Oroville Dam flood danger recedes; state criticized for spending on rail, illegals
http://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/medi...bc16141ba04a65
The California Department of Water Resources increased the amount of water being discharged from Lake Oroville in anticipation of storms later this week as well as snowmelt this spring, but criticism about neglect of the 50-year-old dam continues to flood ...
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Monday, February 13, 2017
The flood danger from the Oroville Dam receded Monday, but California was hit by a wave of criticism for failing to heed warnings about risks to the spillway at a time when the state spent generously on illegal immigrants and high-speed rail.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, came under fire amid reports that federal and state officials for years rebuffed or ignored calls to fortify the massive 50-year-old dam, which provides water to more than 20 million farmers and residential consumers.
“What’s Governor Brown doing?” former state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Republican, asked in a Monday post on Facebook. “The same thing he’s been doing for decades — obstructing progress.”
A radio talk show host, Mr. Donnelly said California “has been so busy defying President Donald Trump in order to protect illegal aliens from deportation that it forgot to do the things government is supposed to do, like maintain infrastructure. Governor Brown is now going hat-in-hand to beg the Trump administration for emergency funds.”
The blame game for the giant sinkhole in the dam’s concrete spillway kicked in as state and county officials announced that they had managed to discharge enough water from Lake Oroville to stop sheets of water from cascading over its earthen walls.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a Monday press conference that the goal is to reduce the water level by 50 feet to make room for the next round of storms, expected to hit Thursday and Friday.
Nearly 190,000 residents, as well as 500 inmates from the Butte County Jail, were evacuated from the area under an emergency order Sunday, but the sheriff said there was no word about when they would be allowed to return.
“This is still a dynamic situation,” said Sheriff Honea. “It’s still a situation we’re trying to assess the damage. We need to have time to make sure that before we allow people back into those areas, it is safe to do so.”
Bill Croyle, acting director of the California Department of Water Resources, said engineers increased the amount of water being discharged from the lake to 100,000 cubic feet per second to counter the inflow of 37,000 cubic feet per second.
“As indicated, we’re working to really dig down into the reservoir and move as much water out of that reservoir so we have space for the storms we expect to come in as well as the snow runoff later this spring,” Mr. Croyle said.
Mr. Brown issued an emergency order late Sunday to speed the state’s response to the flooding danger, brought on by three storm systems that dumped record rainfall on Northern California in late January. He has also requested a presidential major disaster declaration.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is assisting state officials at the scene. Mr. Trump has not commented on the emergency, but Rep. Doug LaMalfa, California Republican, said he was working with the White House and House leadership on the declaration.
“They’re aware of what’s going on here, and they’re making their decisions now,” Mr. LaMalfa said at a press conference Monday.
Built in 1968, the Oroville Dam, located about 70 miles north of Sacramento on the Feather River, is the tallest dam in the nation at 770 feet, but environmental groups argue that the project’s infrastructure needs have been a low priority.
In 2005, advocacy groups led by Friends of the River urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order the state to reinforce the dam’s earthen walls with concrete, citing the erosion risk, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
The agency rejected the request on the recommendation of the state Department of Water Resources and local water agencies, which would have been on the hook for improvements that could have cost as much as $100 million.
Reinforcing the Oroville Dam was not included on Mr. Brown’s $100 billion wish list of projects prepared last month at the request of the National Governors Association in response to Mr. Trump’s call for $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements, CNBC reported.
One project that did make the list: California high-speed rail, a pet project of Mr. Brown’s with an estimated price tag of $100 billion that has become for state Republicans a symbol of out-of-control government spending.
Last month, the state’s 14 Republican members of the U.S. House sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao asking her to suspend federal funding for high-speed rail while her office conducts a “full and complete audit of the project and its finances.”
Critics of California’s willingness to spend billions of dollars on high-speed rail and services for illegal immigrants were quick to draw parallels to the state’s failure to invest in the Oroville Dam. The cost of fixing the spillway alone is now $200 million.
Charlie Kirk, founder of conservative student group Turning Point USA, fired off a meme Monday saying, “California Governor Jerry Brown spends $25 billion per year to support illegal immigrants/I wonder how much Governor Brown spent to maintain the Oroville Dam?”
Others defended Mr. Brown, pointing out that the emergency spillway had never been used until this year and that the catastrophic rainstorms came as a shock, especially after five years of drought.
Still others turned the crisis into an opportunity to blast Mr. Trump, saying he should repair the Oroville Dam instead of building a wall on the southern border.
Oroville isn’t the only dam facing problems. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s dams a grade of D in a report last year, saying the average age of the nation’s 84,000 dams is 52 years.
