$1.1 billion cost estimate for repair work at Oroville Dam.
The price tag for the 2017 crisis at Oroville Dam has surged past $1 billion.
On Wednesday, the state Department of Water Resources revealed a $1.1 billion cost estimate for the massive repair work at America’s tallest dam.
The cost of the emergency response, and the subsequent repairs to the dam’s two flood-control spillways, has periodically risen since officials made their initial estimates following the crisis, which triggered the evacuation of 188,000 residents.
Spokeswoman Erin Mellon, citing the enormity of the repair project, told reporters on a conference call that cost estimates “may be adjusted further” as work continues into the fall. DWR said it expects to have the dam’s two spillways substantially rebuilt and ready for the winter rains.
The state expects the federal government to pick up the lion’s share of the costs.
The initial cost estimate was pegged at $200 million. In January, DWR officials said the price had grown to $870 million. Mellon said the rising costs include more money to excavate the hillside beneath the dam’s emergency spillway, road construction and removal of debris and sediment from the Feather River channel at the base of the two spillways.
Since the crisis, state officials have said they expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse the state for up to 75 percent of the costs, with the local water districts that store water behind Oroville Dam covering the rest. So far Mellon said FEMA agreed to pay 75 percent of the $116 million in costs submitted by the state.
That figure hasn’t changed since January. But the possibility that FEMA could reject the state’s funding requests have lingered since the spring 2017 when acting DWR Director Bill Croyle told a legislative hearing in that FEMA could turn them down for reimbursement if the agency believed the cause of the damage was poor maintenance.
In January, an independent forensic ordered by the federal government to conduct a review of the crisis concluded that poor maintenance was a contributing factor, along with poor design and construction. The independent forensic team also said the crisis was caused in part because the DWR was too focused on the “water delivery needs” of its customers to the south, and gave dam safety less of a priority.
Water districts, including those that supply water to much of Southern California, store water behind the dam and pay for its upkeep. Officials at DWR and the water contractors refuted those claims, saying the integrity of the dam and the safety of downstream residents were their only concerns.
The forensic team also said the state and federal officials who inspected Oroville Dam relied too heavily on visual inspections, ignoring blueprints, construction records and other documented clues that could have warned them about the dam’s troubled flood-control spillway long before it fractured in February.
The team said the spillway failure at Oroville was likely caused by longstanding problems with cracks in the concrete and a faulty drainage system underneath the concrete chute that was too thin in places. State officials said they had rebuilt the spillway enough that it could have been used last winter, but the lake level was kept low enough that no water spilled down its slope.
Mellon said Wednesday the spillway should be fully operational for California’s rainy season, which typically begins in the fall.