OROVILLE DAM Got No Obama Stimulus Funds for Repair in 2009 – A National Tragedy And A Political Failure – State Of California Hangs In The Balance – Town Hall Meeting Scheduled.

by Pamela Williams
Although the Oroville Dam supplies drinking water to the entire State of California, no politician seemed to care…especially Obama. Almost 200,000 residents north of Sacramento were ordered to evacuate while authorities attempted to repair erosion of the dam’s emergency spillway, which would release “catastrophic” flood waters if it collapsed. We are talking “catastrophic” here! There is no public record of the dam, the tallest in the U.S., receiving any of the federal money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was intended for repairs to infrastructure around the nation.
Other projects that received money from the stimulus package were $2.2 million for sidewalks and $2.5 million for a 205-acre “zero net energy” community on the campus of University of California-Davis. That is Obama for you. What is “zero net energy” anyway?. The California Department of Water Resources denied that it had failed to listen to warnings about the dam’s safety. “We have a very rigorous schedule of inspections that is determined by state and federal regulators,” spokesman Eric See said. No one wants to take any responsibility for the Oroville Dam emergency…no one. But now California Gov. Jerry Brown asked for around $162 million for cleanup, but costs for repairs could hit $200 million. The people of California should be furious with the Liberals who looked the other way while Oroville was a ticking time bomb.
However, before Donald Trump became President Trump, he warned Americans about their failing infrastructure. On Twitter, Trump – @realDonaldTrump – responded to an Amtrak crash, tweeting, “Amtrak crash near Philadelphia, train derails -many hurt, some badly. Our country has horrible infrastructure problems.” Even then Trump knew and foresaw what was to come. Now, the political machine is doing everything it can to rid itself of President Trump, and, oh, the political machine is the Liberals in this Country. He is the one President who might really try to improve our infrastructure if the Liberals do not somehow remove him from office.
This leads us to the actual problem that is causing the Oroville Dam emergency. The emergency spillway was called into action as the water level within the lake exceeded the inflow. The quantities of water passing the crest were not considered to be that high, and the erosion of the main spillway seemed to have eased despite the vast quantities of water flowing through the damaged structure. However, erosion started to develop at the edge of the emergency spillway as well. Of course in this case there is no mechanism to control the situation. The horror here is the potential for a catastrophic release that would exceed the capacity of the downstream channels. Everyone had to eventually confront the fact that erosion at the head of the auxiliary spillway threatens to undermine the concrete weir and allow large, uncontrolled releases of water from Lake Oroville. Of course, this would be catastrophic to the population below, but leave it to self-centered politicians not to care until they have to pretend…that is when they are caught red-handed again caring not for the very people who voted them into office.
There is no excuse for this! It is clear that the flow has exceeded the emergency spillway and has flowed over unprotected ground adjacent to it, which inevitably was vulnerable to erosion. The BIG QUESTION WHICH MUST BE ASKED IS ” how did the design allow that to occur?” Next the authorities almost double the flow down the main spillway from 55,000 to 100,000 cubic feet per second, which will have accumulated more damage as a result, and second to start the evacuation of 130,000 people downstream. The time to question this at a town hall meeting Thursday evening. The meeting will be 5-6:30 p.m. at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall, 1901 Elgin St. in Oroville. Citizens will be able to speak about personal and business impacts they’ve experienced from the Oroville Dam emergency.
How have the citizens been impacted? I feel for them, as the nightmare continues, even as the victims try to clean up. Thousands of people evacuated from a flood in San Jose, California, returned home Thursday amid warnings about hygiene and handling food that may have come into contact with flood water. “The water is not safe,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said. “There is contamination in this water and the contamination runs the gamut.” You are talking about water that feeds the entire state of California!
sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/02/23/thousands-return-home-as-flood-waters-recede-in-san-jose/?e=i5Wn*8nSZgftfg

About two-thirds of the 14,000 residents evacuated two days ago were being allowed to return home while 3,800 people remain under a mandatory evacuation order issued when a creek overflowed following heavy rains and sent waist-high water into neighborhoods.

