Article clip: === Could DWR forfeit the FEMA & CA customer's $500 million in Spillway repair funding? Will DWR be found Legally Liable in deep void filling? Hid deep voiding from FERC? Who will pay the bills?
Did DWR hide serious deep voiding problems under the Main Spillway from FERC? Searching 20 years in FERC's database of 3,525 Oroville tied documents finds no DWR notification to FERC of serious deep voiding problems? If DWR withheld a Category 1 severe failure problem from FERC, does this risk forfeiture of FEMA funding? What about the CA customers in their expected 25% in repair costs? Will this end up in the courts?
LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - California Department of Water Resources (DWR) may soon be facing another crisis, except this crisis may be from the risk of loss or forfeiture of the spillway repair reimbursement from FEMA and DWR's Water Customers. The key to this crisis may be from the withholding of catastrophic rated Category 1 Failure mode information from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is charged with the oversight of safety of large public dams in the US. FEMA's decision to allow "disaster" event status for Oroville, in granting funding aid, likely rested on the belief that this event occurred from an "unexpected" condition, even though the spillway was operating at 18% of its full design rated capacity when it failed [18]21. FERC undoubtedly believed that this spillway blowout failure was an "unexpected event", as the Regional Engineer of FERC's Division of Dam Safety and Inspections, Mr. Blackett, described in a recent American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) conference in Sacramento May 21, 2017 [5]. Thus, FEMA's decision may have been attributed to information from FERC - in deciding the "disaster status" - although the spillway was operating well under its design rating when it failed.
However the funding reimbursement issue could take a sharp and unexpected turn when looking deeper into new discoveries. FERC expects a high level of expertise and competence when interfacing with dam owners, such as DWR, to facilitate the task of assuring the maximum level of operational safety of a dam. A primary FERC operational safety assurance process is called the Dam Safety Performance Monitoring Program (DSPMP). The tools to this periodic proactive exercise are physical dam Inspections and Potential Failure Mode Assessments (PFMA's) - which are performed by Independent Consultants [6]. As a dam owner, DWR is required to extensively contribute to the formation of a PFM [10] such as probability of a failure causation, the mechanisms involved, and the ability to detect or mitigate the development of a failure mode. Dam owners are ultimately responsible for public safety and are obliged to engage FERC if any sudden or new PFM is discovered.
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Only about 4 feet of water remaining behind the gates:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?ORO
California agencies and many CA government employees are a law unto themselves. They consider Federal Law, other points of view and Republicans within their state all beneath notice. They have what Thomas Sowell called the Vision of the Anointed.
So the plot thickens. It would be ideal if FERC would get FEMA to stop the funds. Let them come to DC begging for money. After California’s stated desire to fund illegals, and to go to their own single-payer system, they should be cut loose. The only way that the fed should even consider funding is if the fed takes control over the dam and spillway. Although, I’m not sure I want that potential disaster on the federal budget either.