Still no replies to my inquiries of Butte County Sheriff Honea or CA DWR.
Just business as usual, zero information to the public.
Quoting: Crunch62 Crunch, your post about the water coming out of the power plant ....
It implied that the water is NOT going into the the system that channels it to either the urban areas or to the agricultural areas, but was letting it flow unimpeded down river to be flushed into the Bay.
Could you expand a bit on the issue since you are on site and looking at where the water coming out of Oroville is actually being directed to.
Thanks for all of your great insights over the last few months.
Skeptic,
All of the water coming out of Lake Oroville first goes to the diversion dam, a short distance downstream from the reservoir itself.
From there, it either flows into the Thermalito forebay via the Diversion Canal, or into the Feather River channel, over the Fish Barrier Dam and through Oroville to the south.
Some irrigation releases are made from the Forebay, mostly to rice fields to the west. (Richvale, Durham, etc.) The Forebay is very shallow, and useful for warming up the water.
Remaining water then travels through the Thermalito Afterbay and is released into the Feather River south of Oroville. It eventually merges with the Sacramento River north of Sacramento. There is no direct channel to the State Water Project, as all of the water heading to the Central Valley and points south is pumped from the Sacramento Delta.
At that point, there is basically a confluence of the Sacramento River, the Feather River, the Yuba, American, and Bear Rivers. And maybe some I forgot. A lot of water, much of which is pumped south. The rest goes out to sea via the SF Bay.
The California Water Project has it's headwaters at Lake Oroville.
The Federal Water Project begins at Lake Shasta.
Around Sacramento, they converge into the California Aqueduct to move the water south. It is complicated.
