They were dropping them in a sink hole at the north end between the parking lot and the road.

Reality sunk in.

1-2 inches of rain forcasted for tomorrow night.

Get out of the river valleys if you are still there.


ETA: Lake is at 890ft.

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?s=ORO&d=14-Feb-2017+06:52&span=25hours

Oroville Evacuation Fund
http://nvcf.org/fund/oroville-evacuation-fund/
[email protected]
(530) 891-1150
240 Main Street, Suite 260
Chico, CA 95928
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Fri  | 9 AM - 12 PM


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Evacuation=redistribution of your stuff.

A couple questions

The plaque shows dam height of 770'. how is the ESpill at 901' when the dam is 20' higher?
What is the elevation of the main spillway? I thought it was 811' but I'm seeing 850'


I keep hearing Fred Thompson... "this business will get out of control...."

SEMJEDI - Thanks for reposting links.

I found a report that says the river valve outlet was partially repaired in 2014, and tested in 2014 - 2015 up to half capacity.  Since the river valve uses the same tunnels as the plant, they can not open it without further flooding to the plant due to the debri at the end of the spillway backing up the water.

They use howitzers to clear avalanche build ups, why not drop some precision guided munitions on the debris build up to clear it out?

You might be completely full of shit, I don't know.

But if I was downstream of this I'd be looong gone by now.

I am skeptical that we are seeing quick erosion of good granite.  El Capitan type erosion occurs over many thousands of years...maybe hundreds of thousands of years....not 24-30 hours as in this case.

When you designed everything downstream it was a flood control Dam.  That all changed when it became a water storage dam.  They should have let a lot more water out and now can't do a thing about it.

Until it can be determined to be safe.  I would not expect that until at least after the coming weekend.

notsureifserious.jpg

Just ran across this for a diagram of power plant tunnels to give a visual of the setup.

Attached File

The valves were rebuilt and tested.  http://www.nwhydro.org/wp-content/uploads/events_committees/Docs/2015_Annual_Conference_Presentations/04-Tuesday/4-Anderson.pdf

Whether they are operating them right now is unclear.

The E-spill is at 901' altitude above sea level. The dam is 770' feet high relative.

Nothing happened yesterday, the water was safely lowered however the question is still if it was enough.  Bad rains are coming tomorrow night and through the weekend.  There will likely be more water this coming weekend on the already damaged spillway than last weekend.  The people affected by the evacuation probably won't be able to return for weeks.

Report says the final fix to the river valve would only provide 5400 cfs of flow.  Have not found anything that states there was a 100% test.

Just running through hazard analysis - Tell me if I'm wrong here:

1. Worse case - Dam failure = unlikely due to the design, it being around the ridge from the spillways, and also being much taller
a. Caveat - hillside at main spillways collapses more if the main spillway fails more and water leeches in that direction

2. Emergency Spillway failure: If the E-Spillway were to fail the height of the weir wall in water would rush into the valley flooding many areas downstream (if the water is that high).  Additionally water release control is lost other than the normal outlets via the hydro plant as there is no hydro plant bypass at this time.

3. Main Spillway failure: If the main spillway erosion moves up the hill towards the gates it is unlikely for the gates to fail (that we are aware of unless the bedrock is cracked and allows water to channel underneath) but it will begin washing away the hillside potentially putting the main dam at risk as well as leaving very few options for water to escape.  

- DWR is at this time forced to use the main spillway at a flow level they were initially uncomfortable with in order to lower the reservoir level in anticipation of rain/snow melt but more importantly to prevent the E-Spillway from being used
- E-Spillway is being shored up as erosion on the side (parking lot area) was more than expected and may undermine the weir or at least erode the side of the weir where there is NO additional protection
- E-Spillway is being shored up in the front in order to prevent further cracking/damage to what appears to be exposed bedrock (in some areas).  At this time we are unsure of the depth, mooring, anchoring, etc. of the weir wall as well as the fill/compaction of material in front other than it was being washed away at a rate that made DWR very nervous

- Once levels are low enough and inflow levels are sustained at a rate DWR is comfortable with they can turn off the main spillway to examine damage and potentially clear debris from the river which is causing blockages/backups to the hydro plant water release however:
- Restarting the power plant in any quick fashion is unlikely (I don't know any electronics that like being wet).  Furthermore, utilizing the normal water channels through the turbines may not be permissible due to the potential of damaging turbines.  It is known that the bypass tunnels were either partially repaired or not able to be used at this time.

