Vincent Van Goatse posted:

We've known the flood control infrastructure around Sacramento has needed major overhauling for years. The problem is that it's a really loving big job that costs a lot and nobody really wanted to actually step up and deal with it.

Here's a useful illustration of the problem:

withak posted:

Problem is that a lot of levees belong to local agencies who don't have any money. The state spent a shitload of bond money over the last 10-15 years doing much of the engineering work to figure out where the bad spots in the levee system are and how best to fix each area, then handed that information over to the levee owners for free, but many levee owners are slow to do anything about it because tax dollars.

Doc Hawkins posted:

https://twitter.com/CA_DWR/status/830972294784655361

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

That seems like a really bad idea but I don't know exactly why. Anyone want to explain it to my dumb rear end?

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

That seems like a really bad idea but I don't know exactly why. Anyone want to explain it to my dumb rear end?

Doc Hawkins posted:

https://twitter.com/CA_DWR/status/830972294784655361

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

That seems like a really bad idea but I don't know exactly why. Anyone want to explain it to my dumb rear end?

quote:

More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.

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.”

“A loss of crest control could not only cause additional damage to project lands and facilities but also cause damages and threaten lives in the protected floodplain downstream,” the groups wrote.

FERC rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary. Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, along with the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water from the state of California through the State Water Project. The association includes the Metropolitan Water District, Kern County Water Agency, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Alameda County Water District.

Federal officials at the time said that the emergency spillway was designed to handle 350,000 cubic feet per second and the concerns were overblown.

“It is important to recognize that during a rare event with the emergency spillway flowing at its design capacity, spillway operations would not affect reservoir control or endanger the dam,” wrote John Onderdonk, a senior civil engineer with FERC, in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s San Francisco Office, in a July 27, 2006, memo to his managers.

“The emergency spillway meets FERC’s engineering guidelines for an emergency spillway,” he added. “The guidelines specify that during a rare flood event, it is acceptable for the emergency spillway to sustain significant damage.”

This weekend, as Lake Oroville’s level rose to the top and water couldn’t be drained fast enough down the main concrete spillway because it had partially collapsed on Tuesday, millions of gallons of water began flowing over the dam’s emergency spillway for the first time in its 50-year history.

On Sunday, with flows of only 6,000 to 12,000 cubic feet per second — water only a foot or two deep and less than 5 percent of the rate that FERC said was safe — erosion at the emergency spillway became so severe that officials from the State Department of Water Resources ordered the evacuation of more than 185,000 people. The fear was that the erosion could undercut the 1,730-foot-long concrete lip along the top of the emergency spillway, allowing billions of gallons of water to pour down the hillside toward Oroville and other towns downstream.

Such an uncontrolled release from California’s second-largest reservoir while it was completely full could become one of the worst dam disasters in U.S. history.

“We said ‘are you really sure that running all this water over the emergency spillway won’t cause the spillway to fail?'” said Ron Stork, policy director with Friends of the River, a Sacramento environmental group that filed the motions in 2005. “They tried to be as evasive as possible. It would have cost money to build a proper concrete spillway.”

Stork watched with horror Sunday night as the emergency spillway was at risk of collapse.

“I’m feeling bad that we were unable to persuade DWR and FERC and the Army Corps to have a safer dam,” he said Sunday.

Stork said that officials from the Department of Water Resources told him informally at the time that the Metropolitan Water District and the water contractors who buy water from Oroville did not want to incur the extra costs.

“I’m sad and hoping, crossing my fingers, that they can prevent the reservoir from failing,” he said. “I don’t think anybody at DWR has ever been this close in their careers to such a catastrophic failure.”

Lester Snow, who was the state Department of Water Resources director from 2004 to 2010, said Sunday night that he does not recall the specifics of the debate during the relicensing process 11 years ago.

“The dam and the outlet structures have always done well in tests and inspections,” Snow said. “I don’t recall the FERC process.”

Stork said at the time he talked to Snow about the environmental group’s concerns, and he recalls that Snow said the issue was being handled mostly by one of his lieutenants.

A filing on May 26, 2006, by Thomas Berliner, an attorney for the State Water Contractors, and Douglas Adamson, an attorney for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, discounted the risk. It urged FERC to reject the request to require that the emergency spillway be armored, a job that would have cost tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

“The emergency spillway was designed to safely convey the Probable Maximum Flood, and DWR has reviewed and confirmed the efficacy of the PMF hydrologic analysis for Oroville Reservoir,” the attorneys noted.

Ultimately, they were successful. FERC did not require the state to upgrade the emergency spillway.

Trogdos! posted:

Garrison posted:

Aristotle recommended moderation, or the ‘golden mean.’ Virtue can be found as a reasoned, logical place between two extremes. For example, courage is virtuous, but when carried to an extreme it becomes destructive recklessness. A lack of courage brings about its opposite, cowardice.

