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flyingcuttlefish ago

The LA Times Editorial Board:

Editorial: Why the situation at the Oroville Dam may be an L.A. crisis too

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-oroville-dam-20170213-story.html

"Southern Californians have been drinking from the Feather River — and washing in it, flushing with it and sprinkling it over their lawns — for nearly a half century without giving it much thought, so the emergency at distant Oroville Dam provides a jolting reminder of our dependence on the wetter, northern part of the state. A disaster there could easily become a crisis here.

Oroville is the linchpin of the State Water Project, the massive engineering feat that brings Northern Sierra water from the Feather River to the Sacramento, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, into the California Aqueduct, over the Tehachapis and to our faucets. . . "

Environmental groups predicted Oroville emergency spillway erosion in 2005 court document

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-live-updates-oroville-dam-environmental-groups-predicted-1487029145-htmlstory.html

"In a technical memo on Lake Oroville’s discharge, the Yuba County Water Agency wrote in 2002 that if the Department of Water Resources used the emergency spillway, “extensive erosion would take place” and that “the spillway road and possibly high voltage transmission towers would be impacted,” according to a motion to intervene on the licensing filed by environmentalist groups in 2005."