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State water officials say engineers are still in the process of assessing damage to the spillway at Oroville Dam and figuring out what they can do to fix it “They’re evaluating the situation intensively this morning,” said Ted Thomas, the chief spokesman for Department of Water Resources. “They’re looking at what their options are for repair.” An extensive section of concrete on the spillway, which is used to manage the level of Lake Oroville, has peeled away or collapsed.

Few people realize how outdated our systems for water information are. Because of data limitations, real-time, transparent decisions about drought management, flood response and groundwater protection have eluded the state for the past century. Without basic numbers on where, when and how much water is available and being used, we can’t improve how we manage our most precious water and natural resources.

As a test run at the Oroville Dam spillway commenced Wednesday afternoon, the director of the Department of Water Resources said at a press conference in Sacramento he expected the bottom of the spillway to be eroded away by spring, with a replacement completed by fall. This came after a gaping hole in the spillway at the Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the U.S., appeared Tuesday morning. The hole in the spillway is 180 feet wide and 30 feet deep, DWR public information officer Eric See said.

 

State engineers have found new damage to the Oroville Dam spillway, although not as much as they’d feared, after conducting two test releases to see how much water the scarred facility could handle, the state said Thursday. Meanwhile, reservoir levels continued to climb behind the critical flood-control structure. The gash that was discovered Tuesday grew by another 50 feet after engineers released water for a combined six hours Wednesday and early Thursday, according to Department of Water Resources spokesman Doug Carlson. “They found additional damage to the spillway, which was predicted,” Carlson said.

For decades, millions of gallons of treated sewage water has been pumped into the ground to fight sea-level rise. While this process sounds harmful, it’s actually quite the opposite, according to experts. It is crucial in keeping salt water out of aquifers and keeping groundwater replenished. To date, nearly 490 billion gallons of recycled water have been recharged into the Central and West Coast Basin aquifers. That is one of many water recharge projects occurring all over the world.