System flawed beyond design of dam
Slowly — but surely — we are learning that the nearcatastrophic failure of Oroville Dam’s main spillway wasn’t truly caused by weather, even though the state claims that in seeking federal aid for repairs.
Rather, it resulted from poor engineering and construction when the nation’s highest dam was rising more than a half-century ago as the centerpiece of the State Water Project, and poor maintenance since its completion.
The latest evidence is a huge report by a team of engineering experts, headed by Robert Bea and Tony Johnson of the University of California’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.
It concluded that the dam’s fundamental flaws were compounded by decades of neglect by the state Department of Water Resources and Division of Safety of Dams.
“The gated spillway was managed to failure by DWR and DSOD,” the damning report declared.
One of the abysmal failures cited was “the recently exposed existence of DSOD inspection reports dating back to 1989. For reasons yet to be fully determined, identified deficiencies were either ignored, treated as low priority, not acted upon or a combination thereof.”
The 124-page report added that “complacency, lack of industry standard level maintenance, and possibly pressure from internal DWR management and external State Water Contractors’ representatives to hold down maintenance costs were key contributors.”
Finally, and most ominously, the study team suggested that Oroville’s problems are not confined to the spillway, whose collapse last February led to the near-failure of an auxiliary spillway, a threat of failure in the dam itself, and widespread evacuations of those living along the Feather River north of Sacramento.
The Bea-Johnson report says the dam may be “facing a breach danger from a serious and dangerous form of a slowmotion failure mode.”
DWR has insisted all along that despite the spillway failure, the earthen-fill dam itself is “sound and safe.”
Shoddy engineering and design and neglectful maintenance are serious business. If what the other experts say is accurate, it may explain why state officials from Gov. Jerry Brown downward have been so closed-mouthed about what went wrong.
If it wasn’t the weather, but human error, that created the problem, then the state’s plea for federal aid is bogus.
But there’s an even more pertinent question raised by the Bea-Johnson study — whether the state is even capable of competently building and maintaining huge public works projects.
One recalls the more recent example of the Oakland Bay Bridge. It not only took a quarter-century to design and build the replacement, but costs wound up four times their original estimate and after it was completed, it was revealed that there were major construction flaws that the Department of Transportation didn’t disclose but investigative journalism by the Sacramento Bee exposed. When asked about it, Brown infamously replied, “S— happens.”
Meanwhile, Brown wants the state to build two more mega-projects — the delta tunnels and the bullet train. If Oroville Dam and the Bay Bridge set the standard, maybe those new projects are disasters waiting to happen.