Crumbling California dam forces 188,000 to evacuate as threat of major flood looms
Crumbling California dam forces 188,000 to evacuate as threat of major flood looms
By Ben McGrath
14 February 2017
Approximately 188,000 people in several impoverished
towns underneath the Oroville Dam in northern California
were suddenly forced to evacuate their homes Sunday
afternoon amid fears that high water levels would overwhelm
the structure and flood populated areas north of Sacramento.
The water level appears to have subsided for the moment, but
more rain is expected Wednesday that could once again put
the dam at risk.
The dam was at 151 percent capacity on Saturday, triggering the use of an emergency spillway for the first time in the dam’s 48-year history on Sunday. That same day, officials gave evacuation orders for the city of Oroville and towns in surrounding Yuba, Sutter and Butte counties, which remained in effect on Monday. If the deteriorating dam breaks, a 30-foot wall of water will descend upon the towns below.
The dam is not functioning properly due to a massive hole 250 feet long and 45 feet deep in the dam’s main spillway. The risks of structural failure and of a breach at the Oroville dam have been well known for over a decade, with the government ignoring the issue and refusing to spend the relatively small amount that would be required to protect the lives of the hundreds of thousands at risk. In large part this is because the at-risk cities, including Marysville, Yuba City, Oroville, Live Oak and Wheatland, are home to mostly impoverished and working-class residents.
While weather cannot be perfectly predicted or altered, the current threat to lives and homes is entirely man-made. The condition of the dam is representative of the deteriorating infrastructure in the United States. Little to no preparations were made to protect against this well-predicted threat of catastrophe. In 1997, residents living under the Oroville dam were also forced to evacuate when water levels came within a foot of overflowing the structure.
Both the state and federal governments had been warned more than ten years ago that just such a situation involving the structural collapse of the emergency spillway could occur.
On October 17, 2005, three environmental groups—the Friends of the River, the South Yuba Citizens League, and the Sierra Club—filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to have the emergency spillway covered in concrete. These organizations warned that the dam failed to meet modern safety standards and that large amounts of rain would overwhelm the primary spillway and that the emergency structure would erode. This is precisely what happened.
Furthermore, the report stated: “A loss of crest control could not only cause additional damage to project lands and facilities but also cause damages and threaten lives in the protected floodplain downstream.” State and federal agencies ignored these concerns. FERC claimed that the emergency spillway could handle 350,000 cubic feet of water per second and that concerns were unfounded. However, on Sunday, water flowing at less than 5 percent that figure came close to realizing the environmental groups’ fears.
“We said ‘Are you really sure that running all this water over the emergency spillway won’t cause the spillway to fail?’” Ron Stork, policy director with Friends of the River told the press on Sunday. “They tried to be as evasive as possible. It would have cost money to build a proper concrete spillway.” He added, “I’m feeling bad that we were unable to persuade DWR [the state’s Department of Water Resources] and FERC and the Army Corps to have a safer dam.”
Despite these warnings, nothing had been done during either Republican or Democratic administrations or by the Democratic-dominated legislature. The Oroville Dam was completed in 1968 and is the tallest in the United States. It sits on the Feather River, supplying water for much of the state. The state claims that the dam is still sound with the spillway inspected annually, last being repaired in 2013.
The state ordered a last-minute evacuation that would have left hundreds dead if the dam had burst this weekend.
The California Emergency Operations Center began issuing evacuation notices just four hours after giving a press conference in which the center said they expected no problems. Suddenly, the DWR warned that the spillway could fail within an hour. California governor Jerry Brown subsequently issued a state emergency order. Residents began receiving alerts via robocalls or social media and had little time to prepare. The order to leave the area was given so suddenly that traffic along evacuation routes became congested, forcing some people to abandon their cars and walk to shelter.
Rocque Merlo, an almond grower from Durham, California, described the situation many faced to the Sacramento Bee: “I have friends in Gridley (one of the affected towns). They have animals, and they have one hour to get out.” He added, “The state wasn’t being forthcoming with anybody. I don’t know why Sacramento [the state capital] didn’t start advising people earlier they might want to think about getting ready. It’s a pretty serious deal.”
The lack of communication was echoed by others affected. “I’m just shocked, pretty mad,” local resident Greg Levias told Fox News. His wife Kaysi added that she was angry that officials had “not given us more warning.”
Many of the evacuees took shelter in Chico, a city located just north of Oroville, where cots were set up at the local Silver Dollar Fairgrounds. Isaac Loseth, 18, told the Los Angeles Times that the atmosphere there was “hectic” and “uptight,” with fears persisting that the coming rain this week would exacerbate the situation with the dam. Doris O’Kelley, 84, fled with her husband, William, who complained, “I’d like to see them be a little more plain about what’s going on.”
