Oroville Dam Fail: Spillway Leaks From Same Spot as 2017 Disaster
AENN
Developing Story
After $1.1 billion was spent on the rebuilding of the Oroville Dam main and emergency spillways the water is leaking from behind the dam and leaking out the main spillway and along the side. The leaks are from the same spots that created the original spillway’s failure on February 7, 2017.
The main spillway started to come apart on February 7, 2017 when halfway down the spillway shut large chunks flew off the spillway. The California State Department of Water Resources at the time feared the destruction of down stream fisheries and shut the spillway off. By February 11, 2017 the reservoir began to over top the dam at the emergency spillway. The emergency spillway had never been used and was nothing more than dirt in front of the emergency weir where the water from the reservoir was overtopping.
The water soon eroded the dirt and within hours major “head cutting” started to occur. Over the objections of dam experts who feared a major dam failure which could lead to the loss of the entire dam the DWR still kept the main spillway closed. On the afternoon of Sunday February 12, 2017 the Butte County Sheriff became suspicious of the DWR handling of the crisis and how they were dealing with the situation at the dam.. The sheriff went to DWR headquarters and discovered the DWR managers were keeping evidence of the impending disaster from him. When confronted by the sheriff the DWR officials revealed there was less than one our before the entire dam would go into failure mode endangering the lives of more than one million Californians.
The sheriff immediately ordered the mass evacuation of 190, 000 people from around the dam and ordered DWR officials to immediately open up the main spillway gates. In a tense four hours following the sheriff’s orders officials waited to see if the dam would fail but water levels went down below the height of the emergency spillway’s weir thus sparing certain death and disaster over a large area of Northern California. (See Inundation Map Below)
This is a developing story and will be updated.