DWR needs to keep the levels as low as possible in the reservoir which may mean continual flooding downstream as well as wear/tear on downstream flood control gates and smaller dam structures.  Temporary fill, grout, etc. needs to be staged nearby as well as equipment and manpower based on anticipated precipitation and temperatures.  Its going to be months before they can even begin to really put a dent in their issues.

Ht -vs Ele   10-4    ( Du-Oh!)

This seems to me to be a fair evaluation of the situation.  

Basically it's going to be a busy year and they won't be able to touch the power plant until the fall when the snow melt is gone and they can get the water level to the bottom of the main spillway.  

Lots and lots of fill dirty, wait, pray it doesn't overflow again and repeat as the water level allows them to.

The elevations drawings posted earlier show 811.

The weir is about 60' high next to the spillway (look at photos, top of dam is 21' over top of weir)   the spillway floor is definitely below the visible bottom of the weir.

I dont remember how tall the gates themselves are

ETA:  Gates are at 811.33.  There are 8  17'7" wide x 33' high gates.

Shasta and Don Pedro reservoir are at 98% and releasing water.  Not sure if anything is really comparable but they are seemingly trying to balance things at the absolute top of capacity.  Some other like Trinity may get there too.

This^^^^ is why I love ArfCom.

Yeah, an earthquake will solve this conundrum.

Posssible they'd like to save the hydro plant

It would resolve the issue of the espilleay repairs!

I guess they're not getting to 850' before it starts raining again.

here's a larger pic with the story behind it

               
                                   

    River valve damaged in 2009 could have been fourth way to release excess water

Amen to that! I go away for a day or two and have to skip huge chunks of the thread to catch up because it's like trying to drink from a firehose Oroville spillway.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but apparently this thing has a history of dropping an earthquake after a "rapid fluctuation" in water levels.

http://www.johnmartin.com/earthquakes/eqpapers/00000052.htm

Here's a question for the geologists.   The crappy material a the emergency spillway...   it looks OLD and weathered/decomposed to me, but is it possible some of that fracturing was not initially there when they built this sucker, and that the fracturing occurred later as a result of seismic activity?

LOL!

California and its "priorities" like light rail...

So I saw on Fox News that the federal goverment is demanding answers from the state as to how did it get to this point. I'd love to be in that meeting.

Wow.

CA really is the ultimate brokedick BMW owner.  The valve system failed @ 85%  - due to a concrete failure.  And they just walked away from the issue.

Thank you!

It only takes threat of imminent failure and an evacuation of 200,000 people to ask questions that should have been raised from 2009...

How long can they be kept out? How long did people wait to come back to New Orleans?

After the coming weekend rains I suspect there will be answers whether some will even bother. It's what Americans sometimes do, lose their homes and possessions and start over best they can.

It was TWO helicopters, not one.

Yeah, that's where I pulled the pic from then the poster after me linked the PDF with better pictures and diagrams of the system.

My girlfriend went to UWM in the 80;s , what is the name of that street that all most of all that partying imbibed upon. She became a little sister and went away, but holy shit, I spilt a lotta rocks on that street.  Good times.

Welp, just another unedumicated monday-morning quarterbacker here, but:



Seems to me there is no possible way they could line the entire e-spillway with the rocks-and-concrete mix (riprap, they're calling it?), b/c it's just TOO fucking wide.  And, looks like chances favor, they ARE going to be using it again.  In fact, if the inflow continues as projected, they aren't really going to have any choice in the matter.

Any chance, then, they can build a berm of rocks-and-concrete mix all along the parking lot edge to at least concentrate the flow into a smaller area to be lined?  Still an impossible task, I expect, but looking at the pic, it would at least cut the area that needed lining in half.  At least the e-spillway flow is nice and gentle, as compared to the firehose blast on the main spillway.

Good to hear. CA needs to be taken to task for all of its stupidity. Liberals in charge of infrastructure would be like having a preschool class running a war room.

Interesting read!

But hey... at least there's no fracking in the area!

Tough crowd. Here are scans of the book.

http://pubs.geothermal-library.org/lib/grc/1021054.pdf

https://archive.org/details/geologyoforovill00creerich

State Street, that Great Street!
100k+ of drunken students filling the street during halloween, back in the day.

Go bobcats!  Only thing more fun than Halloween was going to court for the show the next day , as an observer of course.

Following this thread and I don't think I have seen it asked,

Why not blow the hill or dump fill to isolate the tailway below the power house and start draining it so they can fix whatever they can in the power plant and then clear the rubble once started to help drain the damn?

This

I agree, it's not well written.

I meant the soil is being eroded from atop and from between the granite boulders, I did not intend to imply the granite, itself, is being eroded in a few days.  That granite boulder has not budged even with all that outflow.