Q: "Remind me what that soil in the photo means."
A: There should be zero soil (if built to the original design specifications). You should see only consolidated rock (not loose) that the spillway concrete slab was poured upon. OR, you should see concrete (called "leveling concrete") which the spillway concrete slab was poured upon.
A good deal of soil underneath the slabs means that (1) the slabs were not poured on a solid consolidated rock surface nor on a leveling concrete surface (violation of the original design specifications).
This means that during original construction, a layer of aggregate (small sharp rock) and soils (clay or clayey fines) were placed over the foundation material (albeit various forms of weathered rock, highly weathered (soil-like), or competent (fresh) rock). Thus, there would be large pockets of soil/aggregate compacted into and on top of the irregular surface of the base rock, leaving a "leveled grade" of compacted soil/aggregate for the spillway drains and spillway slabs to be placed upon.
A Giant form of a Soil-like Problem is if another violation of the original design specifications occurred. All of the evidence is near air-tight on this one. Evidence points to-> original construction did NOT excavate the clay seams and highly weathered rock (BOC calls this clay soils) down to strong base rock. They simply built the spillway on virtual soil foundation (highly weathered rock - clay soils) in major sections from the blowout failure area to near the electrical towers.
Specifications required that excavation was to be performed on these soil-like materials to get to sound rock. Then the excavated area was to be rebuilt to the spillway "grade level" by pouring concrete (called "leveling concrete" as it brings the grade back to "grade level").
There should be giant blocks of this "leveling concrete" in the remains of the spillway (where all of the brown highly weathered rock exists - and was eroded swiftly away into a "canyon"). There are none.
This evidence would then point to a major "time elapse" failure. The spillway would essentially self-destruct as it was used (underslab erosion from every spill) - until it reached the point of the weakest item failing. Take your pick.
DWR - DSOD - FERC Inspectors blew it. Major alarm sign of this self-destruction was non-functional drains. There were two side drains that were broken for years (all of the rest of the entire spillway side drains worked). So these inspectors never looked at the lack of "stain" or "watermarks" on these side drains? This was the case, evidenced in photographs, going back to 2007. So how could all of these agencies say they did inspections and over thirty thousand square feet of service drains (coming out of two outlets) were never detected as a problem? No way. DWR-DSOD-FERC are on the hook for this one. They could have detected a major spillway self-destruction mode nearly a decade ago (plenty of time to enact remedial measures).
Not only re-imbursement money is one the line, there are major implications to personal reputations and organizational reputations on the line. No escaping a "too big to fail" moment.
Curiously, if reimbursement money was not made available, would Kiewit’s pay be in jeopardy?
This is like the novel “Atlas Shrugged” where US citizens become so broken and demoralized by the statist rules, nobody will admit responsibility. In effect, why bother sticking your neck out? Complete apathy and moral decay.
Just a "heads-up". A prior public DWR pdf file is now "garbled". Discovered this after FR discussion was noting the subject of "drains" & repairs. This file is "evidence" in a forensic sense. Sorry to be a bit cryptic. Just posting this to make it public that this is not going unnoticed... Hello to watchers..
I will wait for Forensic Reports to come out to see how this is handled.
(p.s. the "evidence" remains to those that are in the know).