Please excuse as I Opine
Sure enough, DWR has a new PR tact to the revelation of a 78 page Expert's Spillway Failure Prelim Report. Responding by Email to SacBee, DWR's spokesperson is downplaying -almost "dismissing"- the key facts of "original design drawings", as a part of Robert Bea's report. Ignored by DWR, is the tremendous supporting evidence of a huge volume of the forensic photographs & his insightful engineering analysis. This new PR messaging tact is very similar to a technique called "FUD" - whereby a messaging strategy of "Fear Uncertainty Doubt" is engaged in an attempt to neutralize a "spot on analysis". DWR is effectively trying to cast dispersions of "uncertainty" & "doubt" on the report by claiming DWR has access to the true forensic facts, evidence, and other information, just "ignore" the report's use of "original design drawings", as DWR has "better information".
"Never mind, that there are over 5 linear miles of cracks in the entire spillway from nearly every single drain line run .Don't believe that these cracks are observable from outer space via satellite images . Ignore the photographs of all the patching on these miles of cracks . Don't look at the slab that fractured precisely at a drain line run left open for the world to see in DWR's own photographic evidence... Forget about the "jetting" & gushing sidewall drains where large volumes of damaging erosive underflow occurred under the spillway slabs . Don't listen to Dam Safety Experts who have been sounding warnings & alarms to dam owners for years about "hydraulic jacking" from Stagnation Pressure... Forget that our own DWR photos reveal the dangerous Stagnation Pressure issue in spades . Forget about the turbulent brown water erosion of the eroded & weathered rock & substrate images as the spillway was dying . You are "seeing things" if you see some of the drains not working .Who are you going to believe? . Us (DWR) or your lying eyes (the mountain of report's photographic evidence)? . [after all, the report had the audacity to show original design drawings that just so happen to match the report's 70+ pages' mountain of photographic evidence.]"
Deny, Deflect, FUD, Deny. How about a new PR tactic? Come clean it's called honesty .. End of "Opine".
= = DWR's response: SacBee article: (emphasis mine): The forensics analysis team is reviewing thousands of documents and recent geotechnical information taken from the spillway, Mellon said in an email. They will base their analysis not on original design drawings but on actual construction there is a difference and all of the facts, which are being collected and evaluated. We look forward to the teams final report, which will be made public.
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== SacBee & Robert Bea's comments: (emphasis mine): "Beas 78-page report, which he has shared with The Sacramento Bee and other media outlets, says the spillway was undermined by a variety of factors, including thin concrete, the presence of soils and incompetent rock below the concrete and evidence of water undermining that material. Beas findings dovetailed with the conclusions made last month by four consultants advising the state on Orovilles repairs. Subsequent reports by those consultants have been sealed, along with several other documents connected to the Oroville recovery effort. Bea said hes troubled that federal and state officials are citing terrorism concerns to block access to these reports. Greater third-party scrutiny could help guide the $275 million repair job at Oroville and point to flaws in other dams, he said. In essence, their fear for security is something that was largely built up in their own minds as a defensive measure, said Bea, a retired engineer whose credentials include conducting an independent investigation into why the levees around New Orleans failed in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina.
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Expert performed autopsy on Oroville spillway collapse. Heres what he found.
Robert Bea & the Center of Catastrophic Risk Analysis (CCRA) is performing a notable public service in their work & including sharing information & time with the media. I believe there will be political "heat" brought to bear on CCRA as this is a direct threat to leadership all of the way to the top in the CA Governorship. Since the US taxpayer may be on the hook for these disaster mitigating costs, this story needs to get national attention, especially to the US public.
Wow, I think we all collectively owe a debt of gratitude to EarthResearcher and other members of this forum who have collectively brought these dam issues to light! With the mainstream media now openly publishing Professor Beas report, it looks like the cats finally out of the bag.
Prof Bea appears to use many of the same pictures, diagrams, and assessments that were brought up in this forum and at Metabunk. Perhaps great minds think alike, with the rest of us just in awe. Beas report is light on techno-babble and heavy on pictures, so it appears configured for direct public consumption.
I had a buddy who was a infamous EECS professor at Berkeley. He got offered 50% more to move east to the Ivy League, but didnt take it. I asked him: what motivates UCB Professors? Not money, not fame, but impact. I think Beas report was written for maximum public impact.
His paper, like much of EarthReaserchers assessments, calls heavily on DWRs own dam reports. It will be difficult for DWR to publicly claim: hey, we dont know how this happened, when their own (now openly published) reports say otherwise in a publicly consumable format. Their next press conference may not be so cordial. If the press catches on to FCO, Hyatt, and Dam issues as well - things could get testy.
Since there were dam field engineers who recently worked on the spillway repair, one must assume they were aware of the issues. How could you look at the volume of water spurting out those drains, and not wonder: is that healthy? But these issues were most probably grandfathered in when they got hired, and they were probably told that the politics were way too FUBAR to change them.
So, thinking back to when I was a Junior Civil Engineer, eager to change the world, how would one go about it? Assuming that GPR and bore-hole camera inspection were not included in the HQ configured contract, what Q&D field test could be done assess if the drains were actually repaired functionally?
A simple minded field test would be to just fill the upstream drain vent tube with water. If it immediately came down the sidewall nozzle, then the subsurface horizontal drain tube must be OK. If it half filled, and then slowed down, youd know there was a clog, and approximately where. If you poured in huge volumes of water, youd know that the side drains had large under-slab voids. If you plugged the output port, creating a backup head, the water would either migrate to an adjacent drain, or perk up as wet spots through cracks in the slab. This could help identify unknown slab fissures, and/or validate various sealing efforts. This doesnt require any extensive technology, and could have been done 50 years ago.
Question to EarthReasercher and other informed experts: why not just do simple pressure tests of spillway drains? Couldnt they do this for the remaining spillway and/or new construction? Wouldnt the volume/flowrates they get help validate their GPR and borehole camera based subslab flow modeling?
For the new spillway construction, and even for the sections of the old spillway that they dont have time to replace, it would seem useful to place pressure and flow meters in each output nozzle. These could sense relative changes in flow, and perhaps turbidity, before they became visually apparent. Id go with bluetooth enabled adriunos, which could run for a year or so off batteries, and would be simpler, cheaper, and more real-time than monitoring by camera alone.
For the new sections of spillway, wouldnt it be worthwhile to include a bunch of embedded sensors, say pressure, flow, turbidity, temperature, and perhaps others? Many would undoubtedly fail over 50-100 years, but one could either put in a lot of redundancy, or make them accessible via access tubes for upgrade/replacement.
Are new dam installations configured for the Internet of Things? The time to add something like would be before construction begins. Sensing problems before they happen is much easier/cheaper than repairing them afterword. DWR might soon be more susceptible to informed outside input.
That's how coaches and organizations build losing sports franchises. Here it could be the key to catastrophe.