I'll be glad if we make it to summer and the atmospheric rivers stop and snow melts and the dam is fine. Its the uncertainty that is just so gripping.

Not to be repetitious but you never know.( page 1456 this thread, if the links don't carry over).

Don Colson, a former engineer at DWR, told NBC Bay Area that the green spot on the face of the Oroville Dam could be a sign that the phreatic surface is already leaking internally through the face of the dam. If the phreatic surface comes out at the wrong place and the wrong speed, it could erode the structure from the inside, and if enough force is created, it could wash away the entire dam.


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not posting, so I'm taking out links. Easy to find on a search.

"Do not try to ignore persistent 'wet spots' in the nation's tallest embankment dam," Bea said to xxx. "Do not try to explain them away using 'trite explanations' like 'all dams have leaks' or 'it is a natural spring.' This dam is an extremely important part of our California water supply infrastructure system. If this dam failed catastrophically during high water in the reservoir, there would be significant deaths and injuries, loss of property and productivity, and damage to the environment."

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We recently spoke to Bea about his findings. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CALIFORNIA: You investigated some of the nation’s most spectacular disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, Deepwater Horizon, and the Challenger space shuttle. How would a major breach at Oroville compare to those incidents? And is such a failure even possible?

Bea: Yes, it is possible. And it would be worse than any of them. A breach at Oroville would send a wall of water down the Feather River, through the Sacramento Valley and ultimately into the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. It would destroy towns along the Feather and Sacramento Rivers, flood major portions of Sacramento, and blow out levees throughout the Delta, permanently flooding much of the region. The huge government pumps near Tracy that send water to Southern California cities and farms would be incapacitated. There would be tremendous loss of life and property, and it would be years before a permanent water delivery system to the south state could be reestablished.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t necessarily take a tremendous amount of rain and uncontrolled releases as we saw in February to trigger such a failure. It could happen on a bright, sunny summer’s day. The situation is that serious.