Are Oroville Dam Spillway Reports now 'secret' due to CA Department of Water Resources requesting CEII status?

Why the secrecy?

A report dated March 10, 2017 from an independent panel of experts investigating the Oroville spillway crisis revealed serious design flaws that "riddled" the failed spillway. A new report from the panel of experts has now been barred from public access, deemed "secret".  New information reveals that this "secret" status was requested by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) two days before the next report was to be published.  Why?

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - After the evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents from the failure of the Oroville Dam Main Spillway and the Emergency Spillway, the public has relied on Oroville Dam authorities to provide accurate information on this ongoing crisis.  President Trump has supported the urgency of the repair & rebuild of the Oroville dam spillways as announced this Sunday where Federal funding of $247 million was approved for DWR's estimated repair costs from Feb 7 to the end of May [2].  Recently, the public has been startled to discover that a newly formed independent panel of experts, called the Board Of Consultants (BOC), revealed that the concrete spillway had such serious flaws so "gross and obvious" that civil design engineers were noting that the BOC reports findings indicated that spillway could have failed decades earlier [1].  Because of the BOC panel findings, this information created heartburn for DWR as more questions of continued operational risk of the upper spillway have been raised.

Now the public will be further alarmed by the recent news that any new BOC spillway analysis reports will be kept "secret"[3].  More disturbingly, this "secrecy" status was requested by DWR using a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) submission form called a "Project Safety Compliance Report".  DWR filed this report based on findings of their inspection of the Main Spillway Gates.  These Gates control the release of water using eight independent Radial Trunnion Gates to open up 17 foot by 33 foot chutes at the Gate Head Structure.  DWR's cover letter to FERC requested a "secrecy" status using a "Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII)" justification to issues or concerns discovered on their recent Structural Inspection of Gates nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  A CEII granting status will automatically deem any document associated with the Oroville spillway incident as "secret", including the BOC experts' reports.  CEII classification is intended to protect against an "attack" on damaging U.S.A. infrastructure if particular information concerning the structure is considered to be an advantage to such.

California Division of Safety of Dams performed thorough Inspections noted in years of reports, including inspecting the spillway's Radial Gates, in 2014, 2015, and 2016.  Yet no filings were submitted to FERC requesting a CEII status based on these years of inspections.  This raises many questions. What has happened since 2016 to 2017?  Why the need to file for the CEII "secret" classification?  Did the inspectors miss critical Structural defects or sensitivities in prior years?  Are there new maintenance or structural problems or issues with most of the Radial Gates that suddenly developed?   OR was this a maneuver by DWR to "bottle up" the next round of likely uncomfortable "findings" from the BOC experts' report?  Certainly the timing of DWR's filings indicate that this may be the case.

FERC website documentation reveals that DWR filed a CEII informational report two days prior to the BOC experts new report. DWR filed a "Project Safety Compliance Report" with a notation of Critical Energy Infrastructure Information on the cover letter on March 22.  FERC subsequently granted CEII status based on the Structural Inspection of Gates nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  Since all FERC documents are stored with a P-2100 incident classification for the Oroville Spillway Incident, any CEII status grant will thus apply to any and all documents with a P-2100 classification - including the BOC expert reports.

If DWR is truly concerned with security of the Radial Gates Structural findings as a CEII, and with the location of the immediate abutting spillway bridge just feet away from the Radial Trunnion Gates, then DWR should implement vehicle access security similar to what nuclear and military facilities have (kinetic vehicle arresting measures).  If DWR does not show to be implementing such measures, then this could reinforce the concerns of the public that the filing was for other reasons - such as preventing further damaging information from being made public.  Let us hope that this is not the case; that DWR is acting prudently, as the trust of the public, the sizable funding of aid by the nation, and the attention of the world is on Oroville.

More Reading:
[1] "Damage, design flaws in Oroville Dam spillway point to lengthy repairs, consultants say" The Sacramento Bee http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article140390898.html
[2] "Trump approves funds for California relief, including $247 million for Oroville Dam"   The Sacramento Bee  http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article142272894.html
[3] "Oroville Dam documents kept secret by state, federal officials"   The Sacramento Bee  http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article141963119.html#storylink=cpy

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