Oroville Dam Disaster Is Latest In Series Of CA Government Corruption, Environmental Failures
Feb 13, 2017 4:41 PM
On February 13th, 2017 residents in Oroville, CA, were given a last second, panicked directive
to evacuate their homes and flee the area due to concerns that the
Oroville dam was about to imminently fail. At the time of this article,
the dam has still not yet failed. Should it fail though, California's
government may face tough questions about their failure to adequately
prepare for a disaster they had been warned about for over a decade.
California negligently failed to make preparations for the inevitable end to a major drought which had occurring since 2011. For 12 years, environmental groups
had warned federal and state officials that the dam was likely to
experience structural issues in the event of heavy rains and flooding. Reports
are surfacing that the large pothole which has lead to the failure of
the Oroville dam spillway was known to the state government since 2013.
Governor Jerry Brown had years to direct the Democrat controlled state
government to authorize funding and enact plans for repairs to the dam
while water levels remained low. The Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 set
aside $395,000,000 for flood management, but to date has not allocated
any of it to actual repairs or projects, raising questions about where
the money currently sits and what it has been used for since 2014.
California's corruption causes it to consistently approve projects which are financially and logistically convenient for special interest groups at the expense of their citizens. Energy companies in Southern California are currently being sued by citizens over plans to bury nuclear waste from the reactors at San Onofre, California underwater in thin canisters without any clear explanation about how they would monitor the storage devices or explaining how the canisters will be removed once the 20 year approval permit has expired. The ill conceived project was approved by the California Coastal Commission in 2015. The California Coastal Commission was created by Governor Jerry Brown and has been itself the source of controversy after they fired their executive director Charles Lester, who was described as an "essential line of protection between developers and environmentalists." The Commission is currently the subject of multiple lawsuits, all of which allege that Coastal Commission members have had improper private contacts with permit applicants (ex-parte communications) with developers or their representatives prior to voting on those permits.
Jerry Brown himself has recently come under scrutiny as well, after a February 1st, 2017 report by the Los Angeles Times revealed
that Governor Brown still retained $15 million in campaign funds with
no clear guidelines as to how he would spend it. This story follows reports that
Brown's Chief of Staff Nancy McFadden took over a million dollars
from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and continued to hold stock in
PG&E despite playing a key role in the appointment process for new
members of the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates
PG&E and other California utilities (including the ones behind the
controversial plans for San Onofre's nuclear waste).
Whom ever is responsible for this disaster, has better leave the State before the people that have been uprooted by this failure to plan ahead, and get this situation under control, get a hold of him or her ! Who ever expected, all of the people in this pretty good size area, were going to be able to leave all at one time, down the same road, with no problems ??? Oh yes, they will all take turns !! You and I know how that will work out !
ReplyDeleteAs with many events mother nature can change things we couldn't expect when we plan for the future. I'll bet many people who use this water area for recreation never thought this could or would ever happen.
ReplyDeleteThis amount of water could not be controlled if unleashed.
From the looks of it the leash is beginning to Frey.
Like people who build next to the ocean have it good when the weathers is nice they to now have to deal with the dark side of paradise.
At least they have a good warning and can get out alive.