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188,000 Evacuated As California's Massive Oroville Dam Threatens Catastrophic Floods (washingtonpost.com)
Mr D from 63 quotes a report from The Washington Post: About 188,000 residents near Oroville, Calif., were ordered to evacuate Sunday after a hole in an emergency spillway in the Oroville Dam threatened to flood the surrounding area. Thousands clogged highways leading out of the area headed south, north and west, and arteries major and minor remained jammed as midnight approached on the West Coast -- though by early Monday, Lake Oroville's water level had dropped to a point at which water was no longer spilling over. The lake level reached its peak of 902.59 feet at about 3 a.m. Sunday and dropped to 898 feet by 4 a.m. Monday, according to the Sacramento Bee. Water flows over the emergency spillway at 901 feet. "The drop in the lake level was early evidence that the Department of Water Resources' desperate attempt to prevent a catastrophic failure of the dam's emergency spillway appeared to be paying dividends," the Bee reported Monday. Officials doubled the flow of water out of the nearly mile-long primary spillway to 100,000 cubic feet per second. The normal flow is about half as much, but increased flows are common at this time of year, during peak rain season, officials said. But water officials warned that damaged infrastructure could create further dangers as storms approach in the week ahead, and it remained unclear when residents might be able to return to their homes.
The dam is for water management first, electrical power generation second, and flood control third. You can concern troll about hydro if you want, but it's mostly inappropriate here.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
It's interesting that everyone's trying to put a political spin on this, and finger pointing is starting.
First, T supporters say T should only give emergency assistance if CA swears away from "sanctuary cities". CA's response is that CA has always paid into the fed just like every other state, and that one political issue shouldn't be used as a threat against another.
Second, is the reason for not preventing this. There was concern of weakness in the dam's overflow systems going back years. Different experts gave different opinions. It seems it was on the borderline of being problematic, at least on paper. If it's only on the borderline of being a problem, then expensive fixes tend to get ignored.
It may also be a case of "cascading failure" whereby the backup (overflow handling) failed, and then the secondary backup also failed. Sometimes bleep just happens under extreme weather. Other CA damns and water systems held up; the chance of all them working perfectly is slim. If you have hundreds of water systems, at least a few will have notable problems during heavy rains just out of shear probability.
Large dams are probably a thing of the past, in part because they are a single big point of failure, and in part because they screw up the existing state of nature. Smaller sub-dams are the preferred way now, if any. But we still have to maintain the big old ones because many existing dwellings and roads rely on them to work.
Table-ized A.I.
It actually does negate most of Mr. D's point -- Mr. D suggested that there are alternatives worth considering for hydro power to avoid the eco damage. He's right about that. But there is no alternative to storing water. You either dam the water up somewhere so that you have it available during droughts or you don't. And water takes up space.
I don't know what rock you've been living under. For years, client scientists have been saying that AGW will bring about more droughts and more floods. Those two items are in no way mutually exclusive.
As has been pointed out by many people, California spent several billions of dollars on the hyperloop while letting this particular bit of infrastructure upgrade get ignored.
Perhaps you mean the California high speed rail, which was paid for (so far) by a bond measure, the money for which cannot legally be designated for something else?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
So, you're admitting that there is no way to know that anyone has been displaced due to the burning of fossil fuels. Yet, you're arguing for the validity of making that very assertion. Now, who's the idiot?
sig: sauer