Our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson Gavin live in Chico, the largest city in Butte County. That’s the county in which the Oroville Dam is located. Oroville is the county seat. Let me quickly say that Chico is not in any immediate danger, since it is about 15 miles upstream from Oroville.
The problem is that south of Oroville, the Sacramento Valley is very flat; flat enough to flood hundreds of thousands of acres every year to grow rice. That means that a one to two foot wave of water will damage homes, fields, and roads, and if the emergency spillway erodes and the main spillway erodes, we could have a disaster of Biblical proportions. Sacramento itself is in that floodplain.
Supposedly Sacramento is protected by the Yolo Bypass. When the Sacramento River gets too high, gates are opened up at Knights Landing, the water flows south between Davis and Sacramento, and returns to the river at Rio Vista. The Bypass has worked well in the past, and I have been on I-80 when it was running. That system, however, was designed for “normal” floods, not a catastrophic reservoir collapse.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next storm system is a mild one.
I have been following this event. This could have a lot of impact on the nation as a whole. Much of our produce comes from California. This is just another reason for updating the infrastructure in our country.
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