We see today a great many ‘virtue signalers’ who want to feel good about themselves. They consider themselves, kind, humane and generous and they want you to know about it. They demand help for poor, suffering people all over the planet. They want them removed from their own countries and cultures and brought to the United States so we can see such help up close and personal. “Let them in!” they shout. Their signs say, “Refugees are welcome!” They think all humans are equal and there should be no borders. At least, not for the United States.

The problem with such virtue signaling is they want to help people by forcing others to participate. Someone has to pay for for the immigrants who come here wanting free stuff. Things such as medical care, education, housing and food. The immigrants also bring cultural conflict, violence and crime. Big government is the tool used by virtue signalers. They want to steal from you via taxes to pay for the welfare of strangers.

I lived in San Angelo, Texas for nearly 10 years. The many Mexican Americans I knew there were proud of their heritage, but they considered themselves Americans first. They scorned immigrants from Mexico who did not bother to learn English. Nowadays, it’s considered ‘racist’ to insist people have a common language and culture. We are no longer a melting pot.

Massive muslim immigration is even more dangerous. They demand Sharia Law, not our Constitution. They consider Islam to be superior to Christianity. They do not assimilate—they dominate. Importing Islamic culture is a recipe for future strife and conflict. Refugees wanting to escape their hell holes too often want to transform their host countries into the very same hell holes that they left. Look at what happened to Sweden. Crime and rape skyrocketed and now there are ‘no go’ muslim zones. This the the same vision Obama had for America. That’s why he drove hard to the hoop to import as many muslims here as he could. A divided country is easier for world government types to control.

Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite writers. His books on history are excellent. He also wrote an excellent book titled “Mexifornia,” in which he expertly sums up the problems California and other states are facing. That is, a new paradigm where illegal immigrants are not assimilating. English is no longer expected to be spoken. “La Raza,” an openly racist organization, wants to turn California into Mexico while of course still insisting their people get plenty of free stuff.

California wants to be a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants. There is even talk about secession. Under Governor Jerry Brown (Governor ‘Moonbeam’), the state’s debt has deepened to over $400 billion. Regardless, more free stuff is perpetually promised and more immigrants are desired. They can’t afford to help every suffering person in the world without making citizens themselves suffer. This is an example of a virtue being carried to an extreme. Helping others has become a dangerous vice.
—Ben Garrison

The Wiggly Wizard posted:

quote:

This the the same vision Obama had for America. That’s why he drove hard to the hoop to import as many muslims here as he could.

The Wiggly Wizard posted:

TLDR: DWR under Arnold and federal government under GWB ignored a request to properly construct a spillway so they could save money.

idiotsavant posted:

That's what most of this boils down to, doesn't it? This is one of the end results of starve-the-beast politics that Republicans played in California. I bet if you looked at the Butte County Board of Supes it's not a whole lot better, either.

Ron Jeremy posted:

But to play Devil's Advocate, they said that the dam met whatever engineering guidelines they had. Were the standards too low?

incoherent posted:

http://sacramentodispatch.com/trump-denies-ca-plea-for-federal-funds-cites-sanctuary-cities/

The first rubber meets the road for our disrespect of king cheeto.


The question is will we turn our backs after furiously pounding our chest?

hell yes. we're beta af.

incoherent posted:

I will 100% stand by our sanctuary status and all of pain that will come with it, and losing FEMA money is a very real reality. I just don't think the #justwoke are going to be so...sympathetic when their houses gets BTFO because we took a gamble.

e: Snoops with the quickness http://www.snopes.com/trump-federal-aid-california/

withak posted:

California has actually threatened to succeed from the union.

withak posted:

Oroville Dam is owned and operated by the State of California Department of Water Resources.

withak posted:

Well the emergency spillway handled this overflow without failing, so if the design standard was that it survive this particular event then it worked exactly as designed. We will have to see whether it can handle two events in a row.

It is always possible to spend more money and make a project safer, but at some point someone has to decide when things are safe enough and stop spending money. Whoever makes that decision becomes a prime target for armchair dam engineers and Monday-morning quarterbacking after any kind of incident like this.

quote:

On Sunday, with flows of only 6,000 to 12,000 cubic feet per second — water only a foot or two deep and less than 5 percent of the rate that FERC said was safe — erosion at the emergency spillway became so severe that officials from the State Department of Water Resources ordered the evacuation of more than 185,000 people. The fear was that the erosion could undercut the 1,730-foot-long concrete lip along the top of the emergency spillway, allowing billions of gallons of water to pour down the hillside toward Oroville and other towns downstream.

withak posted:

I would be surprised if it was actually designed for 350,000 cfs. That sounds more like someone plugged some numbers into a weir equation to answer a question without thinking about the actual conditions.

TildeATH posted:

What could even cause a twenty foot wave of water to come crashing over the emergency spillway?

Raskolnikov38 posted:

massive rockslide into the reservoir

TildeATH posted:

What could even cause a twenty foot wave of water to come crashing over the emergency spillway?