Written by Carey Wedler
\nANTI MEDIA<\/p>\n
(<\/b>ANTIMEDIA<\/b><\/a>)<\/b> Officials were warned twelve years in advance about potential safety hazards at the Oroville Dam in Butte County, California, which now faces the risk of flooding nearby residential areas as a result of a broken spillway and increased rainfall.<\/p>\n Local outlet Mercury News<\/i> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThree environmental groups \u2014 the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League \u2014 filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam\u2019s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the <\/i>dam\u2019s emergency spillway<\/i><\/a> be armored with concrete, rather than remain as an earthen hillside<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n That never happened. The aging Oroville dam, which exceeded capacity<\/a> on Sunday, began to overflow and spill over the earthen emergency spillway after the main spillway was severely damaged<\/a>. These developments prompted flood warnings and a declaration of a state of emergency<\/a> from Governor Jerry Brown. The spillway is on the verge of collapse, a potential disaster that prompted mass evacuations. Over 188,000<\/a> residents have been displaced.<\/p>\n The environmental groups\u2019 2005 filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission expressed concern over the exact situation at risk of unfolding now. They warned that in the \u201cevent of extreme rain and flooding, fast-rising water would overwhelm the main concrete spillway, then flow down the emergency spillway, and that could cause heavy erosion that would create flooding for communