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Oroville Dam Spillway Concrete Failure (Feather River Flooding, CA) 36

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msquared48

msquared48

Structural
Aug 7, 2007
14,745

Erosion has created a 300-foot-deep hole in the concrete spillway of Oroville Dam and state officials say it will continue grow.
State engineers on Wednesday cautiously released water from Lake Oroville's damaged spillway as the reservoir level climbed amid a soaking of rain.

Situated in the western foothills of the Sierra, Lake Oroville is the second-largest manmade reservoir in California after Shasta....
Click to expand...

Member Spartan: Stage storage flow data here for those interested:

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)
 
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[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oroville-california-dam-spillway-model-repair[/url]

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
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Have they done anything in the drainage basin to increase the rate of run-off? eliminated vegetation for crops? clear cut, drained wetland areas? or whatever?

Dik
 
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The source for relevant updates is the Juan Brown link that itsmoked provide in his last post. Juan has been doing a great job of keeping everyone up-to-date on what's happening as well as reporting on what the officials are reporting as he listens in on all of their teleconferenced updates and he takes prodigious notes. It also helps that he's a pilot with a small plane which is ideally suited for being able to get to and film that dam site and to provide first-hand visual progress reports.

His latest report was filmed this past Thursday, July 27th:


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
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The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Brown's postings on Oroville have been very informative. I understand that weather/climate in the area is very erratic. I just wonder if it hasn't been affected by other factors, increasing the volume or the rate of run-off.

Dik
 
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Some of the work being done - nice drone video of roller compacted concrete, filling in the nooks and crannies with concrete and reinforced concrete spillway side walls with rebar and WF beams as reinforcement.



Filling_holes_ahvaxv.jpg


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faq731-376
 
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Why are my federal tax dollars paying for this?

The total emergency is expected to cost $600 million or more. State officials expect the federal government to cover most of the cost, with leftover expenses to be shouldered by Metropolitan and other members of the State Water Project.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
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I think you will find that flood control projects are at least partially the responsibility of the federal government, usually with the Army Corps of Engineers being involved to some degree.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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Wasn't it covered in the thread already? The owners didn't have the budget to fix the spillway floor so they just have to wait until the it fails and then the repairs will be covered using federal disaster relief money.
 
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dgallup said:
The total emergency is expected to cost $600 million or more. State officials expect the federal government to cover most of the cost, with leftover expenses to be shouldered by Metropolitan and other members of the State Water Project.
Click to expand...

There were already many federal dams, but the bureau of reclamation is prohibited from constructing and operating dams and water conveyances for the purpose of drinking water supply. Oroville Dam was constructed by the state to provide drinking water as the Colorado river allocations could no longer keep up with growth. Since the dam was built, the customer base supplied by Oroville dam has grown to 20 million people.

It's not like this is an impossible sum for people to pay back over the next several years. We're talking a grand total of $600 per person served.
 
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The Bureau of Reclamation is not prohibited from constructing and operating dams and water conveyance for the purpose of drinking water supply. They completed the Animas La Plata Project in 2011 in southwest Colorado. This project consisted of the construction of an off channel 125,000 acre-foot reservoir and a pump station on the Animas River. It is only for municipal and industrial water supply purposes. Each project that Reclamation constructs has to be authorized and funded by Congress.
 
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Failure Analysis Report for the Dept of Water Resources was released.

It soundly condemns the DWR for systemic management and planning failures. Also, the selected primary designer back in the original design phase was a new-hire. He had never designed spillways before, and his work was not challenged nor adequately reviewed. Basically, the spillway had never failed before because it had never been used before.

There were many opportunities to intervene and prevent the incident, but the overall system of interconnected factors operated in a way that these opportunities were missed. Numerous human, organizational, and industry factors led to the physical factors not being recognized and properly addressed, and to the decision-making during the incident. The following are some of the key factors which are specific to DWR:
• The dam safety culture and program within DWR, although maturing rapidly and on the right path, was still relatively immature at the time of the incident and has been too reliant on regulators and the regulatory process.
• Like many other large dam owners, DWR has been somewhat overconfident and complacent regarding the integrity of its civil infrastructure and has tended to emphasize shorter-term operational considerations. Combined with cost pressures, this resulted in
strained internal relationships and inadequate priority for dam safety.
• DWR has been a somewhat insular organization, which inhibited accessing industry knowledge and developing needed technical expertise.
• DWR’s ability to build the appropriate size, composition, and expertise of its technical staff involved in dam engineering and safety has been limited by bureaucratic constraints.
 
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