Those who went home were sorting through waterlogged furniture, toys and clothing after the creek water carrying engine fuel and sewage swamped their homes.
Victor Chen, his two children, and his wife returned home after being evacuated Tuesday night.
“It’s really tough to see. A home is all we worked for, and our family is all here,” Chen, 42, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “And we had to leave it behind when the water was rising.”
Liccardo acknowledged that the city failed to properly notify residents to evacuate early Wednesday, Some people said they got their first notice by seeing firefighters in boats in the neighborhood.
“The city dropped the ball on making sure that people were notified of the potential impact of this flood,” said resident Jean-Marie White, whose house and backyard were flooded. “Nobody had any clue.”
Assistant San Jose City Manager Dave Sykes said officials first became aware of the rising water late Tuesday when firefighters began evacuating about 400 people from a low-lying residential area.
City officials did not believe the waters would spread to other neighborhoods and did not expand the evacuation orders.

So the people wait and watch …all the while we suffer together.  That is the sound of the people being betrayed by the elite in Washington. Will President Trump do better?  Will he get the chance to try?  Will Liberals like California Governor Jerry Brown continue to play dangerous games with the State of California?
www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article134401474.html

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Nine days ago, with the Oroville Dam under stress and battered by more harsh weather, Gov. Jerry Brown said he had no immediate plans to visit the site, suggesting “I don’t think they need politicians fluttering around.”
“This is not law. It’s not politics. It’s not what I am used to,” Brown said.
On Wednesday afternoon, however, as management of the situation stabilized amid a break in the rain, Brown made a surprise visit to the incident command post at Oroville.
Brown was briefed, thanked officials, including Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, and took the opportunity to get a first-hand look at the work around the dam, spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said.

All I can say is Brown is not much of an empathetic man.  How can he survey this kind of damage, and play politics with it?
www.chicoer.com/article/NA/20170223/NEWS/170229849

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris on Thursday toured the damaged spillways at Oroville Dam and was briefed by local, state and federal officials on the ongoing crisis at the lake.
Harris, in an exchange with reporters at Oroville Airport where she arrived by helicopter, expressed gratitude for the work done at the dam, adding she wanted to see firsthand what has happened there so she could advocate for the resources California needs.
“We need to make sure that we’re putting enough resources into maintenance of the infrastructure writ large,” she said. “So it’s about the dams. It’s about what we’re doing in terms of response to floods. It’s about what needs to happen in terms of giving local folks — responders, law enforcement — the tools they need and the resources they need when it comes to evacuating large numbers of people.”
Further, the senator said officials must take a “critical look at the bureaucracy that might be a part of this process and do what we can to eliminate that bureaucracy.”
She said the emergency at the dam affects not only the region but also the state and the country.
“This region produces the fruits and vegetables consumed by the entire country,” Harris said. “This is about the economy of this region, about the state and the country. This is about protecting our environment.”


The Department of Water Resources continues to discharge 60,000cfs of water from the Oroville Dam flood control spillway. Lake levels rose slightly to 853 feet, 48 feet below the maximum level of the reservoir. Inflows exceeded outflows during the current storm system but are forecasted to be below outflows in the next 24 hours.
This rate of flow is consistent with DWR’s established plan objectives to continually manage lake levels, water flow, and support construction activities. Despite current inclement weather, work continues on the area below the spillway, the monoliths, access roads, and various eroded areas created by emergency spillway runoff. Rock, aggregate, and cement slurry continue to be placed into areas affected by erosion. This work will continue 24 hours a
day.
DWR continues to aggressively monitor the status of the dam, spillways, the Hyatt Power Plant, related structures, and progress of repair activities.
 
New crack discovered in dam
www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/24979
 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-8Cbun077U

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4 thoughts on “OROVILLE DAM Got No Obama Stimulus Funds for Repair in 2009 – A National Tragedy And A Political Failure – State Of California Hangs In The Balance – Town Hall Meeting Scheduled.”

  1. There are definitely priorities that must be taken into account.
    And the Priority was for New “Spillways” that had to be
    installed in all them “Cross-Gender” Bathrooms.
    RR.

    Reply

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