[KaiserJeep]

The latest would be that Trump has accepted Moonbeam's plea and Federal Disaster relief funding will now flow to California to fix the dam that "almost" broke.

Now Moonbeam must be feeling a tremendous relief. The media has the toughest of jobs now: somehow twisting the 2013 dam inspection report that Moonbeam buried into something that they can blame on Trump, or at least the few hapless R's in the State Legislature. (The CA Senate is 26 D's and 14 R's, the Assembly is 52 D's and 28 R's.)(In spite of supermajorities in both houses and Moonbeam the Dimmie Governor, the hapless R's get all the blame all the time.)

[hvacman]

A great article on how everything OTHER than Oroville is doing with this winter's water.

“That groaning sound you’re hearing throughout the Central Valley isn’t the dams – it’s the levees,” said Jeffrey Mount, the former director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “We’re stressing them pretty well right now. And, just as you’d expect, issues are starting to crop up.”

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article132779679.html

And a great article on who are the real stakeholders for Oroville's water - and the political and economic pressures brought onto the state DWR - that brought the dam to its current dire situation.

The revelations in a May 26, 2006, filing from the state Department of Water Resources to federal officials underscored how state officials rejected calls 11 years ago from three environmental groups to require that concrete be used to armor the emergency spillway at the nation’s tallest dam.

The department went on to say in its document to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that its geology division had closely evaluated the emergency spillway at Oroville, the tallest dam in the United States. Environmentalists’ concerns that the spillway — a 1,730-foot concrete lip along the reservoir’s edge, with only a tree-lined, earthen hillside below — could fail, triggering a catastrophe, were overblown, department officials said at the time.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/13/o ... -in-place/

Even as residents slowly return to their homes, the finger pointing has begun.....

[Cog]

Moonbeam has realized he needs the federal government now. I would tell him to pound sand if I were POTUS.

[KaiserJeep]

Most people don't remember that Jerry Brown was called "Moonbeam" by a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, following a story in Rolling Stone magazine, where his then girlfriend Linda Ronstadt was quoted as referring to him thus. The "moon" part refers to his brief open following of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church. As late as his last term as Mayor of Oakland, he was still openly a UC member, although he was down-playing his religious views as the Unification Church was more often than not on the conservative side of whatever political issue was current.

[dohboi]

Northern California (incl #LakeOroville) is >1 month ahead of the previous rainiest rainy season on record. 221% of normal. Stunning pace."
https://twitter.com/ericholthaus/status ... 0238632960


That's an incredible departure for a multi-station index!! I knew it had been wet but I didn't realize how extreme the pace was - 50% more season-to-date than the previous record wettest year.

Thanks to Sigmetnow and KevinOConnor at neven's site for link and text.

Also, lost of good pictures and discussion here: https://www.metabunk.org/oroville-dam-s ... ure.t8381/

[Cog]

@hvacman

You mentioned up thread that the power plant is running water through the penstock. That is inaccurate. The power plant is not running water through it at this time. All the water that is going into the river is coming through the primary spillway.

[onlooker]

http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/butte/ ... /344040149
Oroville Spillway: Things you need to know for Sunday
By: Josh Copitch
Posted: Feb 19, 2017 09:05 AM PST
Updated: Feb 19, 2017 09:05 AM PST

[KaiserJeep]

It's incredible. The news is all about the dam and the storm. There is NOTHING being reported about the fact that Dimmycrat Moonbeam buried the 2013 report on spillway cracks in the dam.

He's going to get away with it. As flagrant a case of incompetence as I have ever seen in government. Compare this to the explosion of space shuttle Challenger, where NASA made a mistake that cost seven lives. Moonbeam made a similar kind of "those o-rings are just fine" mistake that could have cost 200,000 lives in the worst case, and we have already spent more than 3X the original estimated cost of spillway repairs on the emergency repairs, the evacuation, and the resettlement of the evacuees. My guess is that if Moonbeam orders another evacuation, he will be praised by the media.

Whereas if the party responsible for this near disaster had been a Republican, he'd have had a "perp walk" on TV, he'd have been interviewed as he made bail, and a special commission would be posturing for effect in front of the cameras. But you see, we only have a scant few Republicans in California in our State Assembly, and every appointed position is filled with Dimmycrats.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, with the way money is being poured into shoring up the dam, and all the attention being paid to water levels behind the dam, there probably won't be a disastrous problem in Oroville now. But those emergency funds and other resources were stripped away from shoring up levees and preventing/repairing sinkholes and mud slides, etc. etc.

