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Lake Oroville and its dam in Northern California are critical components in California’s complex water-delivery system. Damage to spillways that are used to drop water levels in the lake and relieve pressure on the dam prompted evacuation orders covering nearly 200,000 people. Here’s a look at Lake Oroville and its place in California’s water system Lake Oroville is the starting point for California’s State Water Project, which provides drinking water to 23 million of the state’s 39 million people and irrigates 750,000 acres of farms.

The Oroville reservoir spill forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate and Gov. Jerry Brown to issue a state of emergency, and officials are hurrying to make repairs before the next storms. Water overwhelming a failing retaining wall at the massive dam has raised questions and calls for action about California infrastructure. News reports are everywhere. By now, you’ve heard about it, but have you seen it? The video and photographs are wild. It’s a complicated scenario that can best be described in images. So here’s a look at the situation from those watching it unfold in person.

California’s San Joaquin Valley continues to sink at an alarming rate because of groundwater pumping and irrigation, according to a new study by NASA. Ground levels in some areas have dropped 1 to 2 feet in the last two years, creating deeper and wider “bowls” that continue to threaten the vital network of channels that transport water across Southern California, researchers say. The findings underscore the fact that even as record rain and snow have brought much of California out of severe drought, some parts of the state will probably struggle with water problems for years to come.

 

At Northern California’s Lake Oroville, water levels receded Monday, stopping the overflow of water from the dam’s emergency spillway. This reduced the risk of immediate uncontrolled flooding — but longer-term concerns remain. William Brangham speaks with Jeffrey Mount of the Public Policy Institute of California about the massive evacuation that took place and the outlook for the dam’s future.

Any dam engineer would be terrified of this nightmare scenario — the possible collapse of a retaining wall in California’s second largest reservoir.  That’s the prospect officials faced when they ordered more than 100,000 people evacuated downstream of the nation’s tallest dam Sunday. It occurred insidiously: a pocket of erosion that crept ever closer to a low concrete wall that was supposed to be the last, best defense against disaster.