Oroville Dam: Are there still Seabees?. . Can they get in there and help?

[annabanana]

What about the Army Corps of Engineers? It looks like California is just airlifting rocks into holes out there. I know Trump is no big fan of California generally, but wouldn't a dam failure be catastrophic on enough levels to get Federal attention?

[safeinOhio]

1. Army Corps of Engineers

won't act without doing a long major study of the problem.

[hack89]

2. The expertise to fix this lies in the private sector

it is basic civil engineering.

[AngryAmish]

3. There are many problems.

First, the state has been lying this entire time.

Second, the emergency spillway is wholly unusable. For decades they should have either built the concrete spillway. TPTB said no. Then they allowed trees and vegetation to grown there. That is really bad, because tress get washed away, root ball comes up and erosion time 10. They use the emergency spillway again, twenty feet of lake comes out.

Third, the soil in front of the dam is supersaturated. When they turned off the main spillway you could see water shooting into the spillway from the sides. This is floating the whole spillway up, eroding underneath.

Fourth, the bedrock the dam is on used to be exposed, called weathered or rotton. Many fissures there.

Fifth, the mass of the dam is made up of tailings.

They might get a week of rain upstream. If I was downstream I would pack up my valuables, get a full tank of gas and go to spring training.

[braddy]

5. Thanks for the information, yours is a very good post.

[annabanana]

6. Between you and haele (below) I don't know what to think!. . n/t

[AngryAmish]

10. I am just rejurgitating what I heard on a dam safety podcast.

I have no actual knowledge. Not my field.

[haele]

4. Oroville Dam is primarily a packed earth dam.

Bags of large heavy rocks will support the base foundation around the spillway and the upper retaining levee/secondary spillway and allow for more run-out than erosion during the rainy season. The upper retaining levee is not concrete, from what I remember visiting there a long time ago.

CWA won't be able to fix the damage to the dam until late summer; the best they can do is to keep patching it and hope for the best.

The good thing is that measuring and assessing tools have improved immensely over the decade, and the dam's structural integrity can be monitored fairly accurately and quickly, now that they know there's a problem.

Haele

[annabanana]

7. Between you and AngryAmish, (above), I don't know what to think. . .n/t

[haele]

9. We're both right. I'm just showing why this is all they can do now.

Angry Amish is talking about the risks that need to be managed.
There's a lot of "ifs" going on here, and no more permanent fix can be done until summer, no matter who is trying to fix the dam.

It's a matter of managing mitigation processes now. It's not a good situation, sort of a slow-motion car crash.

Haele

[B2G]

8. More rain moves in tomorrow night

If weather.com is accurate, they are facing 7 full days of rain.

It'll be a miracle if that thing holds.