Scofflaw!!
Posted on 02/14/2017 4:05:52 PM PST by CedarDave
Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure.
Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of Google, Hollywood, and Napa Valley wineries.
California’s politicians and pundits in recent years of drought swore the state was entering a cycle of permanent drought (and thus saw no need to start construction on a single dam to store the rain and snow that supposedly would not return). Instead, they warned of the “settled science” of climate change and the need for permanent conservation and restrictions—even as near record storms this year have pushed California’s snow and rain levels in many places to over 200 percent of normal, well beyond the ability of our now ossified water projects to store the deluge that heads out to sea.
Oroville, along with its twin Shasta dam, anchors California's vast water transfer system, the largest and most ingeniously designed in the world. But Oroville’s half-century-old and now damaged spillways were in dire need of maintenance, especially given that auxiliary dams in the region envisioned to alleviate the pressure on Oroville were long ago cancelled. Indeed, the entire California Water Project and federal Central Valley Project were never finished, even as California’s population more than doubled.
After the early 1980s, the state’s politicians and courts decided that dams, as one critic put it, were “a relic of the Industrial Age, a brute-force solution to water scarcity.” They forget that they had been a staple of civilization since the Mycenaean Greeks built them to ward off flood and drought.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I can’t wait to leave California and move to America.
50,000 cfm is no where close to the maximum rate quoted of 150,000cfm at the time the spillway cratered. If the flow was able to jump across the side barriers of the spillway with no prior defect and well below the maximum rated discharge, what you’ve described sounds like a design flaw.
Inspection reports reference water movement over time eroding underneath the spillway, leading up to a repair in 2013. Is this what you are referring to?
Then, in the '50s or '60s, they decided to start offering free stuff (like college) to lure more folks there - and got what one would expect when the draw is free stuff....
Oh?
I've heard the dam is fine; but the spillways are in deep doodoo!
Don’t worry.. there is another Trillion dollars in “infrastructure spending” stimulus on the way. I suspect the dems didn’t give any funds to Nor Cal.
No, but it should have been. I was wrong about it not being a maintenance problem.
I said many were confused, and I was one of them apparently.
Since yesterday, I found out that trees were growing ON the spillway (which had previously never been used). When the spillway water went over them, it tore them out, likely by the roots. This would leave large holes and lead to massive erosion. Which it did.
So, it was likely both things; lack of maintenance and gambling on how much water to keep in the lake to try and get it 'full'.
The latest picture that GoogleEarth® has is 1/23/2016.
It shows NO trees on the spillway.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5407962,-121.4938414,569m/data=!3m1!1e3
Wouldn’t it be funny to send them all back in time to, say, the pre-steam 18th century?
Not having a good day, am I ?
The tree were growing on the emergency spillway.
Seems like I would be better off to just watch and keep my mouth shut.
Here is a link to several videos showing the area in and around the spillways.
Videos are listed on right side of page. Some are short, 3 min. or so others longer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7EPKIrdNgI&feature=youtu.be
Here is a link to an IMGRU page showing a few good photos of the area, etc.
http://imgur.com/gallery/qbWbS
yeah... LOTS of them it seems!
How on earth could ANYONE think that a dirt hillside would hold up under a FLOOD??
Sir, I was not looking forward to the “death and destruction” of anybody! That comment is inane.
In case you haven’t noticed, the vast majority of freepers are against personal attacks and name calling.
My over-arching point remains. A majority of Californians, over recent decades, have voted themselves an all democrat government that wastes billions on everything but infrastructure, Now, their lead flunky is asking Trump and the rest of us to bail out this Liberal Government. Some of us are inclined to tell California Liberals to go pound sand.
Not wanting to get into a pissing contest but you wrote:
I suspect 90% of the people heading south with their pets and kids and pictures and a half tank of gas voted for a liberal moron who in turn voted with the rest of the herd to give the money meant for the dam to loud mouth illegal Mexicans led by LaRaza.
Liberals ONLY learn by brute force! The water behind that dam will be some unparalleled brute force if that dam breaks.
Taking our two comments. 1) 90% pf people evacuating voted for a liberal moron.
statement 2: reads, only liberal morons understand brute force and with the dam breaking a brute force of water will e released.
Dirt and concrete are MUCH cheaper!
Sir, you MAY have a point but it got blown away with your name calling and insults.
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