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Federal regulators have asked the officials who operate Oroville Dam to explain small cracks

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2017 3:40 am
by WB Staff
Federal regulators have asked the officials who operate Oroville Dam — and who are in charge of the $500 million-plus effort to rebuild and reinforce the facility’s compromised spillways — to explain small cracks that have appeared in recently rebuilt sections of the dam’s massive concrete flood-control chute.

In a previously undisclosed October letter, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told the state Department of Water Resources to document the extent of tiny cracks that have showed up in some of the spillway’s brand-new concrete slabs. FERC also asked DWR what, if any, steps might be required to address the issue.

In early November, DWR told the dam’s federal overseers in a cover letter to a classified memorandum that steps taken to build a stronger spillway — such as an added layer of steel reinforcement — caused the hairline cracks.

The letter said the agency found “the hairline cracks are a result of some of the design elements included to restrain the slabs and produce a robust and durable structure.”

Read the rest and vid: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/11/27/fe ... -spillway/