Oroville Dam Update

How many megatons of concrete will that take?

haha...It has the EPA stamp of approval, what could go wrong?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller-compacted_concrete

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash

..."The April 2015 final CCR disposal rule reaffirms EPA's Bevill determination for beneficial use, and provides a definition to distinguish between beneficial use and disposal. The beneficial use of CCR definition is comprised of four criteria:

• the CCR must provide a functional benefit;
• the CCR must substitute for the use of a virgin material;
• meets product specifications and/or design standards; and
• when unencapsulated use of CCR involves placement on the land of 12,400 tons or more in non-roadway applications, the user must demonstrate and provide documentation upon request, that environmental releases to ground water, surface water, soil, and air are comparable to or lower than those from analogous products made without CCR, or that releases will be below relevant regulatory and health-based benchmarks for human and ecological receptors."...

"EPA used the methodology to evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated from fly ash used as a direct substitute for portland cement in concrete, and from FGD gypsum used as a replacement for mined gypsum in wallboard. EPA’s evaluation concluded that the beneficial use of encapsulated CCR in concrete and wallboard is appropriate because environmental releases are comparable to or lower than those from analogous non-CCR products, or are at or below relevant regulatory and health-based benchmarks."

Well, this restores my confidence in the DWR! “The intent is not to use (the emergency spillway) ever again,” DWR chief engineer Jeanne Kuttel said. “However, we know Mother Nature throws a lot at us so we will pray.

Lord help us, Please! You've got to be kidding, right??

I dunno, maybe they're just not drinking enough Brawndo.

It's called Evangelical Engineering. You don't have to do any calcs, or even hire Capt Moosie to do them. You just pray to God to tell you what size of I-beam to use, etc. If your faith is strong, you always get an answer. And if your faith is really strong, you can skip the bulldozers and concrete trucks, and move the mountains directly to where you want them.

If you can't do the calcs, and your faith isn't that strong, you ask "Dear CR4 gurus...".

I find that engineering method faulty: Higher Power is always available to listen, but does not listen to nonsense. If Moses used that method, they would never have crossed the Red Sea (or any other suitable body of water). Moses himself told the children of Israel that they had to start thinking and acting as free men, rather than slaves if they indeed wanted to be free.

It just goes to show, that the Peter Principle of Promotion is flourishing. Happy Days

Shenzhen, China.

They shouldn't have that planned rigged out, until you keep on posting what they did several times already.

let me know when you wake from the coma

I tried to give you the benefit of doubt →HERE← but you are proving yourself as ....

Guess you can't say I didn't try, huh?

I think you should learn to sing some James Ingram song. " I did my best... but I guess my best wasn't good enough, so here we are back where we were before. Coz nothing ever changes we are back to being strangers....".... Just once!" ... Oh you do videoke dj? Im good at that.

Crabtree's bored. Maybe offer to sing him the French National Anthem.

No wait, he's in Occupied France. Make that the Horst Wessel song.

I have been known to joke around when it's off the wall crap, but when it comes to public safety, all joking is put aside. Period.

I hope not. We've had so many threads on this subject, and they're all getting samey.

Oh brother....

Yes, RCC is normally used in dam construction, and has been for quite some time, for projects where the insitu soils are unusable, unstable, or erosion-prone.

BUT, I must stressed that it should have been used, in the case of this dam and others like it, from the start (when the dam was originally constructed), not used as a Band-Aid repair. You see, the real problem here is the underlying highly erodible soils that the RCC will be resting on.

Don't bet the bank on this yet, but this approach is wrought with many pitfalls and more than nought, is apt to eventually fail.

The state of Kalifornia will be shelling out even bigger BuckoRoos to fix the mess yet again.

I agree and share your concerns. This project makes me nervous on several levels. I've tried to point a few things out, unfortunately a few people who visit this sit seem to have dulled senses so they bore easily if the topic isn't constantly new and entertaining. civil engineering is only thrilling to some when it fails massively. Earthen dams have a poor record for a few reasons, everything has to work or you get a house of cards.

I still think the main spillway should be shut down until a proper secure design is in place. The issue here includes dollars of course but you can't turn a blind eye that farmers are constantly exerting pressure so that not a drop of "their" water is lost. this has led to policy decisions that I feel have put much of the public at risk. so let the whiners whine I'll continue to cover this issue until it's safe and 100% online.

If the lake fills up far enough, you don't have any choice about a spillway being used.

Reportedly, the Goobernator(?) of Taxifornia(?) just pushed-through a near doubling of the state gas tax, and vehicle registration fees, generating an expected 5 billion dollars, that will pay for (infrastructure) repairs, specifically including rail lines...

Thus, the White Elephant Express (i.e.: the-under-80-mph-(bullet?)-train) will probably be completed before the Oroville Dam repairs...

Does the White Elephant Express line run parallel to the river downstream of Oroville Dam, or across it?

Maybe the Goobernator is expecting the insurmacation to pay off when the dam breaks the dam tracks.

Don't worry that head of yours, Moosie.."It will never have to be used again"...We're just practicing...

This is the first time I have heard of "Roller Compacted Concrete". Is this something new, or just adapted from other application?

Please provide further details??

http://rollercompacted.org/

OK. Now I wonder what the steepest grade that can be applied on without the equipment running away down hill?

If you have the time, perhaps this document will answer some of your questions about RCC.

Warning, the *.pdf file from the US Bureau of Reclamation is 177 pages.

https://www.usbr.gov/tsc/techreferences/mands/mands-pdfs/RCC.pdf

In the spirit of (structural?) sarcasm, the dam will continue to fail, without the additional structural buttresses (haha...)

Which is to say, with out the buttressing used to support the cathedrals of medieval Europe (i.e.: the so-called flying buttresses)...

FYI, ''bingle'' this for infrastructure report on U. S. dams, and some relevant links:

www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/dams/

I guess I could search his history​, but speaking of infrastructure? Where's original op Mr unglued himself?

He checked out of this asylum a while back, but peeks in periodically. He says the quality of posts/threads has dropped off, so I apologize for that, to the extent that I am responsible.

What we have here is a failure to communicate?