But the dam is 50? years old. Maybe it shouldn’t have been built, I don’t know. But it was built. Maybe all those people shouldn’t have moved to an area where they could grow their crops, I don’t know. But they did move there. So I get your points and even somewhat share your point of view but that doesn’t help us now. We have a certain population that we need to sustain, and telling them that they shouldn’t live there doesn’t help anyone. Most places, even the largest of our cities, have some hazard such as seismic, hurricane, contaminated water supply, etc. Dooming everyone to their fate isn’t a very community-minded attitude. I prefer to think we’re all in this together.
It is NEVER a good idea to wait for an invitation / instruction to evacuate, if common sense or the warning bell of one’s survival instinct starts to kick in. The escape dynamics in tsunami & flood scenarios are the same as they are in the leadup to financial collapse i.e. the exit doors get crowded, or the escape routes get shut off quickly.
The Oroville situation is very similar to a flood event which we had in 2011 in Queensland, Australia. However, Oroville seems worse because of the clear degradation to the dam’s structure. Most of the damage in Queensland was to communities and towns far away from the flood source, because of land contours and water’s path of least resistance. Often that’s the real potential for devastation & misery, because those remoter people 10, 20, 30 miles away simply switch off to the dangers.
All the best to those in and around the Oroville Dam vicinity.
This is how quickly water’s destructive power built up in Queensland:
I’ve been following this story intensely starting Monday Feb 13 2017. Here are some useful resources:
KCRA Sacramento news TV live feed
Good explanation of the primary spillway, the auxiliary aka emergency spillway, and main dam.
Note that both spillways are only used in emergencies, they should NEVER be used in normal operations, so the inaccurate term “emergency spillway” is misleading. The correct term is “auxiliary spillway” (source). If it were operated competently, all of the discharge would be via the hydropower plant at the base of the dam, because the reservoir would have been preemptively lowered via the hydropower plant ahead of the storms.
Hydropower
The hydropower plant is currently shut down due to debris from the main spillway erosion backup up the tailrace (source). This is almost entirely unreported. Because of that the only discharge method currently available is the main spillway. The 17,000 cfs that would normally flow through the hydro generators is completely shut down, not only exacerbating the problem of trying to (belatedly) drop the level of the reservoir, but also resulting in vast amounts of lost power in the process. This lost hydro power will have to be replaced by other sources, primarily natural gas.
Details on lost power from sending water down the spillways rather than through the hydro power plant. I’m updating this with new info as it arrives. Please let me know if you have further info for it, in particular the items highlighted in yellow.
Thanks - Pete
I agree totally.
Towns surrounding the Hazelwood mine were not evacuated during the mine fire. The official story began as advice there was nothing to fear. The story gradually changed a little. Just like the Oroville story seems to be changing. There was never a town evacuation though - the quiet official justification not voiced to the public was there would be more deaths from evacuation stress… Future cancer statistics may well prove that wrong.
I took my family and moved out ASAP I could, once I could see the situation was not resolving. However in the days before the mine fire, when it was just a bush fire, evacuation from our area of town was ordered. My husband refused to go, and his brother proactively entered into town, they chose to stay present ready to fight fire, sending grandma and the kids somewhere safer. I happened to be out of town at the time, and therefore got locked out of re-entering town. 
We are willing to make our own decisions and take the consequences. I do not like to be told what to do by incompetent ‘officials’ who don’t have to live with the consequences to my family. I will decide what is a risk to my health and safety.
As far as flooding goes - you MUST know your catchment area. When we lived by the Logan river in Queensland it was not local rain that caused flooding, but rains up in the catchment area. We always kept an eye on this and the upstream monitoring levels, and there were marks under the house showing us where previous floods had reached. A stark reminder if you were indecisive.
Creating Panic, Living in Fear, Destroying Hope
All of these phrases are used to withhold factual information from other people or to justify a psychological defense of not look realistically at some hard bit of reality. Unfortunately, even though the intent of the tactic is kindness, these cognitive distortions impair our ability to deal effectively with situations.
I think that it is important to separate: 1) the situation, from, 2) the emotional reaction to the situation.
