Oroville Dam emergency

[myosh_tino]

If they have to let most of the water out of the reservoir before the summer growing season in order to repair the dam, the drought may be over but the water crisis will continue...

Not really because the dam itself is fine.  It's the spillway(s) that need repairs and to do that you'd only have to drop the lake level to below the level of the main spillway.  Water can continue to be released through the power plant at the base of the dam.

[Max Rockatansky]

In California's case, it's not so much the additional people as the water-intensive crops being grown there, and lawns and golf courses.

The majority of the golf courses in California now use reclaimed water, and much of the landscaping that's maintained by government agencies (including Caltrans) uses reclaimed and recycled water.
The funny thing with ag usage is that you hear a lot of bitching and moaning, but I personally believe that it's more they're complaining so loudly not because the situation is dire, but because they don't want anyone cutting into their supply. That was threatened a couple of years ago, and that's when the ag groups got really vocal and we started seeing these "dams not trains" signs everywhere. The fact is that, here in the Salinas Valley, where we don't have snowmelt, you self-report "estimates" on your groundwater usage. That seems ridiculous in light of a drought, but trying to move them onto the more standard, monitored usage model has been met with so much resistance over the years that the water district mostly gave up on the idea.

I guess that's why I really find it hard to be convinced at the Central Valley advocacy.  Those farmers literally were the reason an entire inland watershed was killed off with all those river impoundments to supplement their farming.  At the end of the day there is always a cap to how big your business can get using a model that has existed for almost half a century.  Really basically every major and most moderately sized rivers in California have reservoirs on them already....so the argument "build more dams" is kind of paper thin since there is literally nowhere to build, much less count on any additional storage capacity.  So basically it comes down to moderation and accountability...which is really what the farm community really doesn't want at the end of the day. 

Incidentally who else thinks that it is kind of amazing that a 700 square mile lake has completely disappeared in the last century and almost nobody even knows about it?   Imagine if something like that happened today, people would lose their minds.

[Brandon]

Incidentally who else thinks that it is kind of amazing that a 700 square mile lake has completely disappeared in the last century and almost nobody even knows about it?   Imagine if something like that happened today, people would lose their minds.

If you're talking about Owens Lake, that blame lies squarely on Los Angeles, not the Central Valley farmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

[Max Rockatansky]

Incidentally who else thinks that it is kind of amazing that a 700 square mile lake has completely disappeared in the last century and almost nobody even knows about it?   Imagine if something like that happened today, people would lose their minds.

If you're talking about Owens Lake, that blame lies squarely on Los Angeles, not the Central Valley farmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

Negative, I was referring to Tulare Lake.  Owens was part of the Los Angeles Aquaduct project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

[kkt]

People interested in dam failures might be interested in the St. Francis Dam, which failed catastrophically in 1928.  It was near Santa Clarita, California, and between 385 and 600 people were killed.  Exact death toll is unknown because there was a construction camp where some of the workers were undocumented and people were unwilling to report deaths.  Many of bodies were swept to sea and never found.

[Max Rockatansky]

People interested in dam failures might be interested in the St. Francis Dam, which failed catastrophically in 1928.  It was near Santa Clarita, California, and between 385 and 600 people were killed.  Exact death toll is unknown because there was a construction camp where some of the workers were undocumented and people were unwilling to report deaths.  Many of bodies were swept to sea and never found.

I've been waiting for someone to compare the response and denial of a danger to Mulholland, but so far I haven't seen any news organization draw the comparison.

[Rothman]

People interested in dam failures might be interested in the St. Francis Dam, which failed catastrophically in 1928.  It was near Santa Clarita, California, and between 385 and 600 people were killed.  Exact death toll is unknown because there was a construction camp where some of the workers were undocumented and people were unwilling to report deaths.  Many of bodies were swept to sea and never found.

...or the Teton Dam failure in Idaho in 1976.  You can even go to a museum dedicated to the event in Rexburg ID.

[bing101]

http://abc7news.com/weather/storm-triggers-flooding-concerns-at-anderson-reservoir/1759507/


Apparently the Bay Area also has their own version Oroville Dam to deal with too.


