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The damage has been done and the repair contract awarded. Yet more than two months after damaged spillways at the Oroville Dam prompted authorities to order the evacuation of 188,000 people, the question of who will ultimately pay the bill remains murky. How much will be the responsibility of homeowners, businesses, farmers and other customers of the more than two dozen local and regional agencies that contract with the State Water Project?

California needs an average of three atmospheric rivers annually to reach its average yearly rainfall. So far this year, the state has seen an incredible 46 atmospheric rivers. This intense rainfall has pushed much of California out of longstanding drought conditions. California Ag Today spoke with Steve Johnson, a private meteorologist for farmers in California. We discussed atmospheric rivers (AR) and the abundance of rain California has seen in late winter and early spring.

Record rains are a double-edged sword for California’s Salinas Valley: While the recent deluge virtually ended the state’s historic drought, it also created muddy, unworkable fields – sending prices for everything from kale to cauliflower soaring. The famed agricultural region just south of Silicon Valley is usually a springtime sea of green vegetables. But this year, there are patches of brown unplanted dirt in “America’s salad bowl,” which supplies more than 60 percent of the country’s leaf lettuce and almost half of its broccoli.

Official reports released Monday say the catastrophic damage to Oroville Dam’s main spillway probably stemmed from swift water flows under the concrete chute, which was cracked and of uneven thickness. The observations, contained in consultants’ reports prepared for the state Department of Water Resources, echo much of an independent assessment made for UC Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. An official verdict on the cause is not due until the fall, when a separate forensics team investigating the February spillway break will submit its report.