Posted on 02/17/2017 5:09:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
Officials at Lake Oroville reduced the rate of water release once again Friday as workers continued make repairs to a damaged spillway and clear debris from a hydroelectric plant.
State Department of Water Resources engineers will decrease the flow of water in the Oroville Dam's main spillway from 80,000 cubic feet per second to 60,000 by Saturday morning, giving crews space to dredge debris from a pool at the bottom of the spillway, said DWR acting director Bill Croyle.
Engineers had been pumping water out of the lake at 100,000 cfs for several days to make room for incoming storm runoff and to keep the lake from overflowing like it did over the weekend. That overflow badly eroded an emergency spillway and sent debris flowing into a pool at the bottom, forcing the closure of an underground hydroelectric plant.
This reduction in flow will allow us to work on the debris pile in the spillway, Croyle told reporters at a news conference. He estimated that 150,000 cubic yards of sediment and debris were in the pool.
The other focus by workers at the dam is the eroded emergency spillway, Croyle said. Rain began falling again in the area on Thursday and its not expected to stop until the middle of next week at the earliest.
The heaviest showers are expected Monday and could drop up to 10 inches of rain onto the mountains and foothills that drain into the reservoir, the National Weather Service said.
The storms aren't likely to produce enough runoff to exceed the lake's capacity, Croyle said.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of rocks and concrete slurry have been dropped into four fissures that threatened a retaining wall of the emergency spillway on Sunday. They were 50%, 75%, 90% and 100% full, respectively, Croyle said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Sounds like a great plan - “It’s starting to rain again, so let’s reduce the outflow by 25% and see what happens”.
The dam will breach within the next few days.
“The dam will breach within the next few days.”
The emergency spillway dam, or the real dam?!
Real dam.
As in millions of cf/s.
“Real dam.”
Better hope not.
There goes Sacramento! Really!
Don’t count on it.
What information are you using to come to that conclusion? Are you an engineer?
It’s certainly possible the spillway has a failure, but the entire dam?
I predict the flood will grease the plates and all of californicate will fall in the ocean.
“Engineers had been pumping water out of the lake at 100,000 cfs”
Can pumps, even a bunch of them, transfer that much water per second?
:) . The dam is sitting on one of those plates. Anything is possible from here on in....
You know engineers, they even take credit for gravity.
A single 12” pump will move about 6000 gallons per minute.
They are releasing 7,500,000 gallons per minute
1250 pumps?
A judicious use of explosives could solve this.
Guy stuff. We used to be able to do things.
Never mind. I know my math is off. Long day.
100,000 cfs = 750,000 gallons per second X 60 = 45,000,000 gallons per minute.
7500 12 IN pumps.
That may be the only thing that could save California...
That may be the only thing that could save California...
Pumps, sheesh. Dumb journalists.
Any chance of including the legislative majority and their moon(beam) god in that?
Strictly speaking, they just opened the floodgates and let gravity do the pumping.
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