[EarthResearcher333]

You found a key to the problem.... someone had a duty to QC the conditions in the midst of the construction. Here is the "revealing" critical line in the DWR report:

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Cracking could also have been a result of plastic shrinkage, “usually associated with the rapid loss of moisture caused by a combination of factors that include high air and concrete temperatures, low relative humidity, and high wind velocity at the surface of the concrete.”*

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*(exact weather patterns/extremes at Oroville during construction)

This official statement directly infers that QC DID NOT know these variables during construction (or was poorly monitoring them).

This was DWR's responsibility. The other responsibility was QC feed back to Kiewit on early problems. Then it was a combined responsibility to figure out the proper action(s) (Mix? QC? or too late by then?).

Other nagging question(s)... Why was it that FERC was the one to officially discover this cracking? (FERC immediately asked DWR to explain the cracks & have DWR explain why).

Why didn't DWR notify FERC first? Did DWR think it wasn't anything to worry about? (competency? miscommunications? PR concerns?).

DWR has another town hall coming up..... Like abb said "This aint going to end well".

[mad_as_he$$]

Very disturbing turn of events. The finger pointing on this will be epic.

I was actually rooting for DWR to pull this off successfully, in the interest of public safety.

[KC Burke]

Much of this is consistent with concerns I mentioned earlier. The critical items in my opinion are mix design specified and the amount of anchorage attachment to the rock or sub-base roller compacted substitute.

The one thing I want to comment on with these cracks being full slab is that to me it is LESS indicative of the ambient temperature / humidity curing issues due to slab thickness.

Most of us deal with slab or thicknesses that are much thinner, even in roadbed construction. This thickness acts as its own protection to inner and lower levels and the lack of dry granular sub-base also means that accelerated drying would have produced surface cracks only — not full thickness. To me that is the least important of the issues.

In August or the first of September, the time schedule should have been stopped and the cracking problem dealt with to the point of resolution. Now they cannot determine what to change until they restart next year. I am somewhat tickled that they cite the original cost when talking about the project when we all remember that they have already approved changes taking it to the 500 million dollar vicinity. Sort of a Freudian slip to cite the lower figure.

[EarthResearcher333]

The new Independent Forensic Team's (IFT) report has just been published today (Jan 5, 2018). DWR was pushing to get FERC to grant them their 50 year licensing renewal about a couple of weeks ago (was in the news).

I've read through the IFT report today. Watch for news articles to come out after it is digested and reviewed.

[RinaseaofDs]

I’ll bet the pension program at DWR in CA is awesome. I know a guy that used to supervise projects for Kiewit. He hated working for CA State.