Bipartisan Group of Delta Legislators Release Statement on Alarming Oroville Dam Situation
From the Office of Assemblyman Jim Frazier:
Today, members* of the Delta Caucus released the following statement regarding the hazardous situation at Oroville Dam after The Mercury News reported that previous concerns about the safety of the Dam’s current infrastructure were ignored:
“We are concerned that a clear alarm raised 12 years ago about the state of the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway was discounted. There has been more than enough time since then for upgrades and maintenance to the structure. Instead, nearly 185,000 people have been displaced, and there are still people in harm’s way. A catastrophic failure at Oroville would result in uncontrolled releases that do considerably more harm to the surrounding communities, and threaten those further downstream, including levee-protected communities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. For now, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that people are safe and that necessary steps are taken to prevent further compromise of the entire Oroville facility. When the immediate threats have subsided, we need to clearly assess this disaster and its causes. We have a duty to ensure California’s existing infrastructure is maintained and upgraded, and not sacrificed in favor of conveyance projects.”
*The following bipartisan group of legislators wished to be part of this statement: Senator Bill Dodd (Co-Chair), D-Napa; Senator Richard Pan, D-Sacramento; Assemblymember Jim Frazier (Co-Chair), D-Oakley; Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton; Assemblymember Catharine Baker, R-Dublin; Assemblymember Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove; Assemblymember Tim Grayson, D-Concord.
Congressman LaMalfa Requests Disaster Funding From the President
From the Office of Congressman Doug LaMalfa:
Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) issued the following statement after sending a letter to President Trump urging that he declare a Presidential Disaster Declaration of a Major Emergency after the Oroville Dam spillway suffered major damage, leading to an increased threat to public safety and causing widespread evacuations in the surrounding areas.
LaMalfa said: “The damage to the emergency spillway and main spillway to the Oroville Dam is a major safety concern for the surrounding communities and a crisis that will persist for the foreseeable future. Residents have been forced to leave their homes and seek shelter on higher ground as the risk for a major flood continues. The mandatory evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents is the very definition of a disaster and with more rain expected as early as Wednesday, it is critical that we act swiftly to ensure federal aid is available to support and shelter evacuees as this crisis continues to develop. The wellbeing of our residents is the number one priority and we must do everything within our power to ensure their safety. I urge the President and the Governor to take this action as rapidly as possible.”
The text for the letter is as follows:
President Trump,
We are writing to urge that you act rapidly to declare a Presidential Disaster Declaration of a Major Emergency to address the threat to public safety resulting from crippling damage to Oroville Dam, located in Butte County, California. Under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, a declaration would immediately direct federal resources to the area to help address a crisis of growing proportions and assist residents of three counties currently under mandatory evacuation orders.
Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the United States and the primary component of the State Water Project, experienced significant damage to its primary spillway late last week and operation of the spillway was rapidly curtailed. As a result of decreased releases from the primary spillway, a rapid, storm-caused increase in water levels triggered the first-ever use of an adjacent emergency spillway. During operation of the emergency spillway, it also experienced erosion-related damage to a degree which could result in failure and potentially catastrophic flooding if operations were continued. State and local officials determined that failure of the emergency spillway was so imminent that they triggered a mandatory evacuation of nearly 200,000 downstream residents late last night.
While the emergency spillway did not fail last evening, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), additional storms will reach Northern California as early as Wednesday and contribute significant precipitation over the following several days. The danger of failure is likely to persist for months as California’s winter and spring runoff seasons progress, and it is extremely unclear when state agencies will be able to mitigate the danger to a degree that would allow residents to return to their homes.
A Presidential Disaster Declaration would immediately make federal aid available to support evacuation and shelter of the residents of Butte, Sutter, and Yuba Counties, as well as increase the capacity of federal, state, and local agencies to address the crisis as it develops.
We ask that you act rapidly in order to ensure that appropriate federal agencies are able to rapidly provide assistance during this challenging situation. Thank you for your timely response to this request.
Congressman Doug LaMalfa is a lifelong farmer representing California’s First Congressional District, including Butte, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou and Tehama Counties.