Don’t tell people that the spillway is eroding badly and the dam and has a 30% chance of failing. They might panic and cause harm and social disruption in their panic. Instead lets reassure by falsely saying “all is well.” Using a false reassurance deprives people (who believe those reassurances) of the chance to effectively and creatively respond to the situation.
Denial is the most common psychological defense used to manage anxiety evoking information. PP is full of our stories of denial’s many flavors.
“That will NEVER happen.”
“You are over-reacting.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic.”
“Life is too short to worry all the time.”
“Don’t dwell on negativity or you will attract it into your life.”
“Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
“I am a happy person and don’t like to talk about bad things.”
“God is Love. As a spiritual person I only focus on things that evoke His Love.”
“I refuse to live in fear.”
How about we look at the situation as clearly as we can as the first step. Then, in a second step, we deal with our emotional reactions to the situation. Emotional reactions go through stages and evolve. But that is a separate issue.
Along with the Teton dam failure, the St. Francis dam failed in 1928, killing up to 425 people. There was a scathing writeup on it in the outstanding book “Cadillac Desert”. Many of the same government lies and mismanagement were in play. 90 years on, it’s deja vu all over again.
Paul_VT wrote:
Maybe it is helpful to think about this carefully in terms of the interaction between mass psychology/risk perception and response, and the timing and orientation of official government warnings.
Seems to me that when the threat is from potential catastrophes that recur within recent memory (I’m thinking hurricanes), the government errs on the side of caution (highly precautionary) regarding evacuation orders. When it’s a relatively novel catastrophe (Teton Dam collapse in Idaho is way out of immediate recall for most), official warnings and responses are highly reactive and comparatively last-minute.
Perhaps this is related to some kind of normalcy bias with respect to our collective perceptions of risk. Also, there appears to be cultural resistance in our institutions (and maybe society in general) to any evidence that clearly illustrates fallibility in industrial endeavors.
If so, we could deduce in a really coarse but perhaps helpful way what to expect and what not to expect in terms of official warnings, considering the nature of the impending calamity as it relates to our cultural memory and perceptions.
(Source)
"You have to find it before you can pump it."
There's going to be a world of hurt coming when these low discoveries combined with existing depletion crimp future oil and either create massively high prices, fighting over access, or both.
I'm 100% positive that some officials are in the possession of this knowledge but it's too novel, too "out there" to share with the public. So the public is told happy talk about (expensive) shale oils and good old American ingenuity when the reality is very different from that.
Expensive and rapidly depleting oil just isn't the same thing as cheap, long lasting oil wells.
This is why we need to prepare ourselves, trust ourselves, and I am thankful to the Oroville dam situation for reminding us of that again.
It’s not the normalcy or lack thereof that affects timeliness of disclosure, it’s accountability. Hurricanes, earthquakes, winter storms, etc. are readily warned because they are “acts of God”, there’s no elite or governmental accountability involved. Dam failures (Grand Teton, Oroville), levee failures (Katrina), nuclear accidents (Fukushima, Chernobyl) don’t get warnings because the people responsible hope they can partially mitigate the disaster. They also don’t want the magnitude of their culpability to be understood by the masses.
Lying about the situation allows them to manipulate perceptions and obfuscate responsibility. By dragging t out the things out the public anger is partly dissipated by time. If “properly” managed the worst bits become old news and get much less attention. Fukushima is the best example of this last aspect. Most people today think Fukushima was not that big of a deal.
Xango wrote:
...Maybe all those people shouldn't have moved to an area where they could grow their crops, I don't know. But they did move there.
...We have a certain population that we need to sustain, and telling them that they shouldn't live there doesn't help anyone. Most places, even the largest of our cities, have some hazard such as seismic, hurricane, contaminated water supply, etc. Dooming everyone to their fate isn't a very community-minded attitude. I prefer to think we're all in this together.
I’ve been thinking about if it’s even possible to drain out enough water to prepare for the massive snow pack melt. I don’t know the answer so I’m hoping that some others can help.