The potential for a catastrophe in northern California calls to mind the horrific events of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Like then, the government has ignored well-founded warnings of danger caused by a lack of infrastructure spending and sprung a last-minute plan to evacuate the 188,000 people, many of whom would have drowned stuck in traffic had the dam actually burst.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 15,500 of the country’s 84,000 dams are “high-hazard” and death could result from dam failure. Remarkably, one third of high-hazard dams lack an emergency action plan to help protect residents from flood-related disaster. The average age of dams in the US is 52 years old, with 3 percent of dams built before 1900. Two thirds of dams are privately owned. The government placed security checks in place after September 11, 2001, which make it much more difficult for organizations to research dam safety and nearly impossible for residents living under dams to even find out the dam’s stability.
There is no answer to be found within capitalism and the profit system to address the deteriorating social conditions and infrastructure that are too often highlighted by natural disasters. While the area around the Oroville Dam was spared destruction on Sunday, nothing will be done to prevent a similar situation from developing in the immediate or long-distance future.
February 14, 2017
In CA, billions for high-speed rail and
illegal aliens, nothing for Oroville Dam
By Rick Moran
The massive evacuation of the area surrounding California's Oroville Dam would not have been necessary if state officials had heeded the warnings of experts a decade ago.
But defenders of Governor Brown claim that fixing the emergency spillway now threatening to collapse and cause catastrophic flooding was never a priority and that the massive rainfall that has led to the crisis could not have been foreseen.
That may be true. But it is also a fact that the state spent billions for the $100-billion high-speed rail system, and billions more were spent on caring for illegal aliens. A tiny fraction of that spending – $200 million – could have been used to shore up the dam and avoid what could be the most serious flooding in modern California history.
Washington Times:
In 2005, advocacy groups led by Friends of the River urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order the state to reinforce the dam’s earthen walls with concrete, citing the erosion risk, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
The agency rejected the request on the recommendation of the state Department of Water Resources and local water agencies, which would have been on the hook for improvements that could have cost as much as $100 million.
Reinforcing the Oroville Dam was not included on Mr. Brown’s $100 billion wish list of projects prepared last month at the request of the National Governors Association in response to Mr. Trump’s call for $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements, CNBC reported.
One project that did make the list: California high-speed rail, a pet project of Mr. Brown’s with an estimated price tag of $100 billion that has become for state Republicans a symbol of out-of-control government spending.
Last month, the state’s 14 Republican members of the U.S. House sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao asking her to suspend federal funding for high-speed rail while her office conducts a “full and complete audit of the project and its finances.”
Critics of California’s willingness to spend billions of dollars on high-speed rail and services for illegal immigrants were quick to draw parallels to the state’s failure to invest in the Oroville Dam. The cost of fixing the spillway alone is now $200 million.
Charlie Kirk, founder of conservative student group Turning Point USA, fired off a meme Monday saying, “California Governor Jerry Brown spends $25 billion per year to support illegal immigrants/I wonder how much Governor Brown spent to maintain the Oroville Dam?”
Others defended Mr. Brown, pointing out that the emergency spillway had never been used until this year and that the catastrophic rainstorms came as a shock, especially after five years of drought.
Still others turned the crisis into an opportunity to blast Mr. Trump, saying he should repair the Oroville Dam instead of building a wall on the southern border.
Good governance depends on making good choices. Government can't fix everything all at once, but it should be able to prioritize spending to ensure the safety of residents. Instead of coddling illegal aliens, which only encouraged more illegals to cross the border and settle in California, how much more money would have been available to spend on infrastructure projects like the Oroville Dam if the state had cooperated with federal immigration authorities in trying to get a handle on the massive influx of illegals over the last several decades?
That spending billions on a high-speed rail system to nowhere is a waste of tax dollars should go without saying. How many roads, bridges, and dams could have been fixed if those billions had been devoted to realistic and pressing infrastructure problems?
Californians, like all Americans, are getting the government they deserve. They have voted the Democrats in for years and are now reaping the rewards – and paying the price – for their choices.
Any effort to get Washington to pay for emergency repairs to the Oroville Dam should be shot down by Congress immediately. The money is there – all that's needed is the political will to make the hard choices to spend it.
FORMER LOS ANGELES MAYOR ANTONIO
VILLARAIGOSA, NOW CANDIDATE FOR LA
RAZA GOV OF CA, IS A MEMBER OF THE
FASCIST MEX SEPARATIST MOVEMENT OF
M.E.Ch.A.
MICHELLE MALKIN: 15 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA "The Race".
