The next clue comes from the early days of the dam operation. Something unusual develops. Large areas of Zone 3 fill become "saturated" on the backside of the dam. Even more unusual is that this large "saturation" occurs in two locations. The locations are near perfectly symmetrical adjacent to the center toe axis if the dam. The square surface area of the Zone 3 fill saturated hillside is equal to or larger than the square foot surface area of the "Erosion Channels" today. Where did this water come from? After all, in the perfect dam design, any water from the reservoir that seeps its way through the Core and Transition zones would/should be captured in the vertical "Drain Zone" chimney and out the "Drain Zone" in the bottom of the dam. There should not be a "saturation" of the Zone 3 fill, especially at the surface.
Could rainfall have caused these the large areas of "saturation"? If rainfall were to be the "original" cause, the Zone 3 fill in these areas would have to have been non-pervious with a high degree of silts, soils, or clayey material such that the designed percolation was ineffective or defective. Thus, a heavy rainfall would soak the surface and would not percolate beneath the surface as the silts, soils, or clayey mix would "hold" the water. The original imaging reveals that greening occurred in these large saturated areas. With a non-pervious deposition of moisture retentive silts, soils or clayey material base, and a saturated (water) source, vegetative growth has what it needs. These were the first "Green Wet Areas" on the dam.**
So the question becomes, what came first? The Dirt or the Saturation?
If the Dirt was there first, it had to have been from construction. But how could all those computers controlling the automated conveyor belt system's sand mix rate, to the Zone 3 fill, could have added silts, or soils, or clayey material? Bad programming? Bad Computer? And how did this computer know to do this in a perfectly symmetrical arrangement to form "twin" regions? Or was it from construction error? If so, did drivers of the load dumpers mistakenly take material from the giant fill "dump hopper" to Zone 3 fill instead of the Transition Zone (contains silts) or the Core (contains clays & silts, & clayey soil)? If they did, it had to be perfectly aligned errors to make these "twin regions". The odds of any of these conditions seem far remote, in fact they would say to defy probability.
The "other" wild supposition is - did rain somehow cause "dirt" to be brought to these spots from the tiny traces of soil particles within the Zone 3 surface area? This would defy the downward rain percolation characteristics of the Zone 3 fill. In addition, for all of the tiny traces of soil particles in the Zone 3 fill to be gathered up and deposited in the dirt spots, would require such a high concentration of collection (from tiny trace amounts) of a large volume of Zone 3 fill such that very "smart" rain would have to "collect", "redirect", and "go vertical upwards" to the dirt spots.
If the saturation was first, how did the dirt get there?
Could saturation result in the dirt spots? Yes. Where's a high concentration of dirt? The transition zones and the core. Then where's the original water source for this saturation? The reservoir. Why didn't the Drain Zone capture the water? It clogged in two areas above from the transport of silts, soils, clay & clayey material What caused this strong seepage flow? The core developed settlement leaks from longitudinal cracks. How did the water saturate the Zone 3 surface instead of curving down to the bottom to the horizontal drain zone? Good question - more clues on this later. What happened to these original settlement leaks? The upstream Transition zone sealed the leaks with its silts & sands flowing into the core
Could this be the same dynamic mechanism at play in the current "Green Wet Area"? Good question… what do you think?.. more clues/evidence later...
**note: a larger image & RGB coloration matching to trees, grasses, and other vegetation in the larger image reveal the clear greening of these saturated areas. The zoom version here is less distinguishable due to the low resolution & blurring.