The dam was designed with 3 outlets:
Hydro plant (base) - 17,000 CFS
Main spillway (top) - Currently 100,000 CFS, but eroding (how long before it must be turned off?), and only drains the top (from 813.6’ elevation)
Auxiliary spillway (top) - Disabled, and only drains the top (from 901’ elevation)
For everything to go perfectly, the main spillway needs to be able to drain down to it’s level (813.6’), then it stops. At that point workmen start clearing the debris from the bottom, allowing restart of hydro plant when they are done (perhaps a week?). The hydro plant then runs at full capacity, 17,000 CFS, for as long as it takes to lower the reservoir to a safe level to accommodate the melting of the snow pack.
Can the comparatively puny flow rate of the “bottom drain” (hydro plant) (about 1/6th the rate of the main spillway) pull down the reservoir enough before the melt water fills the reservoir again, assuming the best possible case of no further rain or snow and a delayed and slow melt? Does anybody have the numbers and ability to calculate that?
It seems like it’s going to be a difficult process to maintain the integrity of the dam over the next couple of weeks. As they are discharging through the main spillway, we have to assume that some erosion is still taking place there. But they must keep that going, as they are facing several more inches of rain over the next 5 days or so. Even beyond that, models continue to show a strong Pacific jet transporting disturbances into the CA coast, bringing additional rainfall. They truly face a tough couple of weeks out there.
Regarding the comments thus far about warnings and notifying the public, I pretty much agree with what’s been said. The more we advance as a society, the more obvious it becomes how much we have sacrificed safety, knowledge, and skills for convenience, comfort, and instant gratification. Unfortunately, we’ve become too reliant on things to manage our lives which are beyond our control. And we’ve done this to our own detriment. The population only moves in concert through crisis. And the potential crisis points that now exist just below the surface are almost too numerous to even catalog.
Xango wrote:
Maybe it shouldn't have been built, I don't know. But it was built. Maybe all those people shouldn't have moved to an area where they could grow their crops, I don't know. But they did move there. So I get your points and even somewhat share your point of view but that doesn't help us now. We have a certain population that we need to sustain, and telling them that they shouldn't live there doesn't help anyone.
Waterdog14 wrote:
Agreed! The Central Valley of California feeds much of the U.S. My brother lives about 60 miles NE of Oroville, and the first time I visited I was astonished at the fields and groves of olives, rice, almonds, walnuts, prunes, oranges, peaches, and pistachios... Statistics show that in 2014, Butte County CA (Oroville) produced over $800,000,000 in food. The last thing we should do is blame the hardworking farmers for living near Oroville and growing our food. I happen to like olives. A lot. (Ok, I love olives!)
This is from the DWR news conference on Feb 11. (source) Evidently there are 2 problems standing in the way of allowing water flow through the hydro plant at the base of the dam. #1 is debris and water backed up in the channel (tail race), #2 is the removed or compromised power lines leading away from the power plant. Apparently they can’t run the water through the turbines without being connected to the grid, which seems odd to me.
The power generation was halted when water levels in the channel rose too high and comrpomised operation. According to Croyle, the plant faces two challenges. First, if debris washes upstream and gets into the plant it could damage equipment and cause them to shut down operations. Second, if the power lines that connect the plant to the grid go offline then the plant is no longer able to operate, or even let water through. Currently, the power lines are stretched across the area where the emergency spillway is releasing water, and erosion could damage the power poles. PG&E had been doing preparatory work on the lines in the past couple of days, but with water coming off the emergency spillway it became no longer safe for them to continue their work and they had to back off.
First thank you very much for interviewing Mr Cahill, his LinkedIn and that interview have been just about the only hard earth science available on the crisis at Oroville Dam.
I’ve been waiting for someone to publish the minimum level for the primary spillway. This poses yet one other problem going forward. I’ve suspected all weekend that the powerhouse was going to be destroyed if by nothing else by the sedimentation of the diversion pond. With that in mind, the minimum level of the main spillway at ~813’ is the absolute minimum the lake can be lowered to. There is no " base drain" without the powerhouse no matter what happens.
