AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY PAUL PRESTON

The Governor Jerry Brown was at the Department of Water Resources Wednesday in Oroville getting a briefing on the spillway repairs.

Action News Now Reporter Sara Stinson arrived at Department of Water Resources Wednesday afternoon during the briefing where she saw Governor Brown. When she inquired about the governor’s presence, she was told “he was not there,” and was immediately escorted out of the tent briefing room and was informed only of spillway repairs.

Later in the day DWR officials called us and apologized and said the Governor just wanted it to be a quick and private visit.

Governor Brown tweeted out photos of his visit where he got an aerial tour of repairs and was able to thank crews for all their hard work.
Brown was also briefed by the acting director of DWR.

This is what we do know about the repairs of the emergency spillway, the DWR continues to release 60,000 cubic feet per second from the spillway.

Lake levels rose 853 feet, 48 feet below the maximum level of the reservoir.

PG&E crews were able to fly steel poles by helicopter to replace power poles that were destroyed by the water outflow of the dam on Feb. 10.

Crews are also disassembling and removing two transmission towers, then will construct a permanent transmission line.

This has put a temporary flight restriction on all other helicopters working on the repairs.

But, 24-hours-a-day, regardless of weather conditions, 40 truckloads an hour have been delivering gravel, rocks and cement to continue construction.

There is still no word on the amount of damage caused to the emergency spillway.

“As long as we have water flowing down through that area we can’t get our experts in there to see how much that damage is so they can start formulating the plans to rebuilt or fix that spillway,” said Chris Orrock, DWR spokesperson.

The goal is to stop outflow to zero cfs on to the emergency spillway by this weekend to assess the damage.

DWR officials say they are looking at weather conditions and lake levels before they make the decision to stop all out flows.

The Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea confirmed Governor Jerry Brown was there says he is frustrated they didn’t tell us from the start.