I give more credit to the contractors.
DWR had plenty of sign of issues & did nothing about it. Reading through their documentation on the issues, PFM's, DSSMR's, they were going through the motions & not maintaining the spillway. DWR has sliced all of the piezometer tubings and hasn't placed a single new Piezometer in the dam - even when FERC has repeatedly been asking them for years to do so.
The failure finally caught up with them. It was just a matter of time in their operations and non-proactive work that PFM's & DSSMR's were designed for.
Good point. I was thinking more in terms of the working class rather than the commanding "political" class, but in hindsight, most of the workers dealing with the dredging and shotcreting and all that are contractors.
I was thinking of here at TVA where we have a motto that we accomplish much despite management. And really, it's amazing how people DO get things done when TSHTF so to speak. Problem is, that effort goes away once the catastrophe is past.