Sometimes you find yourself where you are. Historically the lake level, over 50 years, has been controllable with the regular draw down and the primary spillway. I believe that they didn’t draw down enough in late January when the storm tracks developed in the current pattern. Water greed. Here in Reno we received our total year’s precip in January and the water masters here were relieving reservoirs, in earnest, by the end of the month.
I agree for the most part, but that strategy would have been fine without spillway damage... shutting the spillway in the middle of the heaviest sustained rain of the season got them on the wrong side of the curve... if they could have run 100k CFS throughout the last big storm (which would have been pretty standard given the inflow rates), they’d have been fine. If anything, this is a call to review procedures at all dams to better prepare for failures at the worst possible time... analyze the reliability of redundancies and verify their performance if necessary and prudent. The procedures in place are assuming proper maintenance and operating condition... lacking that, the status quo has significant risk.