Sluicing On The New Banks Of The Feather River

[klunker]

 Just think. These jeenyusez at the Calif. Dept. of Water Resources are now in charge of making wise, fact based, honest and forthright decisions concerning gold dredging and mining.

[whitebutler]

7 minutes ago, klunker said:

 Just think. These jeenyusez at the Calif. Dept. of Water Resources are now in charge of making wise, fact based, honest and forthright decisions concerning gold dredging and mining.

I never saw any turbidity in that river. I have no recollection of it existing. 

I like to call them genie asses!

[Steve Herschbach]

Obviously not a good situation but thankfully an actual failure of the dam itself does not appear to be in the cards. I had to shake my head over the plan to plug the gorge by dropping rocks in it from a helicopter. Sure, it might make it look like the gov is trying to do something but that is a massive waste of money. No way you are going to plug this thing chucking rocks in it. They will blow out as fast as they drop them in.

[vanursepaul]

They may as well drop marshmallows in there--they would burn up less fuel goofing around..

[Sourdough Scott]

I don't think they are dropping them in the damaged spillway . They are dropping them under the emergency spillway .  

[Sourdough Scott]

Also, not out of the woods yet. More storms incoming  middle of this week. 

[whitebutler]

Here is a photo of the dam. The red line is the huge crevasse that could potentially undermine the emergency spillway. The green circle is the original spot effected or brake in the original or primary spillway. The primary spillway is not going to be damaged any further. The undermining of the emergency spillway could have sent a nearly thirty one foot high wall of water down the river channels. That was the main concern. Now it has been averted. 

[vanursepaul]

Does anyone remember them dropping big bags of stuff into or near levees in New Orleans---- I dont think it even slowed the water down a second--

Water will always find the easiest route and you can react with helicopters and boulders drops as fast as it can find another path...

block it here ---it will build up and go there---- like trying to fence in a goat..

 

[whitebutler]

I ain't worried. I'm waiting to go detecting. The bigger the hole the more area I can find something cool.

 

[Reno Chris]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I had to shake my head over the plan to plug the gorge by dropping rocks in it from a helicopter.

There is a small opening along the far west side of the emergency spillway. From video I saw, I would guess its not more than 10 foot wide now. It was that opening they feared would lead to complete failure of the emergency spillway which is about 30 ft. tall. I would say that its possible to fill that smaller void with 4 ft sacks of rocks now that the lake has been lowered enough to stop the water flow. The cut they want to fill is shown in the picture below with a red arrow.

I can easily see how one could get the wrong idea about the filling the cut with sacks of rocks - the media reporters telling everyone about the problem don't understand, so its hard for them to convey a correct understanding to others.