California Gov. Brown Asks Trump for Help with Oroville Dam After Ignoring Warnings for Years


The Oroville Dam in northern California is about 50 years old. It’s the tallest dam in the US. It provides flood control, a lake for recreation, and electric power generation. The water it impounds is used in cities as far south as San Diego. Parts of the dam complex have failed due to record high water levels, and the possibility of a catastrophic collapse cannot be ruled out.

As water has poured into the dam from heavy rains faster than it has been let out at the dam, the lake level has risen. There are three ways to get water out of the lake: through the turbines in the electric power generation station, through the adjustable gates at the primary spillway, and over the top of what is basically a concrete wall that acts as an emergency spillway that is a bit lower than the dam itself.

The power station can only pass a fraction of the water that must be released. The lower half of the primary spillway has failed with enormous holes opening up that threaten to work their way back up to the gates controlling the flow. The emergency spillway was just used for the first time in history, and the land below started eroding so fast that the primary spillway had to be opened much wider to stop the water from flowing over the emergency spillway even though that made the holes worse.

With heavy rains predicted and snow melt to increase soon, this crisis is far from over.

So how did California get into this mess?

More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.

Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.

The groups filed the motion with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They said that the dam, built and owned by the state of California, and finished in 1968, did not meet modern safety standards because in the event of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as “loss of crest control.”

“Loss of crest control” is precisely what is likely to happen if that emergency spillway is used again. The thing was not fixed 12 years ago because the agencies drawing water from the project did not want to pay for the repairs, claiming they were unnecessary.

FERC rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary. Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, along with the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water from the state of California through the State Water Project.

This emergency spillway that these water companies said was in fine shape, started to fail a couple of days ago when only 5% of its rated capacity flowed over it.

On Sunday, with flows of only 6,000 to 12,000 cubic feet per second — water only a foot or two deep and less than 5 percent of the rate that FERC said was safe — erosion at the emergency spillway became so severe that officials from the State Department of Water Resources ordered the evacuation of more than 185,000 people. The fear was that the erosion could undercut the 1,730-foot-long concrete lip along the top of the emergency spillway, allowing billions of gallons of water to pour down the hillside toward Oroville and other towns downstream.

Such an uncontrolled release from California’s second-largest reservoir while it was completely full could become one of the worst dam disasters in U.S. history.

This is a classic case of “pay me now or pay me later at a much higher cost.”

There’s an interesting twist to this. This is California which has been at the center of the rebellion against President Trump’s immigration policies and actions. Some state and local agencies have gone so far as to cut off communication with their federal counterparts to shelter illegal aliens. While refusing to work with Washington on the one hand, the state’s governor has gone to President Trump, hat in hand, looking for federal bailouts for a problem the state ignored 12 years ago.

On Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown sought federal help from President Trump by asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to declare “a major disaster” in California in light of the damage done by recent storms.

The East Bay Times reports: “Brown formally requested the declaration for the series of storms striking the state between Jan. 3 and Jan. 12.” He noted that “heavy rains, winds and snow, particularly in Northern California, left eight people dead and knocked out power to an estimated 1 million Californian homes and businesses.”

Brown’s request comes as Gov. Brown has challenged the Trump administration on climate change, immigration, Obamacare, and other issues.

The state has had plenty of money to pursue leftist initiatives, primarily in the state’s major cities, but did not have the money 12 years ago to prevent a catastrophe, or now to alleviate that effects of a catastrophe in the less-populated, agricultural heart of the state.

These are Americans and humans involved here. So refusing to help save lives or property because of rebellious state and local governments is not an option. Neither is the fact that California is run by a collection of irresponsible and incompetent leftist loons, starting with the governor, a reason not to help.

Yet the point must be made in a way that cannot be misunderstood, that California has its priorities wrong. Were that not the case, its leaders would not be running to Washington for help in fixing a problem that might yet cost Californians their lives and livelihoods. To do otherwise is to invite a repeat of this state government caused disaster.

 

Source: Breitbart

Source: Mercury News



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