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BLOG: Learning from Oroville: Water Board Proposes Climate Change Resolution

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Juliet Christian-Smith

Earlier this week, while areas downstream of Oroville Dam were still under an evacuation order, California’s State Water Resources Control Board released a draft resolution for a comprehensive response to climate change. It resolves that the agency will embed climate science into all its existing work, both to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. In doing so, the state water board demonstrates how public agencies can respond more proactively to the challenges that global warming is bringing our way.

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California Is Getting Too Much Of A Good Thing

/in /by /Fox 9 (Eden Prairie, Minn.)by Cody Matz

In a region that has seen so much drought over the last decade, the prospect of moisture would be a welcome one.  But right now, not so much.  The state of California has seen more moisture in the last few weeks than it typically gets in a year and this could actually turn into their wettest “wet season” on record.  Several more inches of rain looks likely for northern and central parts of the state with the highest elevations getting several more feet of snow.

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OPINION: Ignored Oroville Warning Raises Big Quake, Levee Questions: Thomas Elias

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily Newsby Thomas D. Elias,

Just because nature allows a delay of many years while officials dither over a catastrophe in the making doesn’t make that disaster any easier to handle when it finally strikes. This is one major lesson of the Oroville Dam spillway crisis that saw the sudden evacuation of almost 200,000 persons from their homes when the dam’s emergency spillway crumbled under the force of millions of gallons of fast-moving water. Warnings of precisely this sort of crisis at Lake Oroville were submitted to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission during a 2005 relicensing process, almost 12 years before those predictions came true.

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California Braces For More Rain. How Bad Can It Get?

/in /by /The New York Timesby Erin McCann

It’s raining in California. Again. A storm system hitting north and central California on Monday and Tuesday will deliver two to three inches of rain to the Central Valley, and up to 10 inches of rain to the mountains, said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. The service has issued a flood warning through Wednesday across most of the Sacramento River Valley and the surrounding areas.

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Continued Erosion Of Oroville Dam’s Main Spillway Part Of ‘Normal Process,’ State Officials Say

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Adam Ashton

Oroville Dam’s badly damaged main spillway is still deteriorating from an onslaught of fast-paced water, but state officials insist that it is “stable” as they make repairs. State officials expected the concrete main spillway to erode last week when they opened its gates, betting that it was a safer option than the dam’s little-used emergency spillway.

 

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OPINION: Does California Really Need More Dams? We’re Running Out Of Places To Put Them

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby George Skelton

You hear this every time there’s a drought or deluge in California: “Why haven’t they built more dams?” Truth is, they’ve built a bunch. And they’re about done with it. Tally them up. There are more than 1,400 dams in the state. At least 1,000 are major and 55 can hold 100,000 acre-feet or more of water. One acre-foot is enough to supply two average households for a year. There are 36 reservoirs that can contain at least 200,000 acre-feet. Eleven can hold 1 million or more.

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‘Flood Fighting Is In Our DNA’: To Live By The Feather River Is To Know Its Power And Danger

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joe Mozingo and Phil Willon

The early settlers snatched up the rich, loamy land along the Feather River to grow grapes and orchards. Edward Mathews, an Irishman who fled the potato famine, was peddling vegetables and didn’t have the cash for that kind of soil. During heavy rains, the Yuba River would flow so hard into the Feather at Marysville, it pushed the Feather back north into Jack Slough, named for a freed slave who in 1861 sold Mathews 200 acres of its poor red soil.

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Government Severely Misjudged Strength Of Oroville Emergency Spillway, Sparking A Crisis

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

Bill Croyle stood in front of an aerial photo of Lake Oroville and swept his hand across the top of the emergency spillway that was helping drain water out of the brimming reservoir. “Solid rock. All this is rock,” Croyle, acting director of the Department of Water Resources, said with an air of confidence at the Feb. 11 briefing. The flows over the concrete lip of the unpaved spillway were tiny compared with what it was designed to handle. Oroville’s first-ever emergency spill was going smoothly.

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Disturbing Deficiencies Seen In California’s Dam Safety Efforts

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes

The dam burst on a warm afternoon, unleashing nearly 300 million gallons of muddy water on a Los Angeles neighborhood. Five people died and dozens of homes were swept off their foundations and destroyed. In the aftermath of the 1963 Baldwin Hills Dam catastrophe, the state strengthened inspection regulations, helping establish California as a modern leader in dam safety.

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Oroville Dam: What Made The Spillway Collapse?

/in /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Paul Rogers and Matthias Gafni

How did a giant, gaping hole tear through the massive Oroville Dam’s main concrete spillway last week, setting in motion the chain of events that could have led to one of America’s deadliest dam failures? Dam experts around the country are focusing on a leading suspect: Tiny bubbles.The prospect is simple, yet terrifying and has been the culprit in a number of near disasters at dams across the globe since engineers discovered it about 50 years ago.

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