Lawmakers take water leaders to task over dam

SACRAMENTO – If a fresh look had been taken at Oroville Dam any time between 50 years ago and last year, could the breakup of the spillway have been avoided? Is enough being done to ensure that work done today will keep the communities downstream of the dam safe? Should the Department of Water Resources remain in charge of the dam in the future?

On Thursday, members of the state Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife Accountability asked questions of state water leaders during a threehour hearing on the Oroville Dam spillway damage and reconstruction plans.

After several questions about what went wrong and how to avoid mistakes in the future, David Gutierrez, technical adviser to the Department of Water Resources, said more answers should be available when a forensic report is completed.

“I don’t want to wait for the forensics report” on what went wrong with the spillway, said state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, who was invited to the meeting because he represents the area.

Work will be done this summer and into the fall or even next year, Nielsen said. “There is work going on now.”

The broader question is “how you operate the dam,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, about halfway through the hearing.

Gallagher held up a report with color-coded bookmarks and cited several problems noted and “patchwork” done over the years.

“There needs to be a process in place now and going forward, so that problems don’t take place in the future,” Gallagher said.

The dam was built a long time ago. Since then, new dams have been built with higher standards. Why weren’t improvements made to Oroville Dam in the past 50 years, he asked.

Ron Stork, senior policy advocate for Friends of the River, said some problems have been on the radar for 20 years.

The emergency spillway was not designed to be safe, Stork said as an example. It was designed for an emergency that was never supposed to happen.

However, DWR said “it was safe up there. It was all solid rock. They told the dam safety regulators that. Both the (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) and the Division of Safety of Dams bought that story back in 2005 and 2006 when we were raising these issues during the FERC relicenseing process. That story was factually incorrect,” Stork said.

“And when we ask ‘show your work,’ we’re told” there are security issues that must be kept secret, he continued.

“We clearly have a cultural problem with dam safety regulators at DWR failing to recognize real risk,” and failure to provide public transparency, Stork said.

A “conditioning effect” can take place over time, said Robert Bea, who shared perspective from his 63 years in the industry. A former engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and UC Berkeley professor, Bea helped found the university’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. He recently worked, on his own time, to review what may have gone wrong with the spillway.

Bea concluded there were problems with the spillway at the design phase, which continued on through construction phase, and continued undetected through decades of maintenance and operation.

Part of his conclusions came from three retired DWR staff who he has promised not to name, he told the committee members.

When he looked through inspection reports he saw “cracks that have been painted over,” and broken anchors at the spillway gates, Bea said.

DWR has said the green spots on the dam are naturally occurring. Yet, Bea said there should be more investigation. “In my view, nothing like that is taken as natural until proven natural.”

He said what’s really needed is more seats at the table. The staff currently on the case are well-trained and intelligent, Bea said. Sometimes what happens is that fallacies are accepted as facts or problems are dismissed and then never revisited.

Stork, of Friends of the River, said the “culture of the management has to change.”

“State Water Contractors have to understand they can’t have that facility on the cheap. They are getting water and downstream communities (from the dam) are bearing the flood risk,” Stork said.