by Bob Walsh
The Trump administration is opposing relicensing of the Oroville Dam until the state can "find out" (meaning "admit to") why the damn thing failed to spectacularly in the first place.
Numerous local elected officials are actually stirring the pot and have ASKED the Trump administration to delay the 50-year relicensing of the damn dam. The dam's actual owner, the CA. Dept. of Water Resources is asserting that all the appropriate environmental and engineering studies have been completed. That may even possibly be true, but all of the political ones have not.
The actual forensic engineering report is not scheduled to come out until January now. It was hoped to have been out by mid-December. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the actual licensing body. The dam's license has been in a holding pattern for over ten years.
The yearly state dam inspections never once expressed worry about the spillway. The FERC inspection, which takes place once every five years, concluded that the failure of the spillway was so ridiculously unlikely that making an emergency plan for the failure was a waste of effort. Whoops.
I guess politicians and bureaucrats don't mind so much looking like idiots once. Looking like an idiot twice, however, might be bad for your career health.
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