Oroville Lake dam crisis

[dtrs5kprs]

Apparently they opened the spillway and it wasn't enough. Not good. 

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html

[Ham]

They may well lose the lake. I feared that when it first started. They should have gotten real desperate from the get go rather than the lets wait and see thing.

[Deadstream]

Makes you wonder what will happen.   And it will  on the White River drainage.  

[Johnsfolly]

Any of our flood control reservoirs could end up like this situation. The Taum Sauk collapse here in MO is an example just on a smaller scale. So far no loss of life has occurred in CA fortunately. I do imagine that this could be a fairly big ecological disaster with the continued high flow rates during this emergency draw down of the lake. We'll have to see what can be learned from this situation.

[moguy1973]

I've been following this too.  Crazy situation.  I guess that's what happens when maintenance on the spillway gets lackadaisical during a drought when they thing they will not have to use it.  Then when they get record rains and snow falls when they need the spillway to work as intended its damaged and broken.  Luckily, and I don't know about Beaver or BSL, Table Rock has an actual backup spIllway and not just a concrete wall as a backup spillway like this lake in California.  

[MOPanfisher]

Its a bad deal all around, I have been trying to follow some of it, well because I like dams.  The regular spillway that had a major sinkhole or collapse started the issue.  They stopped releasing water through it to evaluate it, and quickly discovered that there was no quick fix.  Realizing that the emergency spillway was likely to get used they began to quickly clean it up, removing trees etc, and shoring up the lip of it with boulders and concrete.  According to reports so far it has been holding and not head cutting, also last report mentioned that the level dropped back to 901 which is the level of the uncontrolled emergency spillway.   Should they have been better prepared, sure, is it an easy thing to do, no its not.  Trying getting a few million to fix a known problem when you are in a drought.  Now the repair costs will be probably over a 100 million if not more.  The regular spillway has been essentiall y destroyed and not sure how much damage to the emergency spillway.  Tons and tons of silt, rock, dirt etc. have been added to the feather river downstream. 

Is it possible for such a thing to happen to Ozark area dams, yes it is possible but very unlikely, the COE is manic about dam safety, we also have a lot more native rock around to stabilize things.  Lakes such as TR have the ability to dump a huge amount of water through them, and no long spillway to have to contend with.  If memory serves TR can dump over 500,000 CFS through the gates, way more than they have ever released.  The only COE lakes I am aware of that has had significant flows through their uncontrolled emergency spillway are Tuttle Creek and Milford in KS.

[fishinwrench]

I'm not clear on what all the freaking out is about.   It's a flood.  It's not like the dam is about to collapse because of that divot on the spillway.  Do you realize how thick that dam is ?  

Everything is going to be fine.  Water has topped the dam and is headed downstream, so just let it.  The flooding downstream won't be any worse than the flooding upstream.  Quit trying to use the spillway at such a rate if the hole is getting bigger.  It can all be fixed after the water goes down.  

[Flysmallie]

The dam was never in jeopardy. But if the spillway blew then it would have been a 30 ft wall of water. So they can either evacuate and let everyone female doggy about it when it doesn't blow. Or not evacuate and let a bunch of people die if it does blow, and then everyone will female doggy about it. 

[fishinwrench]

Evacuation was a good move, obviously, but trying to pull the lake down ASAP is a bad move at this point I think.  All they are doing is making things worse down below.    

[snagged in outlet 3]

I hope they need a bunch of pipe pile for a diversion wall.