Oroville residents submit petition to ‘hold DWR accountable’ to federal agency -

Robert Bateman, one of the organizers of the Feather River Recovery Alliance, speaks while other group members listen, at a press conference on Friday at the Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville. The alliance submitted a petition to the Federal Energency Regulatory Commission this week to “hold DWR accountable.” (Risa Johnson — Enterprise-Record)

By RISA JOHNSON | rjohnson@chicoer.com | Chico Enterprise-RecordPUBLISHED: April 5, 2019 at 5:26 pm | UPDATED: April 5, 2019 at 7:41 pm

OROVILLE — A petition to “hold the DWR accountable” was hand-delivered this week by Butte County Supervisor Bill Connelly to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C.

The Feather River Recovery Alliance is the name of the nonprofit run by local volunteers who organized the petition. It evolved from the local advocacy group Oroville Strong which was affiliated with the Oroville Chamber of Commerce.ADVERTISING

Specifically, the Feather River Recovery Alliance is asking FERC to not reissue a license to the state Department of Water Resources to operate the Oroville Dam until terms of the agreement are renegotiated, including a new recreation plan. The group says it received 6,469 local signatures on the petition.

Members of the alliance huddled under umbrellas Friday for a press conference outside of the Feather River Fish Hatchery. The group began collecting signatures for its petition a little over a year ago.

At the press conference, Connelly said he was in Washington, D.C. this week as part of a lobbying effort related to the Camp Fire and the Oroville Dam crisis. With regard to the Feather River Recovery Alliance petition, he said he is mostly interested in seeing locals get the recreation they deserve.

“It’s been a very negative impact on our community that they (DWR) have never developed the recreation they promised,” he said. “They’ve argued to the FERC that if we don’t build it, they won’t come. Therefore they aren’t coming, so we won’t build it.”

Richard Harriman, a local attorney, said the cost of the needed preventative maintenance and repairs would have been miniscule compared to the $1.1 billion cost to repair the dam.

“I don’t like the fact that DWR and the State Water Contractors have bogarted all of the people in the county of Butte and the city of Oroville and not honored their commitment they made back in 1966 to take care of this community, to provide recreation, to provide some sort of compensation for having taken away the water … and given nothing back,” Harriman said.

Genoa Widener, who handles outreach for the alliance, said the most important thing to her going forward was independent oversight of the dam.

“It’s great the spillway has been rebuilt. It’s bigger and better than ever, according to DWR,” Widener said. “But all the problems that were present before 2017 with the spillway are still present with the rest of the dam: aging materials, aging technology, lack of maintenance and the human factor, which were all covered by the independent forensic team’s report of why the spillway collapsed.”

A little over two years ago, on Feb. 12, 2017, about 188,000 downstream residents were given a one-hour evacuation order out of fear the damaged spillway could fail. Though the worst fears never materialized, and the spillway has been entirely reconstructed with additional oversight now in place, Robert Bateman said that community trust in the department remains low.

“At this point it’s very difficult for people living below the dam to trust the DWR,” said Bateman, one of the group’s organizers.

A DWR spokesperson declined to comment on the petition on Friday.

Risa Johnson?@risamjohnson

“We got nothing. Oroville got nothing.”

That’s Richard Thompson, president of the Feather River Recovery Alliance, speaking today about what his not-for-profit group feels local residents are owed on account of the #OrovilleDam in their backyard.8 4:58 PM – Apr 5, 2019 See Risa Johnson’s other Tweets Twitter Ads info and privacy

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Risa Johnson

Risa Johnson covers the city of Chico, local politics and general news for the Chico Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register newspapers. She has written extensively about the Oroville Dam crisis. She is a proud alumna of Chico State University. Reach her at 530-896-7763.