Even with the announcement that a whole new spillway will be needed to replace the damaged structure, how can you possibly improve the design and construct a new outflow if you can’t lower the lakes level below the existing structure? In theory a cofferdam I guess but anchored to what? And what location are you going to build it in?
This is a NIGHTMARE, cost, engineering, geologically…
One of my geology profs once lectured us on “design basis” events, which is the maximum event a structure is engineered to withstand. The catch was that design basis wasn’t determined by the worst the mentioned doom and gloom engineer could dream up. It was instead the maximum protection you could afford to protect against. This, fukushima, Katrina all couldn’t be better examples of this lesson in action.
Thanks Chris - the Hurricane example popped into my head the second I started reading this thread, and I thought that maybe observed patterns from public/institutional warning systems could be characterized in some helpful way.
Its consistent with what your site is successfully doing in so many different ways - helping develop a picture of what to expect and what not to expect when we start hitting steep parts of the descent curve. Substantiating a framework concerning “official” alarms and warnings might help illustrate the need to accept that there will likely be “run for your life” (or simply withdraw $ form the banking system) situations that requires independent assessment and response outside of official advisories. All part of your efforts to help empower ourselves and trust our own judgments.
The trick of course, is the tension that the NWS tries to navigate with hurricanes - I’m thinking of all the evacuations that occur only for the storm to veer in another direction at the last minute. While the evacuations may be appropriate given the nature and degree of risk, NWS evacuation warning messages loses credibility capital every time a storm veers away, with fewer people trusting the warnings, and thus less likely to heed the warnings next time.
DWR has some great data on the reservoir (source). By looking at lake elevation graphs versus lake storage graphs I was able to work out the storage capacities at roughly 10 foot increments. From that I was able to work out how long it would take to drain from one level to the next. Spreadsheet is here.
The good news is that the main spillway running at 100,000 CFS can drop it 40 feet, from 900’ (overflow via the auxiliary spillway) to 860’ (the inlet to the main spillway) in under 4 days, assuming zero inflow. Any inflow will of course lengthen that time.
The bad news is that after it drops below 860’, the only drain is the power plant, which is offline with no ETA yet. Stated cause is debris in the outlet pool, rumored reason also includes flooding and unspecified damage. It only flows max 17,000 CFS so takes a week to drop the lake only 10 feet, assuming zero inflow.
Call me pessimistic, but I can’t see how this thing is going to be able to drain via the power plant alone. It’s going to need the spillways if another big rain comes, and certainly when the snow melts. In 15 weeks it won’t have dropped 150 feet below the 860’ main spillway entrance, probably not 100’. And then the snowmelt comes along, on top of whatever rain has fallen between now and then.
I did some research online looking at photo’s. Found some interesting things…
In this photo you can see the drains actively flowing above the failure site.They cease to flow below the failure, indicating that the water is no longer under pressure and has been relieved by the failure of the spillway surface. They also appear to flow stronger the higher up the face they are. This would be because some of the water is released along the spillway side curtain, as seen in a following photo. I think this leak has been in place for a long time, and has only recently exposed itself in a surface failure. They previously attempted to patch the crack, without solving the under surface situation.
This image seems to support the increased flow observations from earlier. Also note no flow below the failure point. This is only on the “Left” side of the spillway, the right side still flows below the failure site. Also, lots of flow….without much spillway pressure… possibly indicating a pool breach pressure source.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/27n2uk/picture131475559/binary/spillwaydamage
Note, flow continues past failure on left side of picture. Does not appear that pressure is coming from spillway source. Not a good sign.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/3ll8fd/picture131475549/binary/KGspillwaydamage
RedRider13 wrote:
I did some research online looking at photo’s. Found some interesting things…
In this photo you can see the drains actively flowing above the failure site.They cease to flow below the failure, indicating that the water is no longer under pressure and has been relieved by the failure of the spillway surface. They also appear to flow stronger the higher up the face they are. This would be because some of the water is released along the spillway side curtain, as seen in a following photo. I think this leak has been in place for a long time, and has only recently exposed itself in a surface failure.
cmartenson wrote:
Where is this water coming from? How significant is it that it's coming out under what appears to be considerable pressure (and volume)?