"The $1.1 billion spent to repair Oroville Dam is failing as water is seeping through the rebuilt spillway threatens new mass evacuations over the risk of the dam collapsing.
According to national dam expert Scott Cahill of Watershed Services of Ohio, Oroville Dam is on the same failure track as in 2017, with visible water seepage trickling from the foot of the dam and dozens of points along the dam’s principal spillway.
...As America’s tallest earthen dam with a 770-foot face and 901-foot top of the spillway, the lake behind Oroville Dam can hold 3.5 million-acre feet of water.
...(2017)...Facing the risk of a 30-foot wall of water racing toward metropolitan Sacramento, the Butte County Sheriff issued a mandatory evacuation of 188,000 residents.
The rains ebbed and the dam survived, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s after-action 537-page Independent Forensic Team Report found:
“The Oroville Dam spillway incident was caused by a long-term systemic failure of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), regulatory, and general industry practices to recognize and address inherent spillway design and construction weaknesses, poor bedrock quality, and deteriorated service spillway chute conditions.”
California’s potential liability for the 2017 Oroville Dam crisis was reinforced on March 14 when Sacramento Superior Court Judge James McFetridge ordered discovery to begin in a lawsuit against the state for hundreds of millions in damages by the City of Oroville, dozens of farmers, businesses, and others during the two-month crisis.
The plaintiffs’ motion included wide-ranging allegations of dam employees suffering from sexual and racial harassment, extensive theft of equipment by dam officials, filing fraudulent financial reports, shoddy maintenance records, and a pattern of actively destroying evidence to conceal liability and criminal actions.
President Trump has blamed California for systematically failing to fund known state infrastructure and safety needs, then billing the Federal Emergency Management Agency under its 75 percent reimbursement for national disaster relief claims.
Based on the reports of incompetence, FEMA denied $306 million of California’s first $639 million national disaster reimbursement requests for the 2017 Oroville Dam crisis."
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