Engineering360: "Oroville Report Blames Systemic Failures"

This entire report is junk!

Typical waste of money. Over 500 pages that says the dam was not properly designed, constructed and MAINTAINED!

That's it.

It was known to be flawed, but it was cheaper to add band aides than repair the spillway properly. $$$$

The flaws will, no doubt, remain in place because of$$$$.

The country's infrastructure is falling apart everywhere because politicians refuse to properly fund upkeep. It's more important to give tax breaks to big business, who pay their real wages ^(bribes) than fix what's wrong with the roads, bridges, dams and the rest.

Lip service will be paid until the next disaster happens and then we'll get another 500-1,000 page useless report that brings head shaking and tisk tisking again and no real action will be taken.

I mostly agree with you. It is typical mismanagement/mishandling through complacency culture.

In proper maintenance of structures such as dams, every control has to be preventive maintained on a schedule, with the preemptive assumption that a part is in a failed condition at the beginning of the inspection/test, until such time as the workers prove that it does operate correctly, and then they sign off on it. Two sets of eyes, not just one.

It is one thing to engineer such a structure, another to actually build it, and another to keep the construction on such scales on time and on budget. Over time, things have this pesky tendency to corrode or wear out. This is why maintenance has to be a service of vigilance.

The money needs to go to the workers that keep the thing operable, and the personnel that keep the work force on task. Upper level management seems to be getting to spend too much time at the trough, when they should be making sure that the correct protocols are in place, and that the key personnel are on the job, taking care of business.

"It was known to be flawed." This is where the flawed reasoning always seems to enter the picture. Rather than spend $X to correct the problem for Y years, $z is spent n times over Y/10 years (1/10 of the time it would have been good for), such that in Y years, z*n*10> $X, by a large factor, but nobody cares apparently since this was not spent all at once.

This is where bean counter style managers, and politicians need to get out of the way, and let the real men and women get to work on fixing our infrastructure.

Infrastructure always pays back far more than it costs in goods and services provided/transported to the point of application -- it grows the economy arguably.

We did not have Interstate Highways until the system was begun under Ike Eisenhower's leadership. This was at least part of the secret sauce that allowed America to begin to be far more prosperous than ever before, and keep all the WWII veterans employed.

This is something we seldom see any more: Large scale engineering, that benefits the entire nation, not just one or two slush funds with shaky connections to politicians.

From the picture, it is clear that the water enters the top of the chute at whatever velocity. It then inceases down the relatively flat portion of the chute. Said water increases velocity going over the top part of the chute slope. The water continues to increase velocity all the way down the chute to its end at nearly maximum velocity, throuh the lowest baffles. Why did the the chute not fail more near the point of maximum velocity? It was because there was a weaker slab portion higher up the slope that failed first. Why was it weaker higher up? It was because there was more water intrusion at that mid-level location. Where did that water intrusion come from? It came through inadequately compacted subgrade fill along the side trench. Side trench water water flow was more easily able to hydraulically wash away the fill material enough underneath the chute slope slab to find the weakest point of support of the chule slab. Continuous erosion then caused a slight differential settlement of the chute floor slab. Continuous water flowed over the subsequently cracking chute floor slab, thereby causing the primary chute failure...