California’s Oroville Dam Crisis Illustrates Need to Plan for More Extreme Weather
Statement by Adrienne Alvord, Western States Director, Union of Concerned Scientists:
Flooding risks around Northern California’s Lake Oroville reservoir that forced mass evacuations of people living below the nation’s tallest dam in recent days are demonstrating that future infrastructure projects must be capable of withstanding similar catastrophic events, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Below is a statement by Adrienne Alvord:
“The Oroville Dam crisis is dramatic evidence that California must plan for more extreme weather events when designing and building water infrastructure projects because the types of flooding that we have witnessed in recent days will become more frequent due to climate change.
“As we’re witnessing now, the risks to lives and property are very real, and the costs for repairing severely damaged infrastructure is much higher than investing in resilient projects from the start. The damage to the Oroville Dam spillways is a case in point of the need for stronger design criteria. Prior warnings to make safety improvements to the dam’s structures may well have averted this crisis if they had been heeded.
“Over the past year, we have worked hard to persuade the Department of Water Resources to incorporate the type of science that would help avoid these kinds of catastrophes in the future. In the end, we were baffled that an analysis of more extreme events was not required for new dam projects funded by public dollars through the California water bond.
“This crisis highlights the absolute necessity for the Department of Water Resources and the California Water Commission, as they start to evaluate new water project proposals that are being funded by $2.7 billion in bond funds, to include specifications in their project proposals to handle extreme weather events like the one that led to the spillway damages. Such events are much more likely to occur as global warming intensifies.
“The Union of Concerned Scientists’ first concern is for the safety of communities downstream of Oroville Dam, and we commend the rescue workers and those laboring to ensure that the dam spillway does not completely fail and create a true humanitarian catastrophe. We will continue to work with state water officials to ensure these types of life-threatening events can be avoided in the future with water infrastructure planning that can withstand the forces unleashed by a warming planet.”
Restore the Delta on Oroville Dam Emergency
From Restore the Delta:
On the Current Situation
We are hopeful that the Department of Water Resources (DWR) can continue to keep the situation at Oroville under control. We are grateful for all the courageous and hardworking people working day and night to keep the region safe – from DWR employees to public safety officials. The evacuations seem to have been successfully executed.
On Oroville Dam
Oroville is the primary reservoir for the State Water Project. One-third of Southern California’s water is State Water Project water. Oroville Dam also is the source for a portion of Bay Area water deliveries. Making Oroville safe is essential and must take priority over any other water project in the state.This Crisis Was Preventable
The Mercury News is reporting that Federal and State officials ignored warnings 12 years ago. Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside. They warned that the spillway could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.FERC rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the State Water Contractors argued that they would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades. They said the upgrades were unnecessary. The State Water Contractors & Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s outsized influenced on DWR to NOT upgrade the emergency spillway is a story that must be thoroughly investigated once the emergency has passed.
Because of this penny pinching, residents of these water districts will lose a significant portion of their water supply for this year. And almost 200,000 lives in the region downstream from the Oroville Dam have been disrupted, physically and economically (with no clear date set for when they can return home). Another series of storms are expected from Thursday through Tuesday of next week.
Millions of Chinook salmon have had to be relocated from the hatchery, with outcomes of disruption to their life cycle to be seen. Swollen rivers filled with debris can have negative impacts on public safety downstream and on wildlife, as levees will experience extreme pressure from emergency flows.
What Should Be Done?
Safety comes first. Before spending a dime on any gold-plated, taxpayer-backed, water delivery service to agricultural interests, we need to upgrade our 678 high hazard dams in California. Making those facilities safe is now the priority over projects such as the Delta Tunnels that will largely serve industrial agricultural interests in the southern San Joaquin Valley.We need to remind our state water resources agency that they really work for the people of California, not the water districts.
What about the Delta Tunnels?
The Delta Tunnels are only 10% designed, with no seismic analysis, and no full soil samples, yet DWR is leading the charge for state and federal permits for the project.Are they going to repeat history with the Delta Tunnels and ignore warnings that the design is flawed? As we now see, bad design can have impacts on human health, safety, and the environment.
For all of the Notebook’s coverage of the Oroville Dam spillway, click here.
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