All eyes have been on the crisis at Oroville Dam, but weeks of wet weather have put pressure elsewhere on the network of levees and dams protecting cities and farms in California’s vast Central Valley flood plain. Almost all of the major reservoirs that ring the Valley have filled to the point that officials have cranked up releases to catch water from a storm building up off California’s coast that’s expected to hit Wednesday night.
Inspectors visited Oroville Dam 14 times since 2008 but never considered the integrity of the hillside that eroded below the emergency spillway, leading to a near catastrophe that forced the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream, state records show. The inspections by the state’s Division of Safety of Dams repeatedly mentioned the concrete apron, or weir, at the top of the emergency spillway, and often included photographs of it. “The structure was stable appearing, and the concrete remains sound,” inspectors wrote after their latest visit to the state-run dam in August 2016.
In California, construction crews are trying to lower the level of Lake Oroville and repair emergency spillways at the Oroville Dam, about 75 miles north of Sacramento, to prevent catastrophic flooding downstream. A secondary spillway was opened Monday after the main spillway, which is supposed to safely release water when the lake level is too high, had developed a huge hole, as we reported. Rain is forecast for later this week in Northern California, and nearly 200,000 people who live downstream have been evacuated from the area.
California is expected to officially start up its second desalination plant in April, which takes seawater and makes it potable. The first one opened in December 2015 in Carlsbad that is near San Diego while the next one will be in Santa Barbara that is north of Los Angeles. And 15 more are on the table there. Is this a global solution for the billions without access to potable or sanitized water? Can desalination be done in a way that is minimizes harm to the ocean and that uses clean energy to run its operations?
The water level dropped Monday behind the nation’s tallest dam, reducing the risk of a catastrophic spillway collapse and easing fears that prompted the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream. As the day began, officials from the California Department of Water Resources prepared to inspect an erosion scar on the spillway at the dam on Lake Oroville, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco. Authorities ordered evacuations Sunday for everyone living below the lake out of concern that the spillway could fail and send a 30-foot wall of water roaring downstream.
Oroville, California (CNN)A massive crevasse that formed in a spillway at Northern California’s Oroville Dam has spurred mass evacuations, with nearby residents fleeing the worst-case specter of a three-story wall of water rushing downstream. In all, about 188,000 people, mostly in Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties, evacuated from the area, some being given only minutes to gather their things. “Everyone was running around; it was pure chaos,” Oroville resident Maggie Cabral told CNN affiliate KFSN on Sunday.”
Thousands of people fled areas downriver from Lake Oroville on Sunday after a secondary spillway at the swollen reservoir was compromised, raising fears of a collapse that might unleash disastrous flooding. By late Sunday, after whole towns had emptied out, officials said the immediate danger appeared to have passed. Evacuation orders, however, remained in place until they could be sure. “There are still a lot of unknowns,” Sheriff Kory L. Honea of Butte County said at a news conference.
As California waited Monday night to see if President Donald Trump would grant Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for emergency funding for 10,000 evacuees who lived in the shadow of the Oroville Dam, FEMA began preparing for the worse. The federal disaster-management agency’s Region 9, which oversees California and other Western states, has mobilized a 24-hour task force to coordinate its response with state and local agencies, said Mary Simms, a spokeswoman.
No, humans cannot make it rain, stop the rain, or produce real rainbows in the sky. But we can do things that protect ourselves from the rain and get it to work for our agriculture and overall economy. And it’s clearer than ever that Californians have simply failed to do those things as the Oroville Dam crisis continues to force massive evacuations and raises fears of a potential disaster.