5.
"The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of
ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano
de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan
(MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly
characterized the organization as "a radical racist group …
one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which
has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues
its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
After nearly three decades in L.A. County, Nestlé will soon move its headquarters from California to Virginia. This food services giant with an estimated $235 billion in assets worldwide will by the end of 2018 remove 1,200 jobs from a s...
"Calexit" secession from the Union grows louder. With some
cynicism and a bit of righteous indignation, many Americans
long to look westward to San Francisco, L.A., and Sacramento
and wave goodbye and good riddance.
February 11, 2017
The Time Has Come for 51
By John Steinreich
After nearly three decades in L.A. County, Nestlé will soon move itsheadquarters from California to Virginia. This food services giant with an estimated $235 billion in assets worldwide will by the end of 2018 remove 1,200 jobs from a state that relies heavily on income taxes to fund its massive public sector.
Nestlé's exodus follows other big employers, including Toyota, Campbell's Soup,Dunn-Edwards Paints, and eBay – which took with them tens of thousands of jobs – and mirrors the flight of mom-and-pop operations, entrepreneurs, families, and individuals who have ditched the once Golden State for places where the weather is less clement but the business and tax climate is welcoming. With Republicans, conservatives, and Reagan Democrats hightailing it out of high-priced California, the remaining statist majority has a voice that is progressively increasing in volume, and with it, the call for a "Calexit" secession from the Union grows louder. With some cynicism and a bit of righteous indignation, many Americans long to look westward to San Francisco, L.A., and Sacramento and wave goodbye and good riddance.
Because the values of California's popular majority are diametrically opposed to individual liberty, religious freedom, and the unimpeded pursuit of one's own personal happiness, the idea of an independent country being formed from the 31st state is attractive to both progressives and conservatives. The left would love to run a new socialist nation in North America, where it could tax brutally and spend wildly on transgender bathrooms, climate change initiatives, high-speed rail boondoggles, and a host of other agenda items championed by the purveyors of identity and environmental politics. The right would like to see California's 55 electoral votes, which give the Democratic presidential candidate a big head start every four years in the Electoral College, removed from the equation.
The clear problem concomitant with a successful Calexit would be the impact on at least four million Americans who showed up in November 2016 at the polling places across the state to cast a vote against the statist agenda promoted by the Democratic presidential candidate. Should California go full Confederate, and thereafter somehow achieve a permanent status as an independent nation-state, those millions of trapped American citizens would find themselves personae non gratae. A People's Republic of California led by a Jerry Brown or an Antonio Villaraigosa would most certainly tack even harder to the left than the state currently does. The
California-Mexico border would surely be
opened wide, prompting a spike in unfettered
immigration by desperately poor people, drug
dealers, and gang members to what is already a
virtually lawless and out-of-control welfare
state. Novel impositions would be levied on anything the new government could dream up to bilk. Entrepreneurship would be stifled, radical environmentalism would quash the effective use of natural resources, and hyper-sexualized secularism would be the cultural mainstream. It would be a woeful place for anyone valuing Judeo-Christian traditions, American history, religious freedom, and the Protestant work ethic who by misfortune could not migrate back to the United States.
For patriotic Californians who relish their constitutional liberties, Calexit would create an international barrier between them and their natural rights.
There is, fortunately, another option: the State of Jefferson.
The powers that be in Sacramento have increasingly impaired the ability of the state's rural residents to benefit from their regions' water, timber, and mineral resources; saddled them with onerous taxes; and disregarded their petitions for an audience to air their grievances. As a result, some 21 Northern California counties, with a combined population of almost two million people, have developed a plan to exit California and apply to become the 51st state in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, Article 4, Section 3. State of Jefferson advocates have been working diligently to get the attention of their legislators; sadly, their requests have gone unheard, as attested to at the 25:59 mark of thisvideo. Thus, while the left seeks to withdraw California from the U.S., the concerned citizens of the would-be State of Jefferson wish to emulate the words of the Declaration of Independence:
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Like our revolutionary forefathers who fought to leave Great Britain, the Jeffersonians are pursuing separation from California at least in part because they are not adequately represented in the statehouse. Between 1926 and 1964, California's rural areas enjoyed healthy representation in the legislature based on Proposition 28, which provided for a government model similar to the federal government's construction. There was roughly one state senator for each county (with only the most sparsely populated counties sharing a senator), while the assembly was seated largely with urban representatives, thus California's bicameral legislature had checks and balances between country and city interests. With the 1964 Reynolds v. Sims case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state legislative voting districts must represent roughly equal populations, thereby cementing the idea of "one person, one vote" set in motion by the 1962Baker v. Carr and 1963 Gray v. Sanders cases. The Reynolds ruling opened the door for the neutralization of Proposition 28. The result: thirty-six percent of California's counties now have less than eight percent of the representation in the legislature.
