Damning Gov’t. Report on the Damn Dam at Oroville

Like we keep sayin’ . . .  it’s all about the crappy-built spillway put on crappy weathered rock surface.

Read the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) report – After Action Panel: Assessment of Oroville Spillway Incident Causes and Recommendations to Improve Effectiveness of the FERC Dam Safety Program.

Opinion: for some reason they are rebuilding the spillway on the same crappy weathered rock and will shortly get the same result! People should have gone to JAIL for that!  This thing was built sloppily and under-maintained all these years.

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Let’s take a look at the report –

THEY KNEW THIS SPILLWAY
WAS SH*TTY IN 1966!!

On page 6 they talk about the weathered rock issues and at the end at page 39 they rip into the dam operators (who all seem to still be in charge of the dam).

Page 27 details the stability of structure documents that had gone missing from DRW and FERC gave them a free pass when they couldn’t produce them.

Page 28 : “Prior to 2003 DWR monitored piezometric levels under the FCO using Carlson type stress meters at various locations along the concrete rock interface. These meters were installed during construction to monitor uplift and to test the effectiveness of the tendons holding the radial gate trunnions.” Then they broke down in 2003 and DRW never replaced them or did any sort of that monitoring again. And nobody went to jail for it!

Page 29: “In our view, treatment of the entire emergency spillway discharge path down to the river is required to provide for safe spillage conveyance in the future. This treatment extends beyond the area envisioned in the DWR 2017/2018 scope of remediation work.”
– HUH?  So did they do it or not?  DWR gets a free pass on that too???

On page 30 it says these inspectors (“consultants”) didn’t bother looking at the spillway geology but relied on DRW’s lies about it.  Hidden on page 32 is the whole debacle wouldn’t have happened if they had working piezometric level monitoring. 

Page 33: “. . . the methods used to detect and evaluate voids beneath the slab were, for the most part, outmoded (i.e. dragging chains along the slab surface and listening to the sound), and more suited for thinner slabs such as road pavements. A more appropriate method for this work may have been the use of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR).” So, will they do GPR or just get out the old chains for the new spillway?

 

OPINION: These criminals broke a ton of laws and their regulators who are supposed to watch over them seem just as bad.  This whole disaster will repeat itself unless new people are put in charge and the good-ol-boys network of “inspection” is busted up.