over Trump, Putin-Russia, and the gaggle of nincompoops that the nincompoop in chief has surrounded himself with and pining for a CIA coup or impeachment (to install a President Pence) and a real war with Russia-Putin,
President Trump has embarked on the most aggressive campaign against government regulation in a generation, joining with Republican lawmakers to roll back rules already on the books and limit the ability of federal regulators to impose new ones.
This is on top of fifty years of bad government that has left us with $17 trillion in national debt and a public infrastructure that is crumbling. At the moment, a potentially extremely dangerous crumble.
More than 100,000 people were told to evacuate from areas near Oroville Dam in Northern California on Sunday because officials feared that an emergency spillway could fail, sending huge amounts of water into the Feather River, which runs through downtown Oroville, and other waterways. But by late Sunday night, officials said the immediate threat had passed.
…
Engineers scrambled to release enough water from the reservoir to relieve pressure from the emergency spillway Sunday and apparently it worked. The lake’s water level had dropped several feet by Monday and crews were gathering giant boulders that helicopters would airlift to the emergency spillway and plop onto the area that was eroding, DWR said. ..
Scrambling because they don’t know if the fix will work and if it does, for how long. More rain is in the forecast and precipitation this year hasn’t been all that predictable. (The el Nino rains last year never arrived and the la Nina dry spell this year has been very wet.)
Meanwhile, the evacuation order remains in effect. The integrity of the Oroville Dam is not in question (so far). It’s the spillway and the emergency spillway (that has never before been used since the dam opened in 1968) that have been compromised. If the emergency spillway goes, the downstream property damage will be extensive. But there’s more:
Southern Californians have been drinking from the Feather River — and washing in it, flushing with it and sprinkling it over their lawns — for nearly a half century without giving it much thought, so the emergency at distant Oroville Dam provides a jolting reminder of our dependence on the wetter, northern part of the state. A disaster there could easily become a crisis here.
Oroville is the linchpin of the State Water Project, the massive engineering feat that brings Northern Sierra water from the Feather River to the Sacramento, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, into the California Aqueduct, over the Tehachapis and to our faucets.
—The Times Editorial Board
California State Water Project
The SWP collects water from rivers in Northern California and redistributes it to the water-scarce but populous south through a network of aqueducts, pumping stations and power plants. About 70% of the water provided by the project is used for urban areas and industry in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, and 30% is used for irrigation in the Central Valley.
California population
1960: 15.9 million (1960 SoCal 11.2 million; NorCal 4.7 million
Now: 38.9 million (2010 SoCal 22.7 million; NorCal 14.6)
The {Burns-Porter Act of 1959] bond was passed on an extremely narrow margin of 174,000 out of 5.8 million ballots cast.
California governor Pat Brown would later say it was to “correct an accident of people and geography”.
In real time, a high percentage of those in SoCal viewed NorCal water as a commodity that they needed and had a right to. (Likely absorbed from the LATimes and real estate developers PR. Chinatown II the movie that has yet to be made.) Would have been a better idea if soon after all this planning and building, Californians decided that they didn’t want to pay for government and and elected GOP politicians that told them they didn’t have to.
UPDATE (Don’t turn up your nose at the source.) The best photo spread on the on-going emergency situation at the Oroville Dam is at Daily Mail. The huge and huge amount of rip rap that emergency workers are hauling up there isn’t easy to comprehend. The guys operating those vehicles have a certain degree of fearlessness. Necessary to do this sort of dangerous work. (One once got a chuckle out of how quickly I turned green as he drove us up the side of a rock quarry outside Yuba City, but I freely admit to being a wuss.)
UPDATE 2/14/17 – Authorities Lift Mandatory Evacuation Orders for Oroville Dam Emergency. Very welcome news for a couple hundred thousand residents.
Mercury News – Some of America’s worst dam disasters
updated: evacuation order lifted.
i can’t even imagine how fucked up it is around there right now. evacuation count is closer to 200K than 100K, most chased out with only minutes to grab some stuff. and there’s nothing reasonable that can be done with that many people anyway. And only a very small chance of stabilizing the dam before the next storm.
No preparation time, but the number of people effected by the evacuation order was a fraction of those effected by Katrina. Plus, very few don’t have vehicles.
