California Drought

[turnkey4099]

Just found this drone fly-by video of the Oroville Dam spillway taken yesterday after they shut the water off.

Seems like the spillway concrete held up pretty well where it was laid close to the underlying bedrock. That would seem to indicate that the structural support over the portions covering dirt weren't so well designed. :2cents:

But it also shows that erosion of the spillway up the hill toward the dam had pretty much stopped where it came back on to bedrock, so maybe all they really need to do is erect some diversion walls to protect the sides and lower end of the spillway and let it go at that.

With the water off, the main focus is getting the debris at the bottom of the spillway cleared out so they can lower the level of the power plant discharge pool. Projections are that will be done by Thursday.

Pretty well confirms the "there is no danger of the dam failing" tht was repeated so many times but the doomsayers were still screaming FAILURE!!!. I presume the emergency spillway was also bedded in that bedrock.

 

[turnkey4099]

That is a hugh amount of debris..

It would go a long way toward filling the horrendous potholes in the streets in Spokane, WA .

 

[California]

Ahh Operation Plowshare. Just what they need, some nukes added to the equation. I could probably watch from my place. LOL

I was thinking more along the scale of a string of bunker-blasters!

Not like that plan to make a freeway cut all the way through the Bristol Mountains (Mohave desert) all at once! (to build I-40, a more direct replacement for Route 66).

Caltrans' in-house newsletter had a different description of that proposal than what I see on Wikipedia. According to an interview with a former chief design engineer, AEC visited and offered their instant-pass proposal. Caltrans thought it was a crackpot idea and that's as far as it got.

I think one thing critical to Caltrans but not considered by AEC is a roadway needs a stable base, building on rubble of uneven depth will never be stable and worst-case could fail like this spillway. Plus perhaps the earthmoving required to clean up the blasting mess might be as great as the earthmoving required for conventional construction so no overall benefit/cost. Then there's the radiation-in-the wind issue.....

 

[ForestGrump]

Right now and throughout the spring there are a lot of rivers that are in danger of flooding. The California Nevada River Forecast Center tracks all that data and makes it available for anyone to look at. The website is interactive with many datasets available. You can zoom in on a particular location and get the latest information easily.

CNRFC - California Nevada River Forecast Center

Or you can go with these guys:

Like!

 

[ForestGrump]

Pretty well confirms the "there is no danger of the dam failing" tht was repeated so many times but the doomsayers were still screaming FAILURE!!!. I presume the emergency spillway was also bedded in that bedrock.

I disagree, I interpret the video and the debris field differently. They thought the spillway was built on a solid rock bed, it wasn't. Much of the solid rock is now debris, not so solid after all. The debris field is what was under the spillway. The dam is also built on the same "solid rock bed", not so solid after all is it?

I read somewhere that the Folsom dam is undergoing a huge very expensive retrofit. Perhaps that should occur here too with the new knowledge and up to day science that is now available. It's not only on shaky ground it's on crumbling ground.

 

[houstonscott]

Pretty well confirms the "there is no danger of the dam failing" tht was repeated so many times but the doomsayers were still screaming FAILURE!!!. I presume the emergency spillway was also bedded in that bedrock.

You keep talking about doomsayers, people were concerned about weir failing and the lake emptying by cutting a new channel right at the weir. If you look at the dam as a system, it failed, and needs hundreds of millions in repairs. The scale of damage is staggering. Anyone who thinks we didn't dodge a huge bullet is not being honest.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

No, it didn't fail.

 

[kloudbuster]

I would say the spillway failed! Don't know what else you would call that. I agree the main dam was never in any danger

 

[aczlan]

I would say the spillway failed! Don't know what else you would call that. I agree the main dam was never in any danger

I would say the spillway was damaged.
They can still control water flowing through the spillway and the dam is not in danger of failing from the damaged spillway.

Aaron Z

 

[houstonscott]

I would say the spillway was damaged. They can still control water flowing through the spillway and the dam is not in danger of failing from the damaged spillway. Aaron Z

Why fix it then if it's not broken?