It's starting to smell really bad.
Take a close look at these images
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/califo ... 75564.htmlNotice whats missing? Rebar. Doggone.. My patio, poured by a concrete hip neighbor down the street has 1/2" rebar on 18" centers and about the largest strain it will ever face is the impact of a beer can slipping out of my fingers. Interstate highways have 2" rebar on 12" centers. It is absolutely mind boggling they would build such a structure without steel reinforcement. Did their rebar money wander off thru corruption or were they simply cutting corners when the dam was constructed?
DWR. records show they have been patching cracks in the main spillway for several years. But never once was an engineer brought in and core samples drilled to determine the cause. And Hoser is right. It's true they were often inspecting the spillway from "some distance." I find it unbelievable DWR. didn't have at least one flunky in their employ who could put on their tennis shoes and walk the structure once every summer.
John's story about the 2005 worries are true and for once the environmentalists had it right but they blew it off. Having once lived near Covelo (Ca.) (Where they had once hoped to construct a dam on the Eel River back in the early 60's.) I'm well aware of the scores of bore holes that were drilled for soil testing. The emergency spillway is a total joke. Built atop red clay. I find it near impossible to believe soil testing didn't point out huge potential problems with their emergency spillway plan long BEFORE the dam was built and they should have been dealt with when the dam was constructed.
The emergency spillway is a bit over 1,700 feet long and was supposed the capacity to accommodate 250,000 cfs. of water. It failed at 12,000 cfs. just 5% of it's rated capacity. On Television, a DWR. rep. was trying to explain that low flows of water cause more erosion than high flows. Huh? really?? My garden hose says he's lying.
I'll stop my rant and close with the thought that when you build a 3.5 million acre foot dam above the homes of 200,000 people the public should have the expectation that such a dam is well over engineered and is always maintained in tip-top condition. DWR. clearly has some tough questions to answer.
Plumas