Oroville Dam update
By Patrick Ruckert
February 14, 2017
californiadroughtupdate.org
On Face Book: California Drought Report
While engineers and their equipment frantically work to shore up the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam, before the arrival of another series of storms about to hit the region, delivering perhaps another six to eight inches of warm rain (melting some of the near record level of snow in the Sierras), a little background is perhaps useful for those not so familiar with it all.
But first, here is the latest: As of Tuesday afternoon the evacuation order, that sent 200,000 residents fleeing, has been lifted and residents may return to their homes. The announcement was accompanied by the warning that a call for another evacuation could be given at any time. Crews working around the clock have made progress repairing the emergency spillway by filling the holes with rock, stabilizing the soil. By increasing the flow of water from the main spillway to over 100,000 cubic meters per second, the lake level has fallen to 884 feet on Tuesday morning. The emergency spillway is at 901feet, thus the lake is now 17 feet below the spillway. Operators are attempting to lower the lake to 50 feet below the top before the next storm hits on Thursday.
Oroville Dam is not only the tallest dam in the United States at 770 feet, but it is the lynch-pin reservoir of the California State Water Project, which, with the Central Valley Project initiated by FDR, created the most extensive and complex water management system in the world. Oroville, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento, sits on the Feather River, which flows into the Sacramento River, and is the heart of the system that provides the water for 23 million people and millions of acres of farmland, including southern California 400 miles to the south.
Thus, not only is there a danger of a catastrophic flood that has already forced the evacuation of 200,000 people in the flood path, but the water supply for most of the state is at risk.
This water management system was completed in 1972– yes, 45 years ago– and Oroville Dam was completed in 1968. The population of the state in those 45 years has increased from about 20 million to the 39 million who live here now. What worked for 20 million cannot and does not work for 39 million. Those same 45 years has seen our economy turned into a gambling casino by the parasites of Wall Street and London, turning the nation into a broken-down pale reflection of its once leading role in the world in science, industry and infrastructure.
The current six years of drought, the worst in the state’s history, has now given way to a deluge of rain and snow, and where we had dust we now have floods. Empty reservoirs are now overflowing, and that is from where the problem at Oroville began.
Twelve years ago, as first reported by the San Jose Mercury News two days ago, state and federal authorities were warned at recertification hearings for Oroville Dam, that the earthen flow path of the emergency spillway was a disaster waiting to happen. They were warned that any water flow from the dam would quickly wash away the dirt holding the berm of concrete in place over which the overflow from the dam would flow. All across the board, agencies and government authorities assured all listening that there could never be such a problem. Two other such warnings a couple years earlier were also similarly ignored. Why? It was the early years of this century and the speculative financial bubble was in full-swing; flipping houses and Mortgage Backed Securities paid well, so why “waste” money on things like shoring up our infrastructure?
Despite the fact that other dams and structures that were to be part of the State Water Project were never built, thus putting more stress on the parts that were built, Oroville Dam was doing its job of flood control and water storage. But, this winter’s deluge was too much for the 49 year-old structure. The powerful flow of water down the spillway began eating away the concrete, creating a 200 foot hole 45 feet deep. Stopping the flow down the spillway, with more than 100,000 cubic feet of water flowing into the reservoir from the storm run-off and melting snow, resulted in the reservoir level rising as much as 10 feet per day. Saturday the rising reservoir overflowed into the emergency spillway, while at the same time water was once again allowed to flow down the main spillway, with the managers accepting the consequence that more damage would be done to it.
By Sunday afternoon, as forecast a dozen years ago, the water flow onto the earthen emergency (or sometimes called, auxiliary) spillway began eating away at its base, threatening to topple it, releasing a 30 foot wall of water that would devastate the communities below the dam. It was at that moment the emergency evacuation order was given.
Oroville Dam is just one of thousands of dams in the nation that 40 years of neglect have made dangerous to millions of people. Oroville Dam must be the wake-up call to the nation that a serious infrastructure building and repair policy must be initiated now, and the only way that can be done is by putting in place the Four New Laws as put forward by Lyndon LaRouche, beginning with the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall banking law. President Trump’s often stated goal of building infrastructure cannot become a reality without LaRouche’s plan.
Finally, there have been a few voices raised in this crisis attempting to promote the unscientific fraud that both the drought and now the flood experienced in California is due to “climate change.” Grasping at straws is not an unusual behavior for those who have nothing else to grab, and such nonsense should be ignored. But, since they raise the topic, let’s briefly discuss California’s climate. As paleoloclimatologal studies have demonstrated, the past 2,000 years of California’s climate has been characterized by alternating mega-droughts and mega-floods. Some of the droughts lasted a century, and the last mega-flood was in 1862, which put Sacramento under ten feet of water for months. For the past more than 150 years we have had neither mega-floods or mega-droughts, but perhaps with this drought and this year’s deluge we are returning to the “normal” climate for this region.
