California's Lake Oroville Main Spillway Severely Damaged/Eroded. Oroville Dam's Recently Reconstructed Main Spillway Fundamentally Flawed

I said the same thing half a dozen posts ago. It doesn't make us correct, but, it isn't just you wondering.

Kings and...

Now this is just lovely. The wonders of google and what you can find. I think I left enough out to get under 50%....

[link to wattsupwiththat.com (secure)]

Home2017November29

Unbelievable: New $500 million Oroville dam spillway already has cracks.

CA Department of of Water Resources says: “don’t worry”, it’s “robust”.

The state DWR agency spent an estimated $500 million to rush a new spillway replacement into service by November 1st. Now it appears this rush job has cracks in the steel reinforced concrete, repeating the same start of the scenario that caused the collapse in the first place.

Small cracks have appeared in the new concrete in the main spillway at Oroville Dam, but the state says they were expected and nothing to worry about.

An explanation of the “hairline cracks” was called for in a letter the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wrote to the Department of Water Resources in October.

The Oct. 2 letter from FERC said it understood DWR was concerned when the cracks were discovered after concrete curing covers were removed from some of the slabs poured this year.

It called for a report within 30 days that mapped the cracks, identified potential causes and spelled out remedies, “if necessary.”

.......

In the cover letter, DWR said it had evaluated the cracks and determined they were caused by efforts to create “a robust and durable structure.”


UC Berkeley civil engineering professor Robert Bea, a veteran analyst of structure failures, said cracking in high-strength reinforced concrete structures is never expected.

“Cracking in high-strength reinforced concrete structures is never ‘to be expected,’ ” Bea said in an email. Even small cracks could increase stresses in the concrete when it is under “service loading” — for instance, when large volumes of water hurtle down the structure at speeds approaching 90 mph.

The cracking “develops paths for water to reach the steel elements embedded in the concrete and accelerate corrosion,” Bea wrote in an email. “Such corrosion was responsible for the degradation and ultimate failure of the steel reinforcing in parts of the original gated spillway.”

The ONLY way to keep concrete from cracking is to NOT POUR IT.

You spazmos have NFI what yer talking about. ALL CONCRETE CRACKS.

THE DDIF

Lets recap the DD conditions:

1. Spillway operational: CHECK
2. GATES working: CHECK
3. Wet spot induced seismicities: NEGATIVE
4. Harmonic blow jobs: NEGATIVE

OROTARDS:

“ohhhh noes hairline cracks”
“water is splashing up omg!”


OROVILLE DAM:

“I’m fine”

KIEWIT:

“On time, under budget, saved thousands of WT hovels in Horrirville”

lol as of minutes ago there was like 2 inches of water on the deck….

2 inches.

Thanks fer the de-pine, you gotta stop encouraging this self flaggelation circle jerk of fear mongering cretins who have no idea wtf theyre talking about.

Yes, one of the finest engineers in the nation, who did the investigation on the exploded space shuttle, and the Deep Water Horizon blow out in the gulf, has no freaking idea what he is talking about. He's just a cretin.

I think I'm logged out, prayandprepare here. I think this guy must work for DWR. He seems desperate to bury or cover up facts.

Having said that, I do hope the dam holds up.

And another one on the way for California on Monday - Tuesday next week!

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634401938573004800

Spillway day gripes: I hope we don't see DWR on that spillway this (or any other) fall 'patching up' the edges of the deck slab joints. I don't even want to think of how much hydraulic jacking is making its way down through those joints. Yeah, I know:


In the main spillway, RCC was used to fill the major scour holes to bring the chute surface back up to the original design configuration, also becoming the base for the 3-foot thick cast-in-place finished concrete spillway slabs with the average total concrete thickness being 7.5 feet. These CIP checkerboard placements included one mat of epoxy rebar at the top of the slab and a mat of regular rebar at the bottom of each panel. Each panel was 37.5 by 30 feet.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634431039857737731

Training wall drains are from lateral gravel-filled trench drains formed in the RCC base. Good that they're draining, but why? Water leaking from gates SHOULD NOT infiltrate past deck slab seals into those underdrains. Are those 5'+ gravel-filled trenches really FILLED with water enough to make it to sidewall drain pipe system?

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634432215412080640

Can't really tell if dark streaks under training wall drains are just wet concrete, dirty water or algae growing on the concrete. 'Some' of the concrete curing coating would be expected to wash off, but that shouldn't appear dark (almost black) from drain holes.

Remember - these sidewall drains have nothing to do with the training walls themselves. The drain pipes originate at the buried lateral trench drains UNDER the sealed, reinforced deck slabs. All of those drains drain water from UNDERNEATH the spillway, not from outside the training walls.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634433146627268609

Sure, the appearance of the concrete is (supposedly) just cosmetic. But this really looks like old-timey Soviet concrete work. It's damn ugly. The training wall panels are not even the same shade of white. I don't think they painted them. That's some kind of concrete curing treatment or maybe a sealant. Either way, it looks like concrete in the 'bad' neighborhoods where they painted over graffiti or something. The Chico tweekers will feel right at home in the spillway.

