DWR says that it's just some 'natural springs,' and that's it's no cause for worry. But a 'natural spring' in that area would have to flow uphill, which runs counter to the laws of physics
Awesome, I was eagerly anticipating someone arguing that gravity is "just a theory."
Is there such a thing as a natural siphon?
Really interesting report. And I think that the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management is now my backup dream employer behind the Future of Humanity Institute and the NASA Planetary Protection Office.
Hm.
[DWR Director] Davis has good environmental credentials, but I don't think he knows much about managing risk, and I'm not sure he has the guts to say what needs to be said to the people above him.
Bea is implicitly referring to Brown here, right? E.g., Davis doesn't have the guts to say "this is something we have to spend a lot of money on" to the Great Economizer?
I was a little surprised at the prominence given to Freerepublic.com, which I associate entirely with manic right-wing bigots.
4: That was exactly how I read it. It sounds like Davis might be a decent administrator, but probably isn't engineer enough to understand the concerns, and isn't risk manager enough to know how to broadly evaluate and handle risks.
O.K. I didn't read the report, just the article.
That is weird. If Jerry Brown is on one side and Free Republic is on the other, I think I'll trust that Brown is listening to better people. Not that I live below the damn.
Doesn't it seem likely that we're looking at a decade or so of catastrophic infrastructure disasters before the political will and the finances are mustered to fix them? It seems like we won't get dam overhauls nationwide until there's a couple of substantial disasters, our roads and bridges are terrible, Trump is deregulating everything - we may end up with a bunch of plane crashes given that - and we're obviously going to have some sub-Detroit level water problems in a lot of places, since even cities with the money for some modern amenities will find it hard to pay for water upgrades.
Also, they aren't maintaining the locks around here. This is probably a bigger problem for coal miners that everything Obama ever did.
10: Above the damn there's enough heavenly light to read.
On the one hand, I'm worried about the effect that the failure of the locks will have on local roads (because some of the traffic will shift to truck). On the other hand, I'll be able to make "Lock-less Monster" puns.
I'm currently reading a draft journal article about road conditions in Michigan in 2004 vs. 2013. Good news is there is a lot of potential opportunities for conservation groups to work with the DOT to increase fish passage via road repairs (better culverts). Bad news is there are a lot of roads in poor shape and no immediate plans to fix them (and therefore increase fish passage).
15: just give the fish bicycles and they'll be able to get around fine.
work with the DOT to increase fish passage via road repairs
This proposal seems to miss something fairly fundamental about fish.
They should of course be using CANNON.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9qA8c-E_oA
I don't have much independent commentary to make. Few thoughts:
I am absolutely delighted about Grant Davis, and thrilled that we have an outsider coming in. A co-worker a couple cubes down can show how every director for a couple decades is the trainee of the previous, going back to a Pete Wilson (R) appointee. We've had a timid, fear-based approach under them, with more interest in managing public opinion of us than managing real things. Interestingly, four of the five Deputy Director positions are empty right now (retirements, mostly voluntary but the one I'm happiest about was not voluntary. He was offered a lateral move over a dormant office and retired that afternoon.)
I don't know Grant Davis, but not being an engineer could cut either way. He could either defer to them on the grounds that they know, or he could escape the engineering culture that Bea describes. I have no guesses which will happen.
The other major hurdle is that the State Water Contractors are solely responsible for paying the construction and maintenance bills, and so they have had a large say over what gets done. To be fair, the kind of money that Bea is talking about is pretty noticeable when only the water users (many of whom are secretive and extremely wealthy (Resnicks, Vidovich, others who have even better sense and stay better hidden) and a few cities) are paying it. Of course they want to push those bills off to the general public, preferably the Feds. Anyway, because they're paying, and don't live immediately downstream of the dam, they haven't wanted an expensive risk management approach.
(An administration with steel balls could say that they can't operate Oroville with that much risk, draw the water down to a dead pool, and tell the SWC that if they want to fill Oroville they have to pay for a safe dam. But oh boy, can I not see anyone doing that. TBF, that is also water for MWD and some south Bay cities.)
With the new director and new governor in a year and a half, we have the possibility of more kinds of responses than I'd have said even three weeks ago.
This proposal seems to miss something fairly fundamental about fish.
Culvert class was one of the better weeks I've spent.
Bond. Municipal Bond. I'm in Culvert Operations.
I don't want to contradict Prof. Bea, but my understanding is that a collapse of Oroville would send a wall of water through Oroville, Yuba City and Marysville, but then continue to the unoccupied western Sac Valley, breaking levees and mostly spreading out there. I didn't think it would still be a wall of water by the time it reached Sacramento.
That said, I packed the car when the spillway was overflowing last winter. My understanding is that we'll have 12 hours before the water arrives.