The evacuations have resulted in mass closures of schools, government offices and businesses, although the Sacramento Bee reported that only a couple of looting incidents had been reported in Oroville. The Red Cross, Salvation Army and other nonprofits were assisting those displaced by the flood danger.
“It’s very much a fluid and dynamic operation that’s going on out there,” said Kevin Lawson, incident commander for Cal-Fire. “When you try to factor in what we’re dealing with with Mother Nature, it’s hard to look at a crystal ball and predict how that’s going to evolve.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...te-criticized/
DONNELLY: Jerry Brown’s California Legacy is a Dam Failure
by ASSEMBLYMAN TIM DONNELLY
13 Feb 2017
Twin Peaks, CA
The Oroville Dam — at 770 feet, America’s tallest — is on the verge of failing. And Sacramento, which has been fiddling for decades while Rome burns, is running for cover.
This isn’t just any dam; it’s the primary storage facility located on the Feather River for the State Water Project, the state-owned conveyance system that provides drinking water to more than two-thirds of California’s population.
If the dam were to fail, it could inundate not only the city of Oroville but numerous other communities downstream, including Yuba City, Marysville and even West Sacramento.
At the moment, the emergency spillway is being used for the first time since Governor Ronald Reagan approved its construction, and almost 200,000 people have been evacuated.
What’s Governor Jerry Brown doing?
The same thing he’s been doing for decades — obstructing progress. California has been so busy defying President Donald Trump in order to protect illegal aliens from deportation that it forgot to do the things government is supposed to do, like maintain infrastructure. Governor Brown is now going hat-in-hand to beg the Trump administration for emergency funds.
According to Breitbart News sources, the Trump administration is already closely monitoring the situation, and has dispatched personnel and made contingency plans to aid California in the event of a catastrophic dam failure.
But it’s during the seven dry years — the extended drought — that the state should have fixed its water infrastructure, like dams and canals. Brown and his merry band of Democrats had different priorities, like high-speed rail, benefits for illegal aliens, and unsustainable pensions.
The reality is that Sacramento was warned over and over again. Just a few years back, environmentalists raised concerns that an earthquake could degrade the massive earthen rockfill dam. Sacramento just chose to ignore those concerns — and to spend the money on other priorities.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, it was “(t)hree environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — [who] filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside.”
It’s ironic that the same environmentalists who have opposed every new dam project were the ones who raised the alarm.
Countless proposals have been floated over the past two decades to fund infrastructure out of the general fund, and prioritize critically needed upgrades to dams, roads and bridges. But Sacramento spends a pittance out of it’s $180 billion budget on infrastructure, and most of that is earmarked for the abysmal roads and a crumbling intrastate highway system.
Instead, California’s Democrat-dominated leadership depend on bonds to bail them out.
Californians are probably scratching their heads wondering what happened to all the money they had approved for bonds over the past few decades — something close to $20 billion (not including the latest water bond, Proposition 1, which alone was $7.5 billion).
When a bond is approved, the money is allocated according to the official stated purpose and/or specific projects to be built. In fact, some of those bond accounts are still flush with hundreds of millions of unused dollars, which might have been approved by voters to use on existing infrastructure projects like shoring up the Oroville Dam.
But Gov. Jerry Brown never thought to ask them.
According to a PPIC report on how the money has been disbursed on the latest water bond, all the pork projects got funded, but not a penny has been allocated for water storage.
The chart on the report page will show you everything you need to know about Sacramento’s priorities. Even the so-called “Water Bond” hasn’t been used to shore up or expand our water storage infrastructure yet (in spite of projects being in the pipeline for decades):
To date, the awards have focused on addressing priorities related to urgent public health and safety issues and the drought. Thirty-one grants will help disadvantaged communities with safe drinking water and wastewater treatment projects, 19 grants will boost urban supplies with wastewater recycling projects, and 21 grants will support local efforts to better manage groundwater reserves. Another priority has been California’s ecosystems, which have been hit hard by the drought; 45 projects address water supply and habitat to support native species around the state.
No funds have been awarded yet for water storage, another key area for boosting drought resilience. This has led to some criticism that the pace of spending is too slow, but this overlooks the bond language, which laid out a two-year process for establishing funding criteria.
But there is one thing Gov. Brown has done in cooperation with federal officials regarding infrastructure. A little over a year ago, Brown signed off on an agreement to tear down dams on the Klamath River.
Yes, you can’t make this stuff up.
Brown did finally have his “rainy day” fund approved by voters in 2016. Yet California — the so-called sustainable state — has refused to maintain its infrastructure in order to sustain its way of life. Now the “rainy day” they’d hoped to avoid is here.
God be with all those in the pathway of potential destruction.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/...y-dam-failure/