It’s reasonable to conclude that they had no evidence or reason to suspect that the emergency spillway was or could be compromised. That’s a problem with a mega-infrastructure fail safe that has never tested and for decades assumed that it will work if ever needed and therefore the budget doesn’t provide for adequate inspection, monitoring, and repairs. GOP and DINO government.
Are you being snarky? It’s apparently to anybody who played with mud dams as a child that a major cascade down an earthen embankment risks rapid and major erosion, with nasty consequences for the dam.
No. I have respect for engineers and contractors that construct these massive structures. While I may suspect that there was inadequate maintenance over the decades due to inadequate funding, that’s true for much of the US infrastructure. Nearly 59,000 bridges in U.S. are structurally deficient. Water and sewer lines throughout the country are decades past their original expected lifetime. Same with many nuclear power plant. We’ve been skimping on our necessary infrastructure for ever so long because we’ve chosen guns over bridges, dams, etc. When we pay the price for the guns isn’t an if, it’s merely is a question of when and where.
Perhaps. But that situation was/is far more complex and the design/engineering is much older than that of Oroville Dam.
You might find this Report interesting. (It’s only 55 pages.)
Another example of stuff I haven’t seen on TV “news”, although I did hear a garbled report of “the dam breaking” on NPR. What I know is from blogs.
Marie3, it is possible to disagree with your judgment, you know. It doesn’t mean people who do so are “obsessed” with things you regard as unimportant.
Per the dam, i’m not an engineer but I’ve got an interest in earthen dam failure from a geological perspective. (There are many natural dams in alpine areas.) The stability of the Oroville Dam is less clearcut than you might think. There are credible scenarios in which a failure of the emergency spillway works its way upstream to the dam crest, in which case all hell breaks loose. The situation there is decidedly dicey as of now (Monday night).
Was the following too subtle for you?
Disagree with facts, logic, and a strategy to accomplish a defined and positive outcome and I’ll listen. The use of “alternative facts” to discredit someone/something with a wishful expectation that it will accomplish an undefined outcome is boring and not worth my time to debate.
Mnuchin and DeVos were confirmed while the Trump-Trump-Trump and Putin-Russia obsession has been continuous here since last spring and has accomplished nothing. I’d like to say that I loathe Trump more than I loathed Nixon, Reagan, and GWB, but that’s tough to say because I loathed all of them. But loathing and obsession over a President doesn’t seem to be effective in taking them down. Otherwise Clinton and Obama wouldn’t have each gotten eight years in office. I simply refuse to waste my time acting like the rightwing crazies.
There was a great screech on the internet when Trump said that if Rahm doesn’t clean up the Chicago gangs he would “send in the Feds”. Meanwhile, yesterday another innocent grade school girl was murdered by gang crossfire in the schoolyard” in Englewood, bringing the number of murdered children in Chicago to nine so far this year!
Rahm ran like a scalded dog after that tweet from Trump, hurriedly calling a press conference and vowing the Chicago Police would “get tough”, but Englewood continues as a free fire zone.
Lefties chant “Black lives Matter” when it’s someone running from the police or shooting at the police who is killed, but are silent when innocent black children are shot down as long as the perpetrator is black.
If by “bring in the Feds”, Trump means an FBI “Elliot Ness” type operation aimed at the gangs, divorced from the (still) corrupt Chicago Police, I’m all for it.
There is an Elliot Ness in the current FBI? They would be better focused on the CPD and its union and some of the well-heeled Chicago businessmen. That would start to deal with some of what’s keeping the gangs going.
As for Rahm Emanuel, he was told that reducing the number of community mental health clinics and cutting the number of (and funds for) public schools would increase the gang violence.
What I understand from watching Chicago, Atlanta, and other cities is that the suburban ring of white flight suburbs sought politically to strangle the city while the reseident wealthy sought to dodge taxes. That was the trend up until the late 1990s and 2000s.
