[Cog]

This is an engineering consultant's wet dream. CAD guys doing 3D drawings, engineers coming up with fixes, surveyors taking shots to verify quantities, concrete testers, meetings with other firms, etc ad. nauseum. Give me this contract and I'll make a fortune and hand out year end bonuses that would choke an elephant. Show me the emergency contract, I'll show you how to make money on it. Everyone in my firm would be charging time to it. Even HR and the secretaries who do billing.

The words you want to hear from your client: "We don't care what it costs, we just need it done by this date". Its a license to print money for your firm.

[hvacman]

This is an engineering consultant's wet dream. CAD guys doing 3D drawings, engineers coming up with fixes, surveyors taking shots to verify quantities, concrete testers, meetings with other firms, etc ad. nauseum. Give me this contract and I'll make a fortune and hand out year end bonuses that would choke an elephant. Show me the emergency contract, I'll show you how to make money on it. Everyone in my firm would be charging time to it. Even HR and the secretaries who do billing.

The words you want to hear from your client: "We don't care what it costs, we just need it done by this date". Its a license to print money for your firm.

Cog -

Ssshhhh....you're giving away we consulting engineers' dirty little secret:)

[Cog]

LOL Sorry hvacman. I'm retired and its showing. What I meant to say is that the consultants will do an excellent job, in an expeditious and thorough manner, and save our clients(taxpayers) as much money as possible.

[vtsnowedin]

LOL Sorry hvacman. I'm retired and its showing. What I meant to say is that the consultants will do an excellent job, in an expeditious and thorough manner, and save our clients(taxpayers) as much money as possible.

All the staff from the big dig in Boston that still are working age are flying west to "help" with your project.

[hvacman]

Oroville update:

Repair costs are running $4.7 million/day.

Repair work consists of:
Removing debris that is plugging the channel
temporary repairs to lip of the remaining portion of the main spillway so it doesn't further degrade when water starts flowing on it again (spillway releases will resume next week).
Placing surrey and rip-rap on the bare hillside that was supposed to function as the "emergency" spillway.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/09/o ... n-per-day/

Spillway to start carrying water again next week:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/califo ... 30683.html

Because of the precarious situation with both spillways, the DWR does not want to let the lake rise much above 860' (40' from the top). It is at 859' right now. They will start releasing water again from the spillway if it gets to 865'. Unless they get all turbines running real soon, the inflow will continue to out-pace the outflow and the lake will rise about 1.5 feet per day.

For you rock-hounds, below is a brief video of one of the DWR geologists analyzing the base rock exposed due to the erosion from the flow of the emergency spillway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh_klz0nf-o

[Cog]

The turbines can only do Around 13-4K cfs. They have had lake inflows much larger than that. When that big snow pack melts this month or next, they will have to use the spillway.

I noticed something else when they did close-up pictures of the broken concrete they used in the spillway construction. Its apparent they used smooth river rock. That's not the best aggregate in the world to use in concrete. It tends to erode when water finds a crack to work its way into.

Here is a pic of what I'm talking about.

http://i.imgur.com/lAU1NoO.jpg

Here is another pic of them trying to seal some joints

http://i.imgur.com/MxWrOOe.jpg

[vtsnowedin]

Some of those operators will have their house paid for and their kids college funds topped off before this is done. They will have earned it.

[hvacman]

Well, the drought emergency is certainly not behind us:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/San-Joaquin-Valley-is-sinking-fast-rains-won-t-10989670.php?ipid=articlerecirc#photo-12513555

But won't the winter's near-record rainfall replenish parched aquifers?
No, says Steven McQuinn, former water conservation writer for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
"There has to be standing water on the floodplain that can seep down and reach the aquifer," McQuinn says. "But such conditions are exactly what the entire flood control system is designed to prevent. Only an emergency release will make the Central Valley the immense floodplain it used to be in the era of uncontrolled rivers, such as the accelerated drawdown of Oroville Lake that flooded the area around Sutter Buttes. Natural flooding is a thing of the past in California."

Hence the need to pump (or at least allow water to run into) the wells that are now too shallow to reach the aquifer level. Some of these wells are 400 feet deep so letting them fill to the top with runoff water would put pressures of 173 pounds per square inch at their bottoms and recharge the aquifer as much as possible. As long as the water being allowed to flow down the hole isn't oil contaminated it is a good way to store it for the next drought.

"Uncontrolled flooding is a thing of the past". Ah, but Nature bats last. Oroville was "almost" at emergency release status. Shasta was also just two more days of atmospheric river conditions from having to dump flows of 200,000 CFS. All dams have limits. And there are compromises for reservoir level management to both provide "sufficient" flood control and "optimal" water storage. There IS the combination of heavy snow and tropical fronts "out there" that will turn the entire Central Valley into a giant lake again. We just don't know when. The same can be said about LA and the SF Bay Area. Someday the San Andreas fault will really cut loose and there will be catastrophic damage. We just don't know when.

