California Drought

[jerrybob]

Most of your politicians should be taken out and.......

Aborted! (Friendly politics.....here we come!!)

 

[California]

Looks like the Orville dam has failed. Anyone watching this.... Water has migrated around dam completely and is draining the lake 3/4 of the way below the emergency spillway. Just time now. If main spillway can't drain lake quickly enough and there's not much chance of that now, there's going to be a catastrophe.

Relax, Oroville Dam isn't failing, only the overflow spillway next to the dam. The concrete spillway is disintegrating and soil beneath the spillway is eroding a few feet down to bedrock but it can't erode that. None of this affects the primary dam.

Beyond that concrete spillway, when the dam was built they leveled an area for an Emergency Spillway that is at lower elevation than the primary Oroville Dam. If the reservoir reaches capacity, water will overtop that and it will dump a broad sheet of water down a native hillside.
The forecast this morning is the rain has ended and the reservoir is no longer rising, so that emergency spillway is not likely to be used.

The real consequence here is a huge amount of erosion debris in the channel below the dam and headed down to the fish hatchery below. F&G is presently trucking the salmon over to another hatchery. Aside from that, downstream consequences should be minimal.

Another set of photos (click right arrow)

 

[aczlan]

Looks like the Orville dam has failed. Anyone watching this.... Water has migrated around dam completely and is draining the lake 3/4 of the way below the emergency spillway. Just time now. If main spillway can't drain lake quickly enough and there's not much chance of that now, there's going to be a catastrophe.

Got a source? Everything I am seeing says nothing of the sort. The concrete spillway has a hole in it about 1/3 of the way down, but that is built on bedrock and shouldn't let water go the wrong way. Both spillways are a ways away from the dam itself and are positioned so that they wont let the water erode the dam itself:

Source: Oroville Dam Spillway Failure | Metabunk

Aaron Z

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Looks like the Orville dam has failed. Anyone watching this.... Water has migrated around dam completely and is draining the lake 3/4 of the way below the emergency spillway. Just time now. If main spillway can't drain lake quickly enough and there's not much chance of that now, there's going to be a catastrophe.

You must know something I don't, and I live above Lake Oroville. Here's a shot taken from my back porch a few minutes ago:



As you can see, the water is almost to the tree line, which coincides with the top of Oroville Dam. I think I would have noticed it if the dam was "draining the lake 3/4 of the way below the emergency spillway".

I would hope people would verify the information they post, especially something as life critical as this. But in this day and age, I guess that's just too much to ask.:muttering:

The main spillway is damaged, that's all:



They've continued to release water down the spillway since that photo was taken, and the hole is much larger as a result, and the concrete continues to erode down the spillway. I've been watching the KRCR-TV web site for info, and they seem to be posting pretty much in real time.

 

[aczlan]

Another picture of the damaged main spillway from today (as I understand it):


Aaron Z

 

[houstonscott]

Where did the water come from that eroded the soil away under the emergency spillway concrete, and cause it to collapse?

 

[prichard]

From the lake as designed

 

[aczlan]

Where did the water come from that eroded the soil away under the emergency spillway concrete, and cause it to collapse?

The concrete of the spillway was bad and it eroded from the top down. As I understand it there are pictures of trucks parked in that spot and people inspecting that section or within 50 feet of that section back in 2015.

Aaron Z

 

[houstonscott]

The concrete of the spillway was bad and it eroded from the top down. As I understand it there are pictures of trucks parked in that spot and people inspecting that section or within 50 feet of that section back in 2015. Aaron Z

The lake was dry in 2015, no water had ever gone over emergency spillway since 1968.

 

[houstonscott]

Another picture of the damaged main spillway from today (as I understand it): <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=498293"/> Aaron Z

Looks like half is gone now, not just a hole.