Outrage at Oroville officials who were warned the dam was dangerous TWELVE YEARS AGO

Are officials at fault for ignoring environmentalist warnings?

As nearly 200,000 people struggle within makeshift shelters, many question how officials could possibly allow the Oroville Dam to decay so badly.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - One would think routine inspections were conducted on the tallest dam in North America to protect hundreds of thousands of people living below but apparently officials believed it would last forever.

Much like the Titanic, one can only assume Oroville Dam officials believed their structure was infallible and couldn't be bothered to inspect it, or listen to environmentalists warnings.

According to The Mercury News, Federal and state officials, as well as some of California's largest water agencies, were warned the damn was at risk of collapse back in 2005.

Rather than investigating themselves, each official rebuked the warnings, leading to the potential catastrophe it is today.

Environmental groups the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League each filed a motion with the federal government October 17, 2005 after Oroville Dam officials ignored warnings.

The motion urged feds to require the dam's emergency spillway be built up with concrete as it was nestled unstably in a simply hillside.

The groups claimed the damn failed to meet safety standards as any extreme rain or flooding could overwhelm the structure, flow down the emergency spillway and lead to heavy erosion, which would then create flooding for communities located downstream.

They explained this failure is called a "loss of crest control" and added: "A loss of crest control could not only cause additional damage to project lands and facilities but also cause damages and threaten lives in the protected floodplain downstream."

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected the request after the Department of Water Resources and other agencies, financially responsible for footing the bill, claimed such renovations and upgrades were unnecessary.

FERC's attorneys noted: "The emergency spillway was designed to safely convey the Probable Maximum Flood, and DWR has reviewed and confirmed the efficacy of the PMF hydrologic analysis for Oroville Reservoir."

Ron Stork, the policy director of Friends of the River, explained: "We said 'are you really sure that running all this water over the emergency spillway won't cause the spillway to fail?' They tried to be as evasive as possible. It would have cost money to build a proper concrete spillway."

At the time, federal officials claimed the emergency spillway was designed to handle 350,000 cubic feet per second and the environmentalist concerns were entirely unfounded.

In a July 2006 memo to his managers, John Onderdonk, a senior civil engineer with FERC from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's San Francisco Office, wrote: "It is important to recognize that during a rare event with the emergency spillway flowing at its design capacity, spillway operations would not affect reservoir control or endanger the dam.

"The emergency spillway meets FERC's engineering guidelines for an emergency spillway. The guidelines specify that during a rare flood event, it is acceptable for the emergency spillway to sustain significant damage."

Apparently that "significant damage" wasn't as acceptable as Onderdonk thought.

The spillway eroded to the point where it partially collapsed, leaving officials unable to drain Lake Oroville fast enough on Tuesday. Millions of gallons of water flowed over for the first time in fifty years.

Water poured down the hillside toward Oroville and towns further downstream. The potential for a greater disaster remains fully possible.

While watching the emergency spillway revealed signs it could collapse on Sunday, Stork was present to see how events played out.

"I'm feeling bad that we were unable to persuade DWR and FERC and the Army Corps to have a safer dam," he shared.

Stork continued, explaining how officials from the Department of Water Resources informally confirmed the Metropolitan Water District and water contractors who purchased Oroville water just wanted to avoid extra costs.

"I'm sad and hoping, crossing my fingers, that they can prevent the reservoir from failing," Stork stated. "I don't think anybody at DWR has ever been this close in their careers to such a catastrophic failure."

Though the environmentalist groups gave their warning years ago, Lester Snow, who was the state Department of Water Resources director at the time, claims he doesn't remember the specifics of the case during the relicensing process all those years ago.

He simply stated: "The dam and the outlet structures have always done well in tests and inspections. I don't recall the FERC process."

Obviously, the state did not upgrade the emergency spillway and, for whatever insane reason, they refused to reinforce the dam, endangering thousands of lives in the area.

Once again big business and greed triumphed over human safety and, unsurprisingly, they are now forced to accept responsibility for their inaction. If the water agency and related departments learn anything from the Oroville Dam situation, hopefully it will be to invest in preventative and maintenance care.

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