Running Down a Stream

The Oroville Dam while it was overflowing. Credit: Associated Press

The Oroville Dam while it was overflowing. Credit: Associated Press

Kayla Wentland, Staff Writer

On Sunday February 12, over 100,000 people were evacuated in Oroville, California from their homes. The Oroville Dam is on high alert for flooding along the Feather River in Northern California and into Sacramento because of heavy rains.  Lake Oroville also gets water from the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range and it is having one of its wettest seasons in recent years.

A massive hole was discovered in an emergency spillway that catches excess water when Lake Oroville’s water level rises to overflow the dam and threatens communities downstream. Officials warned that a 30-foot wall of water could make its way downstream if the eroding spillway were to wash away. In late December, the water level was at 85 percent capacity. When the hole was found, the state let the water capacity reach an alarming  98 percent capacity. They had no choice but to let the emergency spillway release water and in doing so, the hole became bigger and eroded the roadway along the dam.

As the road washed away, the water followed and has made a second path down the hillside causing officials to issue a landslide warning. The reason for the flooding is due to California’s drought, but now the intense amount of rain and snow from the mountains have caused the water to spill 100,000 cubic feet per second versus the normal 55,000 cubic feet per second. The engineers who manage the dam were not prepared for this amount of water. Officials say that they must wait for the water to even out to be able to fix the hole in the spillway and that could take a few days or even weeks.