Passenger Trains > CAHSR & Immigrants Took $$$ From Oroville Dam

WaTimes: "California spent on high-speed rail and illegal immigrants, but ignored Oroville Dam"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/13/oroville-dam-flood-danger-recedes-state-criticized/

The Hill: "Tear Down This Dam"

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/319428-tear-down-this-dam


 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/17 09:01 by hazegray.

B*S

hazegray Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> WaTimes: "California spent on high-speed rail and
> illegal immigrants, but ignored Oroville Dam"
>
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/13/or
> oville-dam-flood-danger-recedes-state-criticized/
>
> The Hill: "Tear Down This Dam"
>
> http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-envir
> onment/319428-tear-down-this-dam
>
>
>  All true stop drinking the cool aid

Yeah ok, and the govt. is secretly signing over the moon to Russia.

Donald and Putin did what?
(A joke, and a gentle reminder that this is a railroad website.)

       I want to get pictures of the Oroville Dam GE units this time when they start hauling fill materials. . . . . . . . :)   ha ha

Oh please. The Washington Times??

All over the country Government builds new - but does not maintain. True on state, county, city and town levels.

How many people actually read the Victor Davis Hanson piece in The Hill?  He's a respected scholar who lays out a good case for a balance between people and salmon, between power generation and a memory of the 1800s. And the reluctance of the political process to fix and maintain stuff. And, he observes the Shasta Dam is built to similar plans at a similar time, so many checking it out is a good idea. Sooner, rather than later.

The Hill isn't a radical environmental publication, nor is it a far right rag. It's a recognized source of info on what's happening under the sheets in the federal government. Who's hiring which lobby firms, what's going on in the reg writing process.  If you want to be in the know, it and Politico are essential.

Agreed, the Victor Davis Hanson piece is excellent.  As a person who has worked with natural resources all of my professional life, it is well written and precisely on point.
 

Maintenance doesn't generate ribbon cuttings and photo ops for the politicians. Maintenance goes un-noticed until something "bad" happens.

Wurli1938 Wrote:
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> All over the country Government builds new - but
> does not maintain. True on state, county, city and
> town levels.

Paul Wilson
Arlington, VA

Shasta dam was built during the WWII and is made of concrete. It may be similar to Hoover Dam in that the foundation rock could need looking at, but I certainly don't know that. Oroville is piled up rocks, built in the 60's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasta_Dam

Both articles provide interesting comparisons and then iun the last paragrapgh or two they go for their own agenda, it is classic writing but also meant to convince the reader to agree with the writer's opinion.

Also note the Hill Article confuses metaphors in a number of places, comparing the two dams not physically but in the water supply strategy; calling the two dams 'twins' not physically but stategically (missing other dams in the systems that are similar construction); 'the cracks on the face of Oroville dam; once again metaphors as it's made of rock, there are no cracks, it is cracked metaphorically or politically though. The concrete spillway did crack and was further damaged by the water pressure (not to be confused with policitcal pressure). There is mention of dam removal, the California dams in question of removal are magnitudes smaller, much smaller streams and resovoirs and are typically privately owned and close to 100 years old if not older.

I do agree with the water buffalo anology though. There are a number of good connections, but life is getting complicated.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/17 13:06 by TCnR.

Oroville Dam was and is funded by the water and power customers, such as urban water districts and rural irrigation districts and the utilities that get the generated power.  It's not a general obligation of the state.

Not sure what you mean, it has DWR written all over it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Department_of_Water_Resources

http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/history.cfm

http://www.water.ca.gov/recent_news.cfm

-------------------------------------------------------
...
  It's not a general
> obligation of the state.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/17 13:48 by TCnR.

Tear down this dam is a very inaccurate portrayal of facts. Living in Norcal I could have written a more accurate portrayal of the facts. One thing I know is that their are very few undammed rivers in the state. Ca. has run out of rivers to dam. And how this guy came up with billion dollar deficits is beyond me. Ca.has had surpluses through most of Browns terms in office. 2.8 billion this year. The problem is too many people moving here. And ag business is calling all the shots. High speed rail has nothing to do with this problem.

The NY Times speaks out on California dams...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/oroville-dam-climate-change-california.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The NY Times article seems to be busy trying to sensationalize and sell more ads.

Most of the text is very interesting facts about dams that have nothing to do with each other. Way down the page is a relevant comment about the Oroville Dam and Agencies: “I would say California is the No. 1 best,” said Joseph D. Countryman, who worked for 20 years as the head of reservoir operations for the Army Corps of Engineers. Building a dam on a fault is a problem, there's a lot of faults that cause nice canyons. The technology for finding faults has improved greatly in the past few years and they found one.

Agree this was mis-managed and the spillway needs a lot of money thrown at it now. Using vague phrases like 'atmospheric rivers' doesn't explain what happened to the spillway, it's the same amount of water passing over it as in the past few years. There is fatigue and something needs to be fixed. The article is just attempting to incite panic.

-------------------------------------------------------
> The NY Times speaks out on California dams...
>

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/17 18:49 by TCnR.

hazegray Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> WaTimes: "California spent on high-speed rail and
> illegal immigrants, but ignored Oroville Dam"
>
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/13/or
> oville-dam-flood-danger-recedes-state-criticized/
>
> The Hill: "Tear Down This Dam"
>
> http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-envir
> onment/319428-tear-down-this-dam

Thank you for posting some very interesting reading.

The first one smells like your typical anti-California jab from the East. No surprise it'll piss off some California "nationalists." However, the second one is very good reading. Lots of quotable lines in there to spit in the face of tech-elite arrogance, which is oblivious to the infrastructure that made wealth creation possible in the first place.

Victor Davis Hanson (the author of the second link) is a fellow at Hoover Institute. Some of the people he criticizes graduated right under his nose at Stanford University, too busy "thinking inside the money" and ignored what's outside their pathetic little boxes. The crisis at Oroville Dam is the perfect symbol of how out of touch (and how blinded by money) they really are.

Too bad California didn't trick the voters to believe that Oroville Dam is a highway construction project. Lots of funding would have been available then, and this crisis might have been averted.

Dcmcrider Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maintenance doesn't generate ribbon cuttings and
> photo ops for the politicians. Maintenance goes
> un-noticed until something "bad" happens.

Only crises will spur people into action. I know people like to point fingers at "the government" or politicians, but I see this as something bigger, a cultural problem.

Per very small chance that CA HSR project is completed, there will be plenty of deferred maintenance until there are crises. Not something I'm looking forward to.

The so-called "Hoover Institute", in my opinion, is a sham "institute" (like the Cato Institute and Pacific Legal Foundation)  that for the sake of donations to Stanford University was given the right to build a tower dedicated to Aryan Rand-style economic philosophy in the lap of liberalism By saying the Hoover Institute is located on the Stanford campus gives it legitimacy to unaware folks. Stanford and the Hoover are two different entities sharing the same real estate. The Hoover knows nothing of building railways, high speed or low. I imagine they will eventually blame ISIS on the CAHSR. The writer is a 5th generation farmer and he wants more cheap publicly subsidized water (even though Rand was against gov't subsidies) simple as that. Farms in Palo Alto?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/17 13:28 by railwaybaron.