Further diluting rural representation is the 1879 California State Constitution, which limits the legislature, irrespective of the massive growth of the state's population over time, to 40 state senators and 80 assemblypersons. The apportionment scheme endorsed by the SCOTUS, in a state with the bulk of its of nearly 40 million inhabitants stuffed mostly into urban corridors, means that the population centers in the coastal and southern regions have significantly more representation in the legislature than do the inland and northern regions, such that the 21 State of Jefferson counties have nine state representatives out of 120.
In 1983, the SCOTUS ignored the Reynolds decision and in Brown v. Thomsonruled in favor of legislatures apportioned geographically, citing the Wyoming legislature's finding that "the opportunity for oppression of the people of this state or any of them is greater if any county is deprived a representative in the legislature than if each is guaranteed at least one representative."
Brown v. Thomson thus provides case law to bolster the State of Jefferson's legal efforts to have their grievance related to lack of representation addressed.
California today is effectively a socialist democracy, with lopsided representation. This defies the republican tradition of the United States. If the legislature continues to ignore the state's rural quarters and persists in implementing policies that crush economic productivity, the Jeffersonians will only enjoy increased justification to sever ties with the state and do what Vermont, Maine, Kentucky, and West Virginia did in breaking away from New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, respectively, to join the Union as separate states. Thus, as they are wont to say in the fledgling State of Jefferson, the time has come for 51.
John Steinreich has an M.A. in church history from Colorado Theological Seminary and is the author of two Christian-themed non-fiction books, The Words of God? – the Bible, the Qu'ran and How They Are Lived in the Post-9/11 World and A Great Cloud of Witnesses. His works are available on Lulu Press and on Kindle.
THE LA RAZA MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS
BEFORE AND AFTER BARACK OBAMA’S 8
YEARS OF SABOTAGE OF AMERICAN’S
HOMELAND SECURITY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/10/barack-obamas-newest-partner-against.html
MEXICO WILL DOUBLE AMERICA’S
POPULATION
THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES ALONE
HANDS MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY
BREEDERS MORE THAN ONE $$$$ BILLION
U.S. DOLLARS PER YEAR…. MORE THAN
THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF MEXICO
HANDS THEIR OWN!
How many illegals looting or committing crimes in your county U.S.A.?
IMMIGRANT SHARE OF ADULTS QUADRUPLED IN 232 COUNTIES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/america-third-world-country-democrat.html
"More than 728,000 illegal immigrants have been shielded from being deported and
granted work permits through President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty
program, according to the Migration Policy Institute."
MEXICO ANNOUNCES CONTROL OF CALIFORNIA ACCOMPLISHED.
De Léon, who introduced the bill, made his remarks at a hearing in Sacramento on SB54, the bill to make California a “Sanctuary State.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/02/la-raza-mexican-occupied-california.html
California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Léon (D-Los Angeles) said last Tuesday that “half his family” was in the country illegally, using false documents, and eligible for deportation under President Trump’s new executive order against “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
"The American Southwest seems to be slowly
returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico
without firing a single shot." --
- EXCELSIOR --- national newspaper of
Mexico
FORMER LOS ANGELES MAYOR AND MEX FASCIST ANTONIO “Taco Runt” VILLARAIGOSA
DECLARES MEXIFORNIA’S SURRENDER TO LA RAZA SUPREMACY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/la-raza-fascist-antonio-taco-runt.html
“Taco Runt” is a member of the Mexican Fascist Movement of M.E.Ch.A. and a racist (yes, Mexicans think of themselves as a unique “race”) LA RAZA supremacist.
He is proud of the fact that he FAILED California’s State Bar test more than any other illiterate Mexican on earth and that qualifies him to operate California’s Mexican Welfare State for LA RAZA.
MEXICO’S CITY of SANTA ANA, in the ORANGE COUNTY, California should secede and join Mexico.
It is not an American city.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/mexifornia-orange-county-city-of-santa.html
HOW MANY CITIES OR STATES SHOULD SECEDE TO MEXICO?
MEXIFORNIA: LA RAZA-OCCUPIED AND LOOTED
LA RAZA MEX ETHNIC CLEANSING IN CALIFORNIA…. of legals.
SANTA ANA SURRENDERS TO LA RAZA FASCIST MOVEMENT
Another California City Waves the Mexican Flag
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/another-california-city-falls-to-la.html
LA RAZA FASCIST XAVIER BECERRA – HIS
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