Posted on 03/09/2019 11:46:55 AM PST by abb
Millions of Californians could end up with higher water bills after the Trump administration on Friday announced that federal emergency officials arent going to reimburse the state for $306 million in repairs to Oroville Dam stemming from the 2017 spillway crisis.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said federal taxpayers shouldnt have to pay for problems that existed prior to a massive hole forming in the dams concrete spillway in February 2017, eventually prompting the two-day evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents and a $1.1 billion emergency response and repair job.
Oroville Dam the nations tallest is operated by a state agency, but it was built and maintained using funds from agricultural and urban water agencies that store water at Lake Oroville, such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.Metropolitan supplies water to more than 19 million people, whose water bills could rise if the federal government decides not to pay. In total, Oroville Dam water for 27 million Californians.
Since the 2017 crisis, the state and water contractors such as Metropolitan had hoped the federal government would cover up to 75 percent of the repair costs. So far, the federal government has only agreed to pay about a third of the total bill.
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(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
ha! I bet that evil damn is killing some innocent insects anyway!
it should probably be torn down to save the planet!
...
/s
The mandated wage rate tax payers pay for a common laborer in California is about $54.00 an hour !
https://www.dir.ca.gov/OPRL/2019-1/PWD/Determinations/Northern/NC-023-102-1.pdf
Why should tax payers from other states have to subsidize those costs ?
CA should take it out of the money the got from the gov’t for the train they won’t build and not give back.
You sound like you’re joking, but there
has been a movement to eliminate dams
afoot for a long time.
Brown said the state has a 35 billion dollar surplus. So.....why borrow money you don’t need?
Maybe their water and sewer bills will reach the price we pay in Cincinnati...astronomical...
Did you just spend all your money on a worthless Choo Choo?
All aboard the fail train...toot toot!
I remember this very clearly
they panicked over nothing and then blew a bunch of money and it didnt do anything to save that giant earthen dam
it was all a giant California boondoggle not worth anywhere near 300 million
Trump is right on this one
Another one are great and wonderful President Trump is right for CA - on forest management
yes.
But I like to point out the hypocracy of liberals. They simultaniously demand the federal government pay to fix their dam, while complaining that dams should be torn down. The same with taxes.. liberals are ALWAYS saying the rich should pay more in taxes... but then complain about tax changes this year which resulted in the rich people with very very expensive homes paying higher taxes! um.. you would THINK liberals would be happy they are finally paying the higher taxes they claimed they wanted!
Trump owes NO FAVORS to states that voted for Hillary. Screw the blue states.
Since the 2017 crisis, the state and water contractors such as Metropolitan had hoped the federal government would cover up to 75 percent of the repair costs. So far, the federal government has only agreed to pay about a third of the total bill.
Some time in the next 45 years or so there’s going to be nothing the dams can do about flooding in the Central Valley.
But water bills are going to rise anyway.
The dam was built and run by the state of CA. It isn’t a federal problem. Let CA tax dollars pay for it.
This is great news. California had years to fix their dam spillway problems and do routine maintenance and they did nothing. When it failed during a rainy period, “unexpected” by them because they choose to believe in the Global Warming religion, they want US taxpayers to pick up the bill.
Sorry, California taxpayers should pay for this. It was only an emergency because they chose to spend their money on other things. Too bad.
What many probably don’t know is the “Prevailing Wage Rates” in many other states are very similar in over the top and that only tells half of the cost story.
Let’s take a Group 1 Laborer working to cut and drill on the spillway repair. This is hard dirty work and he gets a base wage of 31.01 before taxes. Granted his benefits that the employer pays the Union bring his hourly cost to 54.96 but that is hardly the end of the cost to the employers. If he works 42 weeks a year, that’s about $52,096 before taxes which are about 8% higher in CA than the average, so he takes home about 68% of that — say $35,425 after taxes or an average of $2952 take home a month after taxes. I use 42 to indicate that construction is always stop-start and seasonal Many guys work more weeks than 42 but there are many that work less.
Now let’s go back and also look at what is referred to a Labor Burden or Payroll, Taxes and Insurance on that total base cost to employer. To that $54.96 is added the Employer’s cost for Social Security Contribution, Unemployment Insurance Cost, Work Compensation Cost and similar direct cost against each hour’s labor. I know this will surprise many people but that cost is a variable running from 40% to 80% of the base wage. For a common laborer doing demo on a Damn repair in central CA I would guess that its about 48% or 14.88 per hour on top of the base wage of 31.01 plus the Benefits. So to the Base wage and Benefits total of 54.96 you have to add 14.88 to get the true raw COST to the demolition subcontractor. As the sub will mark up that wage by 10% on commercial work and the General contractor’s mark-up will be about 4.5% for this type of work, the Owner is paying about $80.26 for that one hour of demolition labor, not the 54 you mention and in all states it can be nearly as high.
This is a quick down and dirty guesstimate but I have run projects of over 50 million in many locations including central California and spent the last thirty years competing with top 50 Contractors like Kiewit who did the dam repair.
see my #57
Jerry Brown's legacy?
Ummm, let's see...
1. Oroville Dam neglect and resultant near failure.
2. (cough, cough) High Speed Rail, grand theft based upon stacks and stacks of horrible lies.
3. Illegal alien invasion, and resultant housing crisis (that's a big part of it, one suspects), crime, drugs, and disease (Hep a and c, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, scabies, and probably much more)
4. a land-rush OUT of the once-golden state,
5. solving prison over-crowding by letting the baddies out, and just not charging them when they do commit crimes
6. a school system that isn't even third world
7. using millions of taxpayer funds to combat global climate whatever
8. add more in space below...
.
.
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