This is getting downright ludicrous. With thousands of concerned downstream residents already nervous that DWR has VIOLATED PREVIOUS PROMISES to keep a safety cushion of significant water storage behind the dam, California's Department of Water Resources (DWR) is "fillin' her up" to the very brim, apparently, with ZERO JUSTIFICATION. This, despite the fact there is a circling rainstorm over the Oroville Dam catchment RIGHT NOW and record (for the past month) inflows coming in right now, and continuing to increase.
Pardon me, but this is starting to look like someone very much wants to use the emergency spillway this spring, when there is no need for that to happen.
THIS IS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY and the federal government and the POTUS need to step in here soon and order the outflows to be increased and this creaking old dam brought down to much safer levels.
Enough is enough...and it's just not a few internet whackadoodles saying it now, but qualified engineers, county commissioners, etc., who are all expressing their deep concerns.
(The Butte County Commissioners are expressing deep concerns about the "fill 'er up" philosophy of DWR.)
Should this dam fail this spring, there will be every justification for serious jail time for the perps of the current policy at DWR. DWR could and SHOULD be running 10,000 cubic feet per second through the Hyatt power plant now, but instead is running just 5-6000, and even as low as the 4000s recently.
In the meantime, the leaking water that is going down the main spillway is MUDDIER than I've ever seen it...
That ain't good, folks.