Oroville Dam Warnings Were Ignored

Government failed to pay attention to concerns brought up more than a decade ago.

Steven Greenhut | February 17, 2017

A Sacramento Bee story published Monday succinctly described the disaster unfolding at the nation's tallest dam, where flaws in the Oroville Dam's concrete spillway are forcing water onto the earthen emergency spillway. Threats of a spillway collapse led to mandatory evacuations throughout Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties last Sunday, although residents have since been allowed to return home.

"Oroville Dam contains a flaw, some critics assert, one that could damage the structure during a major flood and threaten downstream communities," according to the Bee. "That flaw is the dam's emergency spillway, which empties onto a bare dirt hillside adjacent to the earthen-fill dam." The torrent of water could erode the unprotected hillside, undermine the emergency spillway's foundation and lead to a catastrophic failure.

The amazing thing is that the news report was first published Nov. 27, 2005. The Bee's Monday publication was a reprint, given the relevance of the report nearly a dozen years later. It provides necessary context after another news organization revealed that three environmental groups at the time had urged state and federal officials to line the emergency spillway with concrete to avoid the kind of problems on display this week....To Read More....

My Take - California's "leaders" are spending money they don't have so fast on so many stupid things like outrageous compensation and benefits to government employees - all completely unsustainable and I predict will all crash by 2020.  Spending money on illegal aliens and leftist pipe dreams but they didn't have a dime to fix this dam, and now loony Governor Moonbeam wants Trump to send them money to overcome the losses of all the flooding in the state.  That way they can continue to overtax their citizens and spend that money on all the loony stuff.  I say if if all this bad stuff had to happen somewhere - I'm glad it's happened in California because they had this happen the old fashioned way - they've earned it.