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Message Subject California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed
Poster Handle Anonymous Coward
Post Content
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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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"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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 Quoting: Prayandprepare000


Pretty sure they doused the wet spot with RoundUp a couple of years ago so people wouldn't be alarmed. Moisture/vegetation creeping out again from left shoulder (looking downstream) of dam face. Fines in soil should be uniform across/up and down dam face, regardless of layered phases of construction. That shouldn't affect uniformity of dam face soil.

You shouldn't be able to see 'layers' from construction because they should all have been well buried by face fill when dam was completed. Green bands/spot can ONLY be caused by soil fines being washed out/pushed through dam face. Face surface erosion would produce vertical bands, not horizontal ones. There is significant surface erosion just below wet spot, but this detail wouldn't be very visible from satellite imagery.

Nothing interesting/different about latest imagery besides intensity (bright green spot) of vegetation rendering. Prolonged recent rains shouldn't have mattered. Some vegetation always grows on dam face during winter rains. It's the uneven nature of that growth that's a red flag.

DWR has continuously claimed awareness of the green spot and dismisses any concern about it. They supposedly sank a monitoring well on the left shoulder uphill of green spot, but never said much about it besides 'natural spring'. Note: the drain curtain inside the middle of the dam should take care of any water intrusion from the shoulder. It extends all the way to either end of the dam, including over/beyond the left shoulder green spot.

I guess there's a remote chance that the shoulder's 'natural spring' empties closer to the face of the dam than it does to the core. DWR has no way of knowing what vertical region(s) of the drain curtain may be plugged/compromised, so it seems improbable that they can determine with any certainty that there is no safety concern here. If the dam ever fails on the left shoulder, then they will have a lot of explaining to do (to taxpayers and downstream survivors).

Nice to know the largest earth-fill dam in the U.S. has a natural spring saturating its face in a region of uneven settlement. What could possible go wrong?




 Quoting: PavewayIV


YO! YOU HAVE BROUGHT THE REAL SHIT HERE..THANK YOU. DAM HAS
NATURAL SPRING..GREAT. AND THAT IS THE BEST CASE ANSWER THEY
HAVE GOT. DARKER COLOR IS A NUTRIENT SUPPLY OF WATER, RIGHT?
 
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