My guess is that the media will give Moonbeam a pass on anything else caused by his diversion of funds to Oroville. I don't know that there will be any such disasters, but if so I have a pretty good idea who to blame. I'm also anticipating that when the rains end, the reservoir behind the Oroville dam, the second largest source of water in this state, will only be partially full, and that as the snow runoff comes down from the mountains, most such water will flow to the sea rather than be impounded. Which means that California's Central Valley farms will once again be rationing water, after one of the wettest years ever, and the price of our produce and wines will be higher than it should be and the harvest much reduced. Maybe you will grumble about the prices at your local supermarket, but it will never occur to you that California's Governor Moonbeam caused your grief, will it?

Our State and Federal governments just do not work as they should when the media are all collectively pumping up one major political party and urinating on the other. I remember when journalistic standards existed, and one could not even tell which political party a newspaper or TV news service supported, outside of the editorials.

Sadly, we no longer have effective media today.

[Cog]

Well they sort of screwed themselves into this situation as you have described KJ. They can't fix the primary spillway until they stop running water down it. And that won't happen until this summer. So now they have to attempt to armor the downslope side of the emergency spillway in case they need to use it again.

If the order went out to let the various dams fill up to capacity, because of earlier droughts, you better make sure all your methods of getting rid of surplus amounts of water are up to snuff. That was not done in the case of Oroville and their options are now limited.

[KaiserJeep]

Yet you did not address the substance of my post. You live in this state, too. Among the redwoods, you won't be dependant upon the Oroville reservoir for residential water. However, I'll bet you still buy foods at a supermarket, including produce grown in the Central Valley and on Northern California farms and dairies across the state. You may personally pay several hundred dollars more for your food this coming year as a result of Moonbeam's incompetence.

Yet you would mock me. Who's the simpleton, now?

[Cog]

It made sense to retain more water at the various state dams during times of abundant rainfall in preparation for another drought. I see the logic in it. But only if your dam inspections and conditions were up to snuff and could handle things if they exceeded dam capacity. The dams were not kept up to snuff and that is why we are here.

Like owning a car and never doing any maintenance on it. You can get away with it for a long time and then it reaches up and bites you hard on the ass.

[KaiserJeep]

Pete's obviously been depressed lately. I don't know whether he lost a job, a spouse, his dog, or just can't stand that Trump beat HRC. I know the guy's down and I try to cut him a break, but sometimes I can't overlook what he says.

[Plantagenet]

We tend our gardens and suckle the sheep.

Thats weird.

Don't the sheep bite you on the nipples when they figure out you can't give them any milk?

---------------------------------------------

suck·le
ˈsək(ə)l/
verb
feed (a baby or young animal) from the breast or teat.
"a mother pig suckling a huge litter"
synonym: breastfeed

[KaiserJeep]

I have been living in a Dimmycrat pesthole for 31 years, and I resent it, more and more as time passes. You apparently do not mind the things that happen in this place, and are prepared to cut any pol a break as long as there is a (D) following their name.

I have now lived for a year or more in nine different states. This was the worst, followed by Taxachusetts. Both are by all accounts, Dimmycrat paradises.

For <insert deity name here>'s sake, Moonbeam could have killed as many as 200,000 people with his incompetence. Oroville could have taken away the #1 spot from China's Banquiao dam, the failure of which killed 171,000 people in 1975, and made 11 million Chinese homeless.

Now explain why you have been grumpy as a junkyard dog the past few weeks. Life in paradise getting to you, too?

[sparky]

.
Dam levels management are a tricky issue ,
it's linked to the dams having two uses , flood prevention and water retention ,
for the first the best option is to keep them empty
for the second to keep them full
usually they are managed on the expectation of rainfall ( input ) and use ( output )

Our brothers up north in Queensland found out the hard way there is no pleasing people
they build a dam , mostly as a flood preventer ,
then as there was less flooding in the valley , the local council sold land for suburban plots .
the locals snapped up the newly released plots ,their gardens needed water
the dam was told to implement a water retention plan .
as summer was coming they let the dam fill up ,
there was a big downpour episode !

the victims of the flood , the local councils and the state government blamed the dam operators