[hvacman]

Oroville update:

Thanks to a few days of warm weather, we had some snow melt flow come down to the reservoir in excess of what the turbines can flow. Level currently at just over 862 feet and slowly rising. Looks like they will have re-open the spillway gates Friday to bleed it down again. The DWR did some shot-crete work under the broken spillway lip to stop the undermining when it flows, but we'll see if it works. Take a look at some the photos taken down in the "canyon" created when the spillway broke. This is amazing levels of erosion.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/15/o ... her-river/

Cog,

Yes, I saw that photo of the broken concrete, too. River cobble is used a lot around here in California for structural concrete. Because it's available. You can't easily get a million yards of crushed rock to build a dam. Shasta Dam was built entirely with cobble extracted from the Sacramento River about 5 blocks from my office. I've linked a photo of the cobble being shipped to the dam construction site by what was then the world's longest conveyor built - about 10 miles long.

https://goo.gl/images/5Ibx4h

[hvacman]

Thar she blows!

Oroville once again is flowing about 47,000 cfs down the broken main spillway. With all the snowmelt, the lake was filling way beyond the conservative storage level and even with all the turbines running, the lake level keeps rising.

While DWR’s crews have shored up the spillway with quick-setting concrete and other materials, the water releases might cause new damage on the 3,000-foot chute. But DWR Acting Director Bill Croyle said it was important to push water out of Lake Oroville as water levels have crept up.

“We’re going to be watching to see what happens, and we believe the measures we’ve taken have really been proactive to try to mitigate the concerns of losing additional concrete off the spillway,” Croyle told reporters Friday. “We may see some of that (concrete) move, but at the moment, I need to get some water out of this reservoir. So, as long as you don’t see catastrophic loss of a lot of concrete, then we’re going to roll through this.”

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/califo ... 17943.html

Also complicating things is that the underlying rock has been found to be serpentine, which contains asbestos. Lots of new environmental safety things kick in for controlling worker exposure. Just what Oroville needed.

Oroville – Naturally-occurring asbestos has been found in the rock formations and in the air near the damaged Oroville Dam main spillway, according to a press release.

Although California Department of Water Resources said risk to workers and the surrounding community is minimal, dust-control operations are being increased. Air quality will continue to be monitored at the work site and nearby neighborhoods.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/o ... increased/

[Cog]

This horror show just gets more surreal. Good catch on the serpentine. In reality the real risk is moving the rock around and getting the asbestos fibers airborne. There is a lessor risk due to asbestos in the drinking water. I wonder if any of those dozer and backhoe operators were wearing PPE for asbestos exposure. I'm betting no.

[vtsnowedin]

This horror show just gets more surreal. Good catch on the serpentine. In reality the real risk is moving the rock around and getting the asbestos fibers airborne. There is a lessor risk due to asbestos in the drinking water. I wonder if any of those dozer and backhoe operators were wearing PPE for asbestos exposure. I'm betting no.

I think the major danger from asbestos comes from dry dusty conditions where the fibers become airborne in the workers air supply. Think ripping asbestos insulation out of a houses' pipe insulation or the siding off the outside. Flowing by in runoff water as it gets ripped out of the bedrock is going to have a hard time getting into the lungs of the excavator operator.
Years ago I used to use asbestos gloves to handle hot samples out of the oven and remember workers dumping fifty pound bags of asbestos fibers into the pug mill mixing up asphalt curb mix. The worker usually had a cigar or cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he lifted the open bag over the rail. Those guys are all dead today but did the tobacco get them, or the asbestos, or the combination of the two?

[Cog]

If I recall from my classes on hazardous materials correctly, their in a multiplicative effect if you are a smoker and also inhale asbestos regularly.

[vtsnowedin]

If I recall from my classes on hazardous materials correctly, their in a multiplicative effect if you are a smoker and also inhale asbestos regularly.

I believe you remember correctly. But not only that but tobacco and any of several other irritants. Silica dust from stone drills in the granite industry, cotton dust in the textile mills,coal dust in the mines etc. etc.

[hvacman]

Not exactly about Oroville dam, but it is about the spillway of it's little cousin, Whiskeytown Dam, at Whiskeytown Lake about 10 miles west of Redding California. Whiskeytown Dam was built using similar earth dam techniques, but uses an entirely different spillway concept - the glory hole.

Background - Whiskeytown Lake rarely reaches overflow level, as it is not really a "storage" reservoir and only has a couple of small creeks feeding it. It exists primarily to "stage" water released from Trinity Lake to the west and re-divert it through a tunnel to Spring Creek and the Sacramento River just downstream of Shasta Lake.

With all the heavy rain, it did finally fill to overflow level for the first time in 10 years, pushing water over the top and down into the glory hole. An IT service tech friend of mine recently got his private drone license and captured a video of the water flowing over the lip and down into the glory hole. Note this may be the first time anyone has actually seen how the water flows down the Whiskeytown glory hole: As the sign says at the glory hole - "Stay Alive by staying out".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEYkAlzYIoA

[Synapsid]

hvacman,

California calls serpentine its state rock. The proper rock name is serpentinite (serpentine is the mineral making up most of it) but as I recall they just say serpentine.

[hvacman]

Even tree-hugging-green-liberal PBS-TV station KQED thinks California should keep serpentine as the state rock.

Serpentinite has a unique association with California for many reasons including: its association with gold deposits and the resulting California Gold Rush history, many plants unique to California grow on serpentinite-rich soils, the fact that serpentinite is thought to promote slow (and less hazardous) ‘creep’ along faults, and others.

https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/08/05/l ... tate-rock/