Oroville Dam Update

Complete video set to date.

Oroville Dam repair Part 1

Oroville Dam repair Part 2

Oroville Dam repair Part 3

Part 4 is still coming, I guess?

I'm not going to flood the channel, only certain people get into this stuff.........seems they get bored faster than a millennial with a single video game to keep the mind occupied.

Do ya mean "Social Justice Video Warrior"? LOL

It is interesting to see the upgrades incorporated into the new design. I have never been interested in bashing the old design, which after all lasted ~50 years. However, the onset of recent problems called for an updated design, which seems to be in progress. How cost-effective this is I don't yet know, but we can hope for cost containment without too much quality containment. Staying tuned....

Cost effective? Well that depends on whether you suffer from American Business myopia. Our leading lights apparently aren't aware that the world actually goes on and really pays no attention to your quarterly earnings calls.

So if we want to exercise our thinking then we need to look at the cost of building it 50 years ago and then spread that out over the fifty years it worked and compare it to the cost of building the same structure at 10 year intervals from then until now and then average out that cost against the original construction cost. This will give you the efficacy quotient for the project.

In most cases, Government contracts are the exception in many cases, within the structure of the economy of the day the cost of building it then is actually more than the cost of building it now materials and labor wise. It's all the other things, studies, impacts, fees, hearings, permits, EPA, OSHA etc. that have caused the astronomical increase in construction costs.

does this look like the State go it's moneys worth to you?

Yes, I would, given the age of the dam and the type of damn it is. Had the environment, population, and usage not changed over the last 50 years I would maybe be concerned, but given the era, the technology, the government of California at the time it looks like they made a good initial investment, but failed to properly maintain and upgrade as the circumstances dictated.

Now this is going to set some folks off, (tough) but climate change is really happening. We need to adjust our thinking to this new normal which includes more flooding, higher water levels and lower water levels (extremes) and more heat. More snow, more violent storms etc. (the pictures of that reservoir just a few years ago. Talk about extreme change. )This will require we change our living practices and the way we engineer things. Too many people are playing the blame game instead of figuring out how to live in the new normal we are faced with. Frankly folks, we cannot afford to continue the way we have. The cost of rebuilding is beyond even our countries ability to afford.

Cool stuff. Being into heavy construction (the company I work for designs and builds pulp and paper mills), I can't wait for episode 4.

I could sit and watch this kind of stuff for hours and hours...

me too ;)

Same here and often do!

My Ex used to complain to me aobut why on earth I would watch such 'boring things'.

My reply to her was something to the effect that when you can score at least a 110 on a IQ test on a bad day this stuff doesn't seem so boring.

OOOOOOO! You really stung her, now didn't you? I bet one of you ended up sleeping in the dog house that night.

No. I always slept where I wanted to sleep. If she was pissed off at me and didn't want to share a bed that's what the spare bedroom was for.

She lived there for most of the last year of our marriage and it was no fault my own either. It takes two people to work out a solution of rational compromise and she was not playing that game. (the rational or the compromising part.)

Don't worry, I get invited to move out at least once a week. The next morning, she forgets all about it.

PART 4

https://youtu.be/0ZNNYRpp1k0

Yeah, I confess, I only have a snippet of time left today, so I watched 15 seconds of each of about 5 segments. I got the Cliff notes version: lots and lots of leveling concrete, and training walls going up already.