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

OK, THEY HAVE UH NOTICE SAYING THAT RELEASE SCHEDULE IS NOW @
22,500 BUT, OUTFLOWS HAVE JUMPED TO ALMOST 25K. NOW @ 859.72

RIV REL UP AGAIN TO 24,666-ISH UH. INFLOWS JUST UNDUH 40K CAPS

OK, THEY HAVE UH NOTICE SAYING THAT RELEASE SCHEDULE IS NOW @
22,500 BUT, OUTFLOWS HAVE JUMPED TO ALMOST 25K. NOW @ 859.72

RIV REL UP AGAIN TO 24,666-ISH UH. INFLOWS JUST UNDUH 40K CAPS

Latest from the Watch Group:

Lots of strange work lights near the spillway last night...they're obviously concerned about something.

are the cameras down?

Yes, they seem to be.

'The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.'

The shut the fuck upping is on you. CAPMAN UH is a great contributor to this thread.

You...not so much.

This thread will run it's course regardless of your unnecessary and useless contributions.

We are a family here. If you don't like it, take a fucking hike.

Preach it, Crunch!
Bye.

The shut the fuck upping is on you. CAPMAN UH is a great contributor to this thread.

You...not so much.

This thread will run it's course regardless of your unnecessary and useless contributions.

We are a family here. If you don't like it, take a fucking hike.

Bye.

I have to make a confession.

Dealing with this shit regarding the dam for nearly 40 years is taking it's toll.

Watching the DWR incompetence year after year is wearing me down.

I have PTSD from 1986 and 1997. I have stories to tell from those years if anyone is interested in hearing them.

My wife (fiancee then) and I grew up in So Cal. Simi Valley. It was a nice place to grow up then, but expensive to live. We looked at Nor Cal due to the low rent and low property prices.

We came up to Honcut in November of 1985. I had just turned 23. With the nonstop rain day after day, I wondered WTF had I done moving here. I did not realise it was not a normal year.

Coming into February of 1986, I received a call notifying me that one of my friends from So Cal had passed away. Worse was the fact he had taken his own life. I was asked to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

The rain was bad and the roads were flooding badly. My wife (fiancee) and I spent the night at her cousin's house down in Yuba City. My flight to So Cal was scheduled for early the next morning.

We drove down to the Sacramento airport early that morning. I think my flight was scheduled for 6:30 AM.

Debi was then planning to head to work. She was a stylist in the JC Penney hair salon in the Peach Tree Mall in Linda-Marysville.

I flew down to Burbank airport. Somebody picked me up (I don't remember who).

Later that afternoon, I was at my parents' house watching the TV news. Suddenly, there was a breaking news report of a levee breach in Nor Cal.

I watched a helicopter shot of the Peach Tree Mall underwater. Where Debi was supposed to be at work.

I freaked.

Nothing I could do, being 500 miles away. No cell phones or internet then. No email, no text. Just old-school land lines. I called home, I called relatives, I called everyone I knew.

Nobody had seen her. I was losing my shit. I just kept watching that video of the mall underwater. I thought she was gone.

I completely lost it. My dad restrained me, as I was trying to RUN back to Nor Cal.

Finally, Debi called. She had decided to NOT go to work that day, due to the road conditions. She had spent most of the day just trying to get home. Finally made it by taking numerous roundabout routes.

A day from Hell for me, thanks to CA DWR failure.

I will never forget it. Damn them.

exactly...UH, AND SOME OF U.S. WILL CALL THOSE DEATHS 'MURDER'

No one will care what an illiterate jackass speaking his own made up language will think.

Thanks for the link, AC.

In case all this anchor tendon nonsense and cracks are confusing anyone, I'll add this observation ('opinion') best as I can recall by engineers from the old forums back in the days of spillway troubles:

1) The TOE edge (the downstream 'spillway' floor edge) of the gatehouse is slumping forward and rotating downhill when the reservoir is full. The internal stress on the vertical structural elements of the gatehouse are tremendous. That's what's stretching and busting the anchor tendons and cracking 5' thick structural concrete walls.

2) Previous high-pressure grouting under the head (upstream) edge and under the center of the gatehouse slabs in the 1960's and 70's made the problem worse. The grouting was necessary to mitigate water infiltration under the gatehouse through the hillside foundation rock, but expanding and filling the cracks put upward pressure under the headworks upstream edge. This 'helps' rotate (tip) the whole structure slightly forward when the reservoir is full from water pressure on the upstream side. Speculation is that this is the reason DWR engineers discontinued further grouting under the gatehouse and just accepted increased water infiltration/drainage under the gatehouse. Decades of erosion under the gatehouse toe made the whole problem worse.