Now the trend is the gentrification of the cities, the deterioriation of the earlier white flight suburbs through lack of investment, overinvestment in police in comparison to other ways of fighting crime like good schools, mental health services, family counseling services, and legal services–essentially an infrastructure that helps families face time of hard times and dysfunction. And people who worked hard to escape the inner cities into jobs where they were in the suburbs are now being stranded as those jobs disappear and there are no transportation options to commute to where the jobs are and even declining schools systems in the inner suburbs as the withdrawal from public schools continues. The complicity of so many people in resistance to desegregation has over 50 years torn the country apart. It is getting to the point that the ability to solve problems like crime is disappearing rapidly as a result.
Trump has ways of killing more people, but not of solving problems. Emanuel is interested only in the money, patronage, power, and prestige. He works to export his problems to other communities through what amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Voice, please watch this town hall last week led by Chicago leaders and community members. Interested in seeing your response:
Bottom line: those who are leading residents’ efforts to improve their neighborhoods and reduce the violence see the “get tough” law enforcement response as a big, big part of the problem.
And their statements UTTERLY destroy your insulting, false claim that African-Americans “…are silent when innocent black children are shot down.”
Insulting? Where’s the hash tag? Where’s the umpteen blog entries?
And how did “Lefties” become “African Americans”?
But, I will admit that since I answered your obvious provocation, I’m not as smart as Arthur Gilroy.
So you’re uninterested in watching and responding to a town hall which took place in your neck of the woods.
OK.
Post a transcript. I don’t watch movies.
“I simply refuse to waste my time acting like the rightwing crazies.”
Amen.
If the Trump/Putin/Russia “obsession” had gotten the media attention it deserved, we wouldn’t have a loathsome President who would have placed Mnuchin and DeVos as Cabinet nominees. So, given her actions here during the campaign, Marie3 might want to spare us the concern trolling.
A progressive who wanted to avoid the travesty of the current Administration would have avoided making the comments they made on this thread. Such, such serious policy concerns Marie3 had this day when Clinton had her brief fainting spell, which evidence shows was not a manifestation of a broader health problem. Look how very serious and fact-based she was:
“…But if I did and was surrounded by people charged to protect me, including at least one person with enough medical knowledge to perform a neurological check, would expect some immediate hydration and assistance instead of walking some distance to a vehicle pick-up point with only the aid of one woman holding my hand.
If it were heat related, why wasn’t her jacket removed and why no effort to fan her.
Wouldn’t severe dehyrdration call for a trip to an ER room if at all possible (which it was in this instance)?
We don’t know if this was a unique event, but what can be seen in the photos and video isn’t consistent with the explanations given. Don’t blame others for being curious and engaging in speculations. That’s what normal people do when anything doesn’t add up.”
She used this throughout this and other threads to fuel the “Hillary is secretive and untrustworthy” narrative.
Marie3 spent the entire campaign from August to November attempting to organizing the community against supporting Hillary, and she comes to the community today claiming that we’re not focused on the right things. Did Marie3 organize people, here or elsewhere, to call their Senators and ask them to reject Trump’s Cabinet nominees? That would be a big fat NO. If she had done so, it would have been helpful. This baloney is not.
Why does Marie3 want us to STOP TALKING about a real problem? A Russian conduit in the White House security team was a real problem. There is abundant evidence that the Administration will continue to drive new pro-Russian foreign policies which will harm our national interests. As long as Marie3 is concerned about Cabinet nominees, she might want to start considering that harm by writing about Secretary of State EXXON, a person who would never have been nominated by a President Clinton.
I am not going to let you get away with lying.
Marie voted for Clinton. She wanted her to win.
I would note that it turned out that Clinton WAS lying, that in fact she had pneumonia which she had previously denied.
And that your citing of the thread is rather ironic.
Stop lying about the intentions of people who post here.
Marie3 may have voted for Clinton. There is scant evidence she wanted Clinton to win. If people had credulously taken in all the claims and extremely personal attacks Marie3 posted here against Hillary, they certainly would have been discouraged from voting for Clinton. She hammered away at Clinton and the Democrats all day and night, and had barely a peep to say about Trump and the Republicans, even after the primary was over.