Also, we do here have at least some counter to the trend of public disinvestment in the form of Prop 1 (2014), a big water bond with a few billion for storage projects. Definitely the rich water folks should shell out amap.
12: I thought the locks they wanted to get rid of were on the Allegheny, which gets far less river traffic than the Mon. While it'd mean some coal getting shifted to rail/road, I don't think it'd be much.
I thought it wasn't so much wanting to get rid of them locks on the Mon, but having them fail through lack of upkeep.
21 is great and a Young Person should make a YouTube of it.
I think this modern preference for video over text is just a passing fad.
25 is correct. There's a (semi) proactive plan to retire a bunch of lightly used locks on the Allegheny, but there's also a failure to fund known lock improvements at heavily used Mon locations. Something like $40M in urgent need, and DC is barely willing to commit $10M (those numbers may be way off, but that's the sort of ratios).
The Allegheny is a prettier, but lazy river that destroys ice cream boats while the Mon carries all the coal.
Apologies to the Allegheny. I read too quickly. It was the Mon that did in the ice cream boat.
So i went to the PT and my diaphragm went into spasm. I don't recommend, makes it super hard to breathe plus wow uncomfortable. She managed to get rid of spasm but now I'm *exhausted*.
On reflection the domino-style failure of the delta levees possibly worries me more than Oroville dam failure, while on further-further reflection this must all be displaced anxiety re the inevitable very very large earthquake here in SF.
19: Is this the sort of thing that Gavin has known views on?
31.2: Probably worth it for not having to deal with hot summers or so many Trump voters.
Because I know everybody is interested in this still, you can see the Mon (the really dirty one) and the Allegheny here. I guess the same rush of water that knocked over the ice cream boat also churned a bunch of mud.
That's a really cool picture.
One of those trees way in the back is the one that keep putting sap all over my car.
The yellow bridge on the right (the larger one) is the one where Emma Watson stood on the back of the pick-up while riding through the tunnel to it and over. It was a not-wizard movie, so I have no idea why.
That movie sucked. The one where a Russian sniper viciously shot like 15 people in that park in the middle was better.
I think I actually saw that one, but maybe I missed the beginning. I don't remember that scene.
It's the one where Tom Cruise viciously beats the shit out of many people, and shoots many others.
I realize that Tom Cruise beats and shoots people in most of his movies, but usually he doesn't act like he's enjoying it. In Pittsburgh he was totally an asshole though.
I thought you didn't read books.
Anyway yes, the sniper shooting is right at the beginning.
That said, I packed the car when the spillway was overflowing last winter. My understanding is that we'll have 12 hours before the water arrives.
What did you pack?
Interesting thought experiment. (We've probably done it before.) What would you pack in your car if you had 8 hours to pack it?
I guess you need to leave 4 hours to escape the danger zone due to traffic.
Eight hours is a long time. You could bake a bunch of cookies so you aren't miserable stuck in traffic and don't waste so much flour/sugar/etc.
My BiL, dodging a hurricane last year, prioritised clothing, computers and the cat. Seemed right to me.
48:
Those make sense. Computer. Hard drives. Clothes/shoes. Some art. Maybe kids.
Well, I only need to go half an hour away or fifteen vertical feet away. I took stuff to make the toddler and the dog comfortable, nothing sentimental (because I didn't really believe) and some clothes. I suppose if I really believed and had time, I'd like to take my Persian rug (and hope other artwork is high enough to survive). If Folsom breaks, it'd be 40 minutes and wall of water, but if Oroville breaks, we've got time and it would be substantially diminished by the time it reaches Sacramento.
19: Is this the sort of thing that Gavin has known views on?
You mean, as the inevitable next governor? I don't know. I assume Villagarosa is in the pockets of the Resnicks (because the Resnicks donate so much money in L.A.); I wouldn't expect him to challenge the State Water Contractors. Gavin's last disclosure showed money from the Resnicks as well. Honestly, I'm liking Chiang a whole lot, and he's been the only one to sound doubtful about the tunnels. His analysis ("that's expensive water") is exactly what I love to see from a deep wonk who is state treasurer.
"At first I was afraid, I was petrified.
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side.
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong,
And I grew strong.
And I learned how to get along."
27: Sure as hell hope so. Can't stand it for many distinct reasons.
34: Great picture. I was watching the USGS gauges for the Mon (right river) and they were amazing. Its flow rate was up over 50-fold, from about 2500ft^3/s to ~110k ft^3/s in less than 48 hours. The storm almost precisely hit the Monongahela/Youghiogheny valley, with 5-7 inches of rain in areas.
I bet any friendly, anthropomorphic tug boats are exhausted.
50.2: Thanks! Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to learn.
The name Oroville Waterblocker is still available.