3. Opening the gates at high reservoir levels relieves much of the upstream forces on the gatehouse and it will measurably rotate (tip) back towards the reservoir. Same thing when the reservoir is empty.

4. The headworks bottom slabs and piers are anchored to the hillside foundation bedrock by long rods cemented deep into the rock. Some of those anchors may have broken or become loose (cement deteriorating). Other anchors are still gripping sections of the bedrock, but that bedrock is known to be fractured and somewhat incompetent. There's a risk that sections of that rock are simply moving with the gatehouse when it tiles rather than anchoring it.

5. Worse yet, the anchoring and tipping problems are not uniform under the whole gatehouse structure. Slumping movement near the headworks left abutment (looking downstream) appears to be larger than along other sections, leading to the cracked pier above the trunion pin and anchors for Gate 8. This also contributed to the road deck slab spalling the edge of the pier it sits on. The headworks was built using two units - one of the left four gates and one for the right four gates. Racking of those structures during tipping may explain both pier 8 cracks and broken anchor tendons/gate racking at gate 4.

6. More evidence of this problem: the gigantic, bizarre concrete sarcophagus and wall. Supposedly to protect the main spillway from erosion if the e-spillway is used. Kind of like somewhere you would just build a simple, reinforced concrete wall. More skeptical engineers see this as a horrible hack to prop up the end of the e-spillway weir and headworks - FROM TILTING AND SLIDING DOWN THE HILL.

7. We're talking a fraction of a millimeter movement and microradians of tilt. The whole hill and dam deforms by those degrees when the reservoir is full and it wouldn't be unusual for large concrete structures built on it. It only becomes a problem when those structures are built using certain movement assumptions, and subsequent real-world performance later on are not measured or tracked. (Opinions vary on whether DWR does this at all or just keeps the results secret). Obvious future problems related to original design specification assumptions being exceeded later on are ignored - mostly because they are very costly and time-consuming to fix.

The above isn't MY technical assessment of the gatehouse. It's the collective assessment of some geezer engineers and geologists on forums that have been seeing these problems for decades. Other engineers disagree on the seriousness of the issues or suggest other underlying causes.


Measuring this kind of structural movement was difficult (but not impossible) 1960's technology. It's not, today. They can measure a millimeter of displacement and a fraction of a microradian of tilt on an active volcano with a few thousand dollars of equipment. DWR does not lack the technical means to do this, it's that they are paralyzed as far as any organizational desire to FIX anything they find regardless of measurement results, and they'll always use the quickest/cheapest fix when they ARE forced into action.

DWR isn't worried about 4" of displacement on a cracked 5' gatehouse structural pier. But they are outraged when pictures of it leak out and horrified dam engineers all over the world start discussing it and openly criticizing DWR and its engineering organizations. DWR *engineers* are not incompetent, stupid or immoral, but their bosses sure are. Must be a miserable place to work.

No problem for DWR though. DWR absolutely loves CEII restrictions allowing them to hide engineering problems like this affecting the public's safety. Unfortunate for DWR that the cracked pier photos got out, but those Goddam terrorist citizens will never be allowed to see the details on a host of other serious problems. Critical Electrical/Energy Infrastructure Information secrets. You don't NEED to know that secret stuff. And if you poke around too much, well... you'll end up under Sta. 23+00 where you can't cause any more trouble.

It is every Americans right to march into an virtual country club, drunk, and bump whatever thread they wish.

AMERICA.

The Army Corps of Engineers is closely monitoring it to decide how much water is safe to release.

Ok... tell me if you can see what I think I’m seeing...

Look at the joint between the first wall panel you can see in the lower right of the spillway view and the second wall panel.

Tell me what you see.

859.82 INFLOWS UP TO 43K
OUTFLOWS AND RIV. REL. BOTH @ 25K

Ok... tell me if you can see what I think I’m seeing...

Look at the joint between the first wall panel you can see in the lower right of the spillway view and the second wall panel.

Tell me what you see.

Just can't ignore it. Like a train wreck. Dude is talkin shit and calling me out, but...nothing...

It would be so satisfying to punch that shit talking mouth, LOL.

But we are all adults here.

Link to a view of this?