Couldn't they power wash it or put some kind of more uniform coating on it? The sarcophagus and e-spillway look like hell, too. Ever see a new freeway look like that? They cost a billion, too.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634434201142394882

I'll never understand what they were thinking when they built a sharp corner at the bottom of the training wall. It was spalling after the test run a few years back. Seems like an unnecessary point of failure - or at least a 'feature' that will require endless repair. Seems like some kind of rookie mistake. It won't spall enough to affect the integrity of the 3' to 5' wall base (I guess), but there must be a better design.

The new walls for the main spillway ranged from 20 to 34 feet in height and were heavily reinforced. They were 2 feet in thickness at the top and 3 to 5 feet thick at the base. Kiewit built their own gang forms to place each the 30 foot wide sections.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634435072232235009

Hope whatever they were grouting holds together if the e-spillway is ever used (again). If that huge canyon that eroded almost back to the ogee weir was consistently bad rock, you think they would have dug it all up and filled it in with concrete. You know... for SAFETY.

Yay that they even bothered with some kind of grouting program during the rebuild, but it obviously didn't stop water from infiltrating into that hill from SOMEWHERE. The e-spillway has been draining since they built it - even when the reservoir was nearly empty. Where the hell is all that water coming from? Did the grouting do anything?

The grey spots are from grouting/drilling. The darker brown spot with all the tire tracks was worked on, too. No idea why it looks like wet brownish dirt. Did the grouting at that spot cause water to pipe up to the surface? Holy hell...

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634436393307983873

All the infrastructure on that hillside (including the left- and right-abutment hillside, itself) looks like a damn sieve for mystery 'natural springs'. You do NOT want that water feature on the country's tallest earthen fill dam. It wasn't raining enough to produce ANY water we see running past the guardhouse and across the parking lot.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634437334094475264

Guess the tainter gate seals are going to have to wait a few more years. No big deal, but the leakage is washing sand and mud into the lateral and longitudinal slab joints. Is the cavitation/hydraulic jacking during use hammering that crap into/around the seals? Those joints get filled with water - you can see where it disappears and flows out when the leakage is minimal.

Seems dumb that they didn't design a drain just past the gatehouse toe threshold for this exact purpose if leaky gate seals are 'normal'. It's a safety issue for dam workers doing anything on the spillway when the reservoir is above the gate bottom. And the sand/mud washed into those joints is going to be a problem. The rebar ties between the slabs are epoxy-coated. I'm sure they're not rated for hydraulic sand-blasting every time the spillway is used.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634438279243104257

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634439216598851586

Everything USACE builds looks great and lasts a lifetime. I would rather have seen $150 billion go into their budget to fix this crap that I DEPEND ON...

https://twitter.com/_/status/1634440514530340866

...rather than paying for US Nazi stooge grifters running Ukraine to lose their war. Fun fact: Ukrainians will never see a dime of my tax money. I'm not saying Zelensky is corrupt, but remember Ukraine's Privatbank that went bust and that $5 BILLION that went missing? Yeah, Zelensky's father, Ole, was part of the partnership that owned that bank (along with evil oligarch Kolomoisky who financed Azov). The apple does not fall far from the tree. Biden will protect his part in that with his life. Well, actually the lives of 100,000 Ukrainians, but you get the idea.

Cavitation is a toroidal spinning inward exploding bubble. It creates a non nuclear transmutation. It is the transmutation in a micro bubble that disintegrates props, concrete Etc. Not the exploding bubble. This is new science 5 or so years back. Reproduced and authenticated multiple labs.

Be gone!

Be gone!

Looks like SERIOUS amounts of water jets flowing into the spillway from low on the side walls. We’ll see if that appearance holds in full daylight.

NWS says to expect nine inches of rain at Paradise (high up in the catchment area) starting right now, and through to Wednesday.

Still melting snow on all those ridges up through Methgalia and probably even Sterling City.

No, not the same thing. I’m talking about seeing plumes in the middle of the spillway at the horizon of the visible spillway before it plunges down out of view.

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Thanks so much Paveway. Great posts and pictures!

I don't know enough to speak to cavitation possibilities, but you can read about when the Glen Canyon dam spillways were just about destroyed in 1983. Its a fascinating story ( and worth buying the book "The Emerald Mile" just to read about it more.

Here is a more current article:

[link to www.azcentral.com (secure)]

A little bump on the spillway wall, a quarter inch bump, started a cavitation process that led to huge holes in the side. Lower where there was a band/elbow in the spillway (in hindsight, a bad idea to have that bend and save money on digging it straight) there was a hole as big as a house. Photos at link.

The cavitation started at 6,000 cfs and got bad at 20,000 cfs. Later they had to open the gates to 32,000 cfs due to lake inflows. A three foot diameter rebar infused concrete wall in the tunnel was ripped to shreds. It took three weeks total. The flow was about 100 mph, Oroville is estimated at 90 mph.

So anyway, those noticable white cavitation seams, with 20,000- 30,000 cfs going over, it is not a minor thing.

This is an interesting article on concrete spillways and scour from high velocity flows, and slabs lifing from water pressure underneath ( the airplane wing we talked about later). We can only hope the rebar into RCC underneath, and the 7+ foot spillway thickness, holds it all together this year.

[link to damfailures.org (secure)]

My take on all this is that left alone, with more heavy flood seasons, the spillway is doomed from cavitation and/or uplifted slabs. I figure CA politicians and DWR assume they will be retired or dead by then and don't care about kicking cans down the road.