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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.
This dam is primarily for water supply, the hydroelectric aspect is secondary.
I just wanted to post some info before everyone spins this as a partisan failure of one sort or another.
1) The dam was built and is owned by California.
2) California was warned about the potential problem (the one we are currently seeing) in 2005.
3) In 2005, as part of the federal re-licensing procedure for the dam, several groups urged federal officials to require that the dam’s [earthwork] emergency spillway be upgraded to concrete. The federal government declined.
4) The dam was built at a time when requirements were less strict in comparison to today's standards. The dam foundations were dug down to "weathered" rock, which is less structurally sound than "bedrock".
And finally,
5) As much as people feel the need for karma or justice or revenge or whatever, we DO NOT punish people's lives and homes over partisan bullshit. The federal government should (and most probably will) assist in any way that they can to help avoid a disaster.
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. Both California and the Federal government (viz: the licensing mentioned above) can share the blame for this.
It's another Katrina-like situation: both governments (Cali and Federal) were warned, did nothing, and now it's an emergency.
Also of note, and I'm trying to look at the big picture here and not point fingers, it's been pointed out that the infrastructure in our country has been neglected for a long time (especially roads, bridges, and the electrical grid), and we really need to start fixing up things.
Fixing our infrastructure was one of the campaign promises of the party in power, perhaps this will galvanize them to action.
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.
It may be hard to comprehend, but California is a pretty big state. It also covers a large swath of territory from north to south, and the northern edge is almost nothing like the southern edge, in terms of terrain/climate. Northern California is no longer in drought, but Southern California is a different story. Geographically speaking, it would be like saying "Pennsylvania is no longer in drought, but Georgia and South Carolina still are", because that's about how far apart the ends of California are from each other.
That's false. The Legislative Analyst's Office questioned the assumptions but did not find anything in the CAHSR's numbers that were factually incorrect. The State Auditor found some risks and weak oversight but again could not disprove the numbers. We see the same thing over and over again, and each time it helps California improve its planning and oversight.
Meanwhile, every HSR line in the world that's at least a few years old is already making a profit.
Every.
Last.
One.
Even Amtrak's Acela Express makes a profit. So why would California's HSR be any different?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
There's actually 2 things going on.
The existing spillway is made of concrete, and suffered some structural damage.
Here is an image of the damage, from a couple of days ago, and here is that same spillway today.
The lower half of the spillway is probably completely gone. The raging water might erode up to the level of the dam, but that's not likely.
The actual problem was the emergency spillway, which is an earthen bank to the left (looking up to the dam) of the regular spillway.
You can see the damage in this image. Note that one of the eroded canyons reaches almost up to the level of the water.
If the erosion had reached the emergency spillway it would have burst, releasing a whole lot of water downstream.
Here's a closeup, and note the middle lower portion of the image. We were that close to a breech.
That didn't happen, and the waters are now below emergency levels.
However, the situation is rather precarious and the emergency spillway could still burst. There's still a lot of water still coming in to the reservoir, which is being frantically lowered.
(And yes, I wrote "Hyperloop" when I meant "High Speed Rail" above.)