There were warnings 12 years ago about the Oroville Dam. They were ignored.
Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.
The groups filed the motion with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They said that the dam, built and owned by the state of California, and finished in 1968, did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as “loss of crest control.”
And the government response was the usual. “Nothing bad has happened. So far”
Lucky for them. So far.
In other news the Governor Of California asks Trump for help.
Comments
3 responses to “Loss Of Crest Control”
Well, the feds should help them with disaster relief. They’re a state, and they’re Americans. Well, mostly. Sort of.
But not one damned penny for repair or replacement on that dam.
Sanctuary states don’t need federal funds.
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It does look like they were warned. Sort of. Normally I wouldn’t give much credence to anything that includes alarmists like the Sierra Club. Looks like they got one right for a change. Weren’t the envirowhackos demanding that all dams be demolished just a few years ago??
I wonder how you could asses the safety and reliability of government projects in a (somewhat) free society. Governments are notoriously bad at assessing their own work, it would have to be some sort of third party with a lot at stake if they get it wrong.
For something like a dam, where a failure could be catastrophic, how about requiring insurance? A policy that pays full restitution for all the damage caused by failure, for example. Lloyds or whoever would demand a thorough third party inspection before underwriting the risk, and the risk would determine the cost of a policy. For example, when the yearly premium for a deficient dam design comes due at $50 billion the developers might want to scrutinize their design a bit more thoroughly.