You had plenty of quarrels against the party and Clinton, but you refused to play with fire, made a decision to put your shoulder behind the wheel after the Convention, and organized voters in a good faith effort to defeat Trump and the Republicans. There is no evidence Marie3 did anything of the sort. She said here recently that Democratic Party voters were to blame for Trump because they rejected Sanders in the primary, and that she had no responsibility at all. She continues her “shut up the Trump bashing” call on this very thread. Judgments of a person’s intent can be reasonably made when they behave in such ways.
Lastly, with all that has happened, you are going to look at that September 11th thread and side with those who were Hillary health truthers? You want to defend the fantastically idiotic pneumonia diagnosis discussion? After she missed less than a week on the campaign trail? After she has been in apparently fine health since? No Presidential candidate in history has been held to the standard of needing to instantly report out all diagnoses from a physical exam, and you want to want to claim that as a lie she told?
After all that has happened since?
TO
EACH
THEIR
OWN.
Me, I’ll continue to let almost all the bile flow by, but I will object when the bile flows over my nostrils even after I get on my tippy-toes.
I stopped reading at “While you wre obsessing over…. Trump”. It’s funny to me because that’s exactly the kind of thing she was saying in the weeks before the election when fladem here was predicting a 10 point victory for HRC. Everyone else was stupid for focusing on Trump… well here we are.
THE LESSER EVIL WON!
VOICE MAD!
You are, and always have been, a liar.
Who do you think are to call into question another’s motives?
I am going to say it again: YOU ARE A LIAR.
If someone has the audacity to disagree with you and your three friends you sink to asinine innuendo.
I have to tell you something: I doubt a single vote was changed in a Booman thread. This is just people talking about politics. We express opinions, and we speculate.
This is what David Axelrod said on September 12th:
“antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?”
I guess he wanted Trump to win too.
You really are intolerant of those with other ideas, and you are will to lie about the intentions of people you do not lie. And yoyu offer just absurd defenses of the Clintons.
It was YOU that decided to come into this thread and blow it up. Don’t like me or Marie – stay out of our threads.
Don’t comment on what we say.
Because you aren’t going to shut us up.
And I am never going to let you so contemptuously impugn and lie about the intent of others.
Geez, don’t you trust American Civil Engineers …
Engineers! What do they know? If they were smart they’d be CEO’s or Senators, right?
(that was sarcasm, in case readers can’t tell)
Most of the population of the Western US depends on government environmental services in order to live there at all. Just consider what shutting down state and BLM power,water, and road projects would do to cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, Palm Springs, and the large retirement communities of the area.
I suspect the residents there know their ability to continue to live there is unsustainable just like those who live on ocean front real estate in high-rise condos on barrier islands of the Atlantic know that the real estate folks set them up for disaster for a buck.
Yes, the California Water Project has been a conspicuous consumption fiasco from the beginning, with inexpensive channels losing amazing amounts to evaporation in order to irrigate fields for export of crops thousands of miles and fill swimming pools. That public subsidy means that California crops can be priced less in NC after 3000 miles of travel costs than can crops that come from within a 25-mile radius.
As the Oroville Dam challenges the wisdom of irrigation, the Trump deportation executive order and #daywithoutlatinos challenges as less-well noted form of subsidy for farms in the Valley, sub-minimum-wage labor.
The Atlantic – Which States Are Givers and Which Are Takers? White folks in NC had a 150 year head start over those on the left coast.
Peoples in their own time make mistakes and aren’t always anywhere near as forward thinking as is needed. But how about you not lecture those on the left coast. At least, and thanks to Mexico and no thanks to transplant farmers and landholders from southern states, CA was established as a free state. And a decade later was contributing to the Union’s war effort against those that desired a continuation and expansion of institutionalized slavery.
You also seem to overlook a little fact.
>>Most of the population of the Western US depends on government environmental services in order to live there at all. Just consider what shutting down state and BLM power,water, and road projects would do to cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, Palm Springs, and the large retirement communities of the area.
how is that one bit different from any other large city anywhere else? ever since the concept of a city was invented 3000 or so years ago the city has been dependent on its hinterland for food and water and vulnerable to transportation failure. LA and Phoenix are every bit as sustainable as Rome or New York.
You’re right! The famous Roman aqueducts and the Cloaca Maxima were absolutely essential to maintaining a million person city.
and, the huge fleet of ships bringing grain from Egypt to feed the city.