway is at risk of exploding (water penetration, volume, surface area, cracks, seams, flow rate, anchor strength, etc). Yet DWR had the audacity to say (paraphrasing) "when we find out the failure cause we will let the rest of the world know so they could benefit from our findings". Horse puckey. They know right now (cause). For them to imply that this is something all of the dam experts in the world haven't run across is delusional.
The timing of them filing the CEII precisely 2 days before the next damaging BOC report was to be made public defies probabilistic odds. If they were told to do this inspection by the experts, why isn't this data in the expert's report? (the 4.26MB vs 1/2kB file sizes reveal that the BOC report does not contain a fraction of the CEII filing report).
Water is escaping the upper chute so badly that it is saturating the hillsides - that is why the BOC was stunned in saying "this should be investigated" when waterflow continued out of the drains after the gates were closed. The only answer is that there is a saturated "basin" in the chute hillsides - reflowing back to the lowest point (drains). Water is going everywhere.
No, I firmly believe DWR does not want all of the dirty laundry exposed. The only hope is that they are now under scrutiny by FERC through the board of consultants. However, the lives of the public below the dam are not getting the truth. This is unconscionable.