AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY PAUL PRESTON

When state water officials scaled back their mass dumping of water from the damaged Oroville Dam this week, they knew the riverbed below would dry up enough to allow the removal of vast piles of debris from the fractured main spillway.

But they apparently did not anticipate a side effect of their decision to stop feeding the gushing Feather River — a rapid drop in river level that, according to downstream landowners, caused miles of embankment to come crashing down.

With high water no longer propping up the shores, the still-wet soil crashed under its own weight, sometimes dragging in trees, rural roads and farmland, they said.

“The damage is catastrophic,” said Brad Foster, who has waterfront property in Marysville (Yuba County), about 25 miles south of Lake Oroville.

The farmer not only saw 25-foot bluffs collapse, but also lost irrigation lines to his almonds. “When the bank pulled in,” he said, “it pulled the pumps in with it. It busted the steel pipes.”

Officials at the state Department of Water Resources, which runs the dam, said Friday that they’re monitoring the river for erosion. But they declined to discuss the situation.

The department is already wrestling with the problem of endangered salmon becoming trapped in riverbed pools since the outflows at the dam were cut. The falling riverbanks, reported mainly in Sutter and Yuba counties, are just the latest outgrowth of the state being forced to quickly increase and decrease flows from the swollen reservoir since early February.