The California Department of Water Resources has temporarily shut down a power plant at Oroville Dam to make improvements that will increase its capacity for releasing water, officials announced Saturday. The Hyatt Power Plant initially stopped functioning when a massive mound of concrete, earth and debris formed in the channel below the dam’s 3,000-foot concrete spillway, which fractured Feb. 7. State officials were able to get it working again Friday, but it was not pumping water fast enough.

 

When state water officials scaled back their mass dumping of water from the damaged Oroville Dam this week, they knew the riverbed below would dry up enough to allow the removal of vast piles of debris from the fractured main spillway. But they apparently did not anticipate a side effect of their decision to stop feeding the gushing Feather River — a rapid drop in river level that, according to downstream landowners, caused miles of embankment to come crashing down.

As California labored under a severe drought for more than five years, industry and media debated the pros and cons of desalination coming to the rescue of the drought-stricken state. About a dozen or so desalination plants have been planned or proposed up and down the Golden State’s coast, with the 50 million gallon (189m liter) per day Carlsbad desalination plant opened in December 2015 and Santa Barbara’s smaller desalination facility set to open this spring.