Officials were warned the Oroville Dam emergency spillway wasnt safe. They didnt listen.
In 2005, three environmental groups warned state and federal officials about what they believed was a problem with Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway, which was at risk of collapsing over the weekend as recent storms caused the adjacent massive reservoir to swell.
Their concern, which seemed to have fallen on deaf ears: The emergency spillway, which is meant to be used in urgent situations — is not really a spillway. Rather, it’s a 1,700-foot long concrete weir that empties onto a dirt hillside. That means, in the event of severe flooding, water would erode that hillside and flood nearby communities, the groups said then.
That nearly happened on Sunday, when a hole on the emergency spillway threatened to flood the surrounding area and prompted officials to evacuate thousands of residents who remain displaced as of Monday afternoon.
When the Oroville Dam was going through a re-licensing process, the three groups filed a motion in October 2005, urging a federal regulatory agency to require state officials to armor the emergency spillway with concrete so that in case of extreme rain and flooding, water won’t freely cascade down and erode the hillside. The upgrade would have cost million of dollars, and no one wanted to foot the bill, said Ronald Stork, senior policy advocate for Friends of the River, one of the groups that filed the motion.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/officials-were-warned-the-oroville-dam-emergency-spillway-wasn%e2%80%99t-safe-they-didn%e2%80%99t-listen/ar-AAmU43u?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