In the Bay Area  Anderson Reservoir is getting issues too.


 
       

The Anderson Reservoir is at 99 percent capacity, so water is being drained from it, but while they do that it causes another possible issue -- flooding down the Coyote Creek.[/size]There are a number of low lying communities that are close to the flood plain so there is a risk they could flood. The reservoir is only supposed to be at 68 percent capacity because of seismic concerns. So water officials really need to get it below that level to make it safe in case there is a really big earthquake.                                               

[hotdogPi]

It's dam time to bring back the dam "Dam Jokes" thread from 2009!

[Max Rockatansky]

http://abc7news.com/weather/storm-triggers-flooding-concerns-at-anderson-reservoir/1759507/


Apparently the Bay Area also has their own version Oroville Dam to deal with too.


In the Bay Area  Anderson Reservoir is getting issues too.


 
       

The Anderson Reservoir is at 99 percent capacity, so water is being drained from it, but while they do that it causes another possible issue -- flooding down the Coyote Creek.[/size]There are a number of low lying communities that are close to the flood plain so there is a risk they could flood. The reservoir is only supposed to be at 68 percent capacity because of seismic concerns. So water officials really need to get it below that level to make it safe in case there is a really big earthquake.                                               

Yeah that would be all time bad timing.  I'm not sure why some of these reservoirs aren't ever up for demolition after they are damaged...really a lot of the structural defects are coming to light in these storms.

[bing101]

http://www.kcra.com/article/officials-don-pedro-reservoir-may-use-controlled-spillway-next-week/8950422

Wow also Don Pedro reservoir is facing an incident similar to Oroville too. But the threat will affect San Joaquin Valley.

[nexus73]

The curse of drought has been replaced with the curse of flood.  Here's an article about a huge storm that hit the Southland.
Rick

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains that downed power lines and electrocuted a man, killed a motorist in a submerged car and disrupted hundreds of flights at airports.

With the storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.

More than 300 arriving and departing flights were delayed or canceled at Los Angeles International Airport.

In the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, a falling tree downed power lines and hit a car. A 55-year-old man was electrocuted and pronounced dead at a hospital, police and fire officials said.

Winds gusting to 60 mph or more lashed the area. Heavy rains turned creeks and rivers into brown torrents and released slews of mud from hillsides burned barren by wildfires. Several stretches of freeways and highways were closed by flooding.

"It's crazy," said Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It's just pouring down rain. The wind is just going nuts."

"At one point the wind was so strong I'm surprised it didn't blow my windows out," retiree Phoenix Hocking said in a Facebook message from Carpinteria. "I now have a pond in my patio. And my dog is starting to grow flippers so he can go out and do his business."

In the desert town of Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street. A helicopter rescued one person from the roof of a car but another motorist was found dead in a submerged vehicle, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.

Elsewhere in the county, a 20-mile stretch of State Route 138 in the West Cajon Valley was closed at the scene of a summer wildfire.

Mud sloshed over concrete rail barriers and about two dozen vehicles, including big-rigs and a school bus, were either mired in mud or became unable to turn around on the closed road and some were abandoned, Sherwin said.

Two people in a car were rescued and four students on the bus were removed and taken to a school office, he said.

Another road in the area was covered with 2 feet of mud.

In LA's Sun Valley, 10 cars were trapped in swift-moving water on a roadway and eight people had to be rescued, the Fire Department reported.

Using ropes and inflatable boats, firefighters rescued seven people and two dogs from the Sepulveda basin, a recreation and flood-control area along the Los Angeles River. One person was taken to a hospital with a non-life threatening injury.

The storm took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco. It was not expected to bring significant rain in the far north where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.

The National Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since January 1995.

Rain and wind wiped out play in golf's Genesis Open at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where a eucalyptus tree cracked.

Hundreds of trees and dozens of power lines had toppled in the Los Angeles area and at one point more than 60,000 city power customers were without electricity.

A 75-foot tree fell onto an apartment building near the University of California, Los Angeles, narrowly missing someone who was in bed, fire officials said. Four of the six apartments have been declared unsafe to enter, prompting the evacuation of 16 college students.

