I've been reporting that the most dangerous element of everything having to do with the Oroville Dam is not necessarily the repair work that was done and only just recently completed (without an intervening hot curing period) but the lack of PUBLIC ACCESS to any working live webcam overlooking the reservoir so that the people downstream could monitor water levels independently of Department of Water Resources (DWR) pronouncements and data streams.
In order to appease the people and despite their promise to repair the camera at the visitor's center "in February" DWR set up two new cameras overlooking the main spillway, showing nothing of the water levels of the reservoir. These were toggled back and forth as the current live stream on the web for a few days, but are now showing nothing but a black screen for the past two days.
This, as, for the past two days, DWR also cut the outflows from the dam severely, allowing it to fill at such a rate that we are now a full three feet+ ABOVE where the water levels were at when DWR first "turned on" the new spillway 11 days ago.
Here is the data they are putting out...go look for yourself:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/dynamicapp/QueryF?s=ORO
DWR did claim they were going to "maintain" water levels for April at app. 870'...just 31 feet below the lip of emergency spillway. BUT, can they really maintain anything--given what we witnessed two years ago? Right now they are filling the reservoir at the rate of two feet per day. THAT is happening with no rain currently falling. At a current elevation of 858.5', without further intervention, we are 21 days from disaster.
Of course, they have a completed test of the new main spillway now at 25,000 CFS. But is that really a real test?
(The "test" of the new main spillway. Courtesy of kfbk.iheart.com.)
Unless DWR has a crystal ball (and maybe they do, who knows how far advanced weather manipulation may be by now) snow melt and a "Pineapple Express" rain system could combine to fill the dam at current outflows at some point in the next few weeks over just a 5-6 day period. In order to avoid that happening, DWR would be forced to run the main spillway at multiples of their feeble test levels.
I would tell you to "keep an eye" on this...But, oh yea....YOU CAN'T.