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REPORT ABUSIVE REPLY
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Message Subject
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California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed
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Poster Handle
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Anonymous Coward |
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Post Content
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Note for those coming late to this thread ... this is the HIGHEST DAM IN THE US at 770'!! Taller than Hoover Dam (by 44'). It is a Rock Filled Dam, NOT a concrete dam. It holds back the second largest lake in California.
The problem is that the Spillway off to the side started to disintegrate yesterday as they were raising the release level of water from the dam so as to make room for the water that would be coming into the Lake over the next 4-5 days from the intense incoming storms.
The water release rate was approximately at 60,000 CFS at the time of the disintegration of the Spillway (scheduled to go to 70,000 CFS). That Spillway is currently completely shut down. The damage area is approximately 180' wide by about 230' long per the news conference. Per other reports the erosion UNDER the spillway has in places gone to 30' deep.
Currently the ONLY water being released is the water going through the generator turbines (only 1 of 2 penstocks were in operation yesterday) and that has only been about 5100 CFS. They are attempting to get the other penstock operational for today (is was closed off for maintenance) and with that operational they believe that they can raise the amount of water going through the generator plant to 15,000 CFS.
Per the news conference last night (link is above on this thread) they will finally get to inspect the spillway today once it is light. Until that is done (as of the time of the news conference) they have no repair plan yet devised. They did state that they WOULD release through the damaged Spillway, if needed (ie: to prevent the dam from being overtopped I would assume since that would cause even more erosion into the spillway bed).
The "FULL" level for the lake, ie: filled to Full Flood Level (about 50' above desired pool level), is 900'. Wikipedia puts the absolute top at 935', but that would have to be the overtop level of the dam structure itself.
5 AM PST data for Oroville Lake/Dam
Water Level: 864.54
Water Flow IN (hour before): 74,679 CFS
Water Flow OUT (hour before): 5,069 CFS
Water coming into the lake has dropped since yesterday AM when it was close to 130,000 CFS .... but NEW STORMS with heavy rain are headed towards the watershed area.
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