"It's a sight that usually means California is having a good winter and water supplies are healthy. This week, operators at Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the United States, which holds back California's second-largest reservoir, opened the spillway gates and began releasing billions of gallons of water down the massive concrete spillway into the Feather River below. The reason? It's not to waste water. But to prevent potential floods."
"Like many reservoirs in California, the 10-mile long reservoir in Butte County which is a linchpin of the state's water supply, has been filling fast over the past three weeks due to a series of major storms. During wet winters, dam operators often let water out of reservoirs to preserve space to capture more water so they can release it in an orderly way. If they let reservoirs fill to the very top too early in the winter and spill on their own, the volumes of water that come down spillways and outlet pipes can cause flooding to homes and businesses downstream."
"It's a balancing act, said Jeffrey Mount, a professor emeritus at UC Davis and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California's water center. A dam engineer's life is like a soldier's life. It's 99% boredom and 1% terror. But vast majority of winters it's pretty straightforward stuff."
Oroville Dam operators opened spillway gates to release billions of gallons into the Feather River to reduce reservoir levels and prevent potential floods. The 10-mile-long Oroville Reservoir in Butte County filled rapidly during a three-week storm sequence, receiving 12 inches of rain and rising 75 feet, increasing from 51% to 75% full. Operators routinely release water during wet winters to preserve storage capacity for additional storms and to enable orderly downstream releases. Oroville supplies water to cities and farms across California and currently sits at 136% of its historical average for this time of year.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]