Posted on 02/13/2017 7:30:57 PM PST by WilliamIII
California Gov. Jerry Brown, appealing to the Trump administration for direct federal assistance on the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway, said Monday that he remains encouraged that the state and federal government can work constructively.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
In all this discussion, the point that is lost is that no amount of money can solve the immediate problem of the dam in short enough order.
What exactly does Brown want declared an emergency valued at $142 million, or whatever it was.
If and when the spillway(s) goes, the damage costs will make his request look like piggy bank stuff.
My theory is that he is just trolling Trump at this point.
Tell them the Secretary of the Interior will get to it after confirmation.
Am mulling the options regarding the radiator.
How many years too late, Governor Brown?
Your failure to plan, Moonbeam, should not be America’s emergency.
The feds don’t have any money either after Obama! The USA is totally broke and in the hole by 20 trillion plus.
You’ve described in stark detail how desperate people are right this minute. I agree the evacuation was required by the events so how can you and others be helped? What are people doing without their medicines or without food? Or money or gas?
Somewhere (now I can’t relocate the darn article!) DWR people said the flow over the emergency spillway only reached about 12,600 cfs, when it is supposedly able to handle 250,000 cfs. They also claimed the lower flow would do more damage than a greater flow.
The explanations don’t, however, hold water. The once proposed gates for the emergency spillway were never built, therefor, in order to get to the higher flow rate, the lake would gradually rise and the flow would pass through that 12,000 cfs region, perhaps VERY gradually depending on what else was going on. Most likely, you’d get the damage we see, and then if the water ever did get to 250,000 cfs, it’d take out what remained quickly.
Sadly, what DWR is really doing is trying to bamboozle people away from the real issues of bad planning, questionable construction (of the emergency spillway) and worst of all, poor maintenance of the two spillways. If it’s not concrete, one at least wants an emergency spillway apron to be well-sodded grass. Instead, trees were still being cleared off it, almost up to the point it went into operation.
250,000 cfs, BTW, is an enormous amount of water, nearly equal to the average flow of the Ohio River @ Cairo, IL. (Ok, that’s a trickle compared to the Amazon River, but, still, 250,000 cfs is a LOT of water.)
That 100,000 plus cfs coming down the main spillway is nothing to sneeze at, either. If I have calculated & assumed correctly, the power available in the “drop” is in the neighborhood of 5,000 megawatts.
For comparison, the maximum propulsion of a modern “supercarrier” is somewhere around 200 megawatts.
I also read an article that said “slurry” (concrete) will be added to the rock fill, to solidify the fill. That may help a little, but if one has ever watched water erosion in progress, they know the water will simply find a new spot to carve out.
No Jerry, You are not doing everything you can to prevent the Oroville Dam from collapsing.
The only thing you could do that would be even a little bit effective is to die so that someone else, who might be just a little bit saner and competent could take over the prevention effort.
Otherwise, Moonbeam, STFU.
Sounds bad, so what is your plan?
You ask some good questions of which there are no real answers at the moment. As for folks in shelters, the question of medicines are being dealt with with doctors and nurses and pharmacies filling orders. As for us still in the foothills, that is a different situation.
Quite frankly, I think the situation might be very well worse than they are letting on.
Oroville is not an upward community. We are not rich, nor elite. Peons and peasants probably best describes us. Some of us might be better peons than others, but peons just the same.
I thought California wanted to split from the USA
Will you need help getting supplies? Is there a communication system that locals can still access?
I found this online - not sure if it is accurate, but it would not surprise me:
Estimated 2015 expenditures
Estimated state spending, California, FY 2015 ($ in millions)
State funds: $158,996 $93,554
Federal funds: $93,554
Sorry I can’t get the link to post - that page keeps locking up on me.
I would not jump to conclusions about the original designers and builders of Oroville dam. 50 years of drought and wet years it did its job. But I agree that the sooner researchers capture historical data before it's deleted is essential to laying blame where I suspect it ought to be.
I did not mean to impugn the original designers / builders. MOST engineers in the US are responsible types. I think it is VERY likely the soils info. is available.
THIS situation is almost certainly more a problem of poor maintenance, planning, and “CYA’ism”, than defects in the original design. Grass overflow spillways can work fine, at least for a while, IF properly maintained.
Doing everything you can governor? Are you praying?
Seems like something like this happened under another Democratic controlled state where they didn’t prepare for a disaster, left their levee system in disrepair.
Oh, yeah, Hurricane Katrina!
Did a bit of research on DWR site. Head of it appointed 1 month ago. Also, from the top brass bios, most have Bachelor degrees. Not too impressive. Lots of manhours for them spent on the Delta project (ecology stuff). Will try to go back in time.
Reuters, from Drudge tonight, reports that environmental groups tried to lobby for repaairs at dam. Something amiss in this report. Does not make sense.
I think I finally figured out a USE for Jerry Brown: use him to plug the hole in the dam.
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