"I was just sitting in bed trying to enjoy a Friday morning of no class," one resident told KCAL-TV. "I had a giant, like, thunder popping sound and then next thing I knew a branch was coming through the ceiling."

Her leg was scratched by debris and "I was covered in sawdust," she said.

Her thought now was, "Where am I going to live?"

Another tree smashed a carport and vehicles in the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta.

Knott's Berry Farm amusement park in Orange County closed because the weather. High surf pounded beaches.

By evening, Ventura County and northern Los Angeles County had seen 24-hour rain totals of up to 7 ½ inches, with the San Marcos mountain pass in Santa Barbara County receiving nearly 8 ½ inches.

Farther south, downtown Los Angeles had received about 1 ½ inches of rain while some areas saw up to 4 inches.

The storm system was moving "very slowly" eastward and Los Angeles County was expected to see more rain through Saturday, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The city of Duarte, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, ordered evacuation of 180 homes below a burn scar. Up the coast, evacuations were urged for parts of Camarillo Springs in Ventura County and around an 11½-square-mile burn scar west of Santa Barbara.

Santa Anita Park near Pasadena canceled all its horse races Friday.

In Northern California, officials monitoring the stricken Oroville Dam on the Feather River said they were confident the reservoir would handle any runoff from expected storms because ongoing releases have been lowering the lake's level since its spillways were damaged last week.

[ARMOURERERIC]

About a half dozen trees fell on 163 through Balboa Park, causing it's closure northbound.

[sparker]

http://abc7news.com/weather/storm-triggers-flooding-concerns-at-anderson-reservoir/1759507/


Apparently the Bay Area also has their own version Oroville Dam to deal with too.


In the Bay Area  Anderson Reservoir is getting issues too.


 
       

The Anderson Reservoir is at 99 percent capacity, so water is being drained from it, but while they do that it causes another possible issue -- flooding down the Coyote Creek.[/size]There are a number of low lying communities that are close to the flood plain so there is a risk they could flood. The reservoir is only supposed to be at 68 percent capacity because of seismic concerns. So water officials really need to get it below that level to make it safe in case there is a really big earthquake.                                               

Yeah that would be all time bad timing.  I'm not sure why some of these reservoirs aren't ever up for demolition after they are damaged...really a lot of the structural defects are coming to light in these storms.

Coyote Creek is a major concern down here in San Jose; it is the lowest line of elevation in the southeast corner of the San Jose alluvial plain, and its bed is only 15-18 feet below the decks of most of the street overcrossings, including the Capitol Expressway and Tully Road, the main arterials connecting US 101 with the south-central parts of town.  If there were to be a substantial water surge out of Anderson, it would likely first inundate the industrial area in the northern part of Morgan Hill before turning north along the creek.  The creek actually crosses US 101 twice, once north of Cochrane Road and the 2nd time north of the Blossom Hill Road interchange; neither bridge is more than 20-25 feet above the creek bed, so there's a good chance that US 101 would see closures at one or both of these points for safety reasons alone.  Ironically, Coyote is still labeled a "creek", although its watershed area far outstrips that of the Guadalupe River to the west, which is less likely to pose problems due to the number of holding ponds upstream near the lower end of the Almaden Valley, which act as a "plenum" to the water flow (one of these is located under the CA 85 viaduct between CA 87 and Almaden Expressway).  Of course, the Guadalupe passes by the upscale Willow Glen section of San Jose, while the Coyote Creek area is principally industrial, with some apartment complexes near Tully Road.   Nevertheless, expect regional flooding and significant road closures if the Anderson releases are increased.

[bing101]

http://www.kcra.com/article/evacuations-ordered-due-to-levee-breach-south-of-manteca/8958411

http://www.kcra.com/article/500-residents-evacuated-after-levee-breached-near-manteca/8959791

Now Manteca is facing Levee issues and Don Pedro is releasing water to the spillways.

http://www.kcra.com/article/don-pedro-reservoirs-controlled-spillway-gates-to-open-at-3-pm/8956930

[sparker]

Well.....the fears about Coyote Creek flooding the east-central side of San Jose have become reality.  East of downtown and SJSU, the area from 17th Street to US 101 is, as I write this, under mandatory evacuation; water is up to the top of parked cars in the area.  Folks in the affected neighborhoods are being evacuated by boat in some cases.  Northbound US 101 was closed because of mud flows between Morgan Hill and San Jose, where the upper Coyote Creek (just downstream from Anderson Dam) was pusing mud & silt over the sides of the 101 bridge.  Caltrans & the Santa Clara County flood control district are building a diversion dam to shift the water through a series of culverts under 101 and hope to have it re-opened in time for the morning commute.  A secondary dual-direction closure of US 101 where Coyote Creek re-crosses it between McKee and Oakland Roads is in effect until further notice; a mobile park and the city golf course, both along the creek just east of I-880, are inundated.  The flood zone snakes through the industrial area west of I-880 all the way to CA 237 and Alviso.  Coyote Creek is at a flood stage not seen for over 100 years!  Even the current San Jose mayor (who's not known for apologizing for anything) has stated that the city was totally unprepared for this type of event.  Those of us on higher ground are truly fortunate -- and we're slated to get another storm passing through this coming weekend! 

2017's rainy season is turning out to be more profound that of 1982, 1983, or 1997!     

[bing101]

http://www.wcvb.com/article/storm-lashed-california-roads-dams-could-cost-1b-to-fix/8978290


http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/foon-rhee/article134774059.html


http://wtop.com/government/2017/02/storm-battered-california-roads-to-cost-600-million-to-fix/


http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/23/californias-hydropower-surge-may-be-bad-news-for-these-power-producers.html


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-dam-spending-idUSKBN1632CL


http://wwlp.com/2017/02/23/californias-oroville-dam-problems-could-be-learning-experience-in-westfield/


http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14700460/california-water-system-infrastructure-dams-oroville-don-pedro-flooding-drought


Update on the California Dams issue.

[bing101]

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/517495739/with-climate-change-california-is-likely-to-see-more-extreme-flooding

Update

[Max Rockatansky]

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/517495739/with-climate-change-california-is-likely-to-see-more-extreme-flooding

Update

Well that was "sudden" change of heart off the doom and gloom of drought....now it is too much water.  Seems like the news always changes to a negative to whatever is going on...especially when it comes to climate stuff in California.  Climates are not a static thing, they never have been.   

[Rothman]

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/517495739/with-climate-change-california-is-likely-to-see-more-extreme-flooding

Update

Well that was "sudden" change of heart off the doom and gloom of drought....now it is too much water.  Seems like the news always changes to a negative to whatever is going on...especially when it comes to climate stuff in California.  Climates are not a static thing, they never have been.   

Climate has been more stable in some eras more than others...

https://xkcd.com/1732/

[Max Rockatansky]

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/517495739/with-climate-change-california-is-likely-to-see-more-extreme-flooding

Update

Well that was "sudden" change of heart off the doom and gloom of drought....now it is too much water.  Seems like the news always changes to a negative to whatever is going on...especially when it comes to climate stuff in California.  Climates are not a static thing, they never have been.   

Climate has been more stable in some eras more than others...

https://xkcd.com/1732/

True, but the expectation that it will stay the same is a little out of hand sometimes.  Basically you had nothing but people complaining that they wanted the rain because the drought would never end and the reservoirs are low.  Now they have one winter when the rain and snow pack was big...all of the sudden the tune changes to "now it will be like this every year."  There will always be eras of more stable climate and others will be more skewed all over the place.  The story of the Donner Party back in the 1840s is a good example of that, going back well over 150 years.   They heard "the snow doesn't start in October" and boy did they get bit in the ass because of it given the snows started early that year.  It is mildly amusing to see opinion change so wildly on such a small sample of differing weather.

[Max Rockatansky]

This article has 58 pictures of the spillway damage and debris from Oroville Dam:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/05/oraville-dam-powerplant-spillway-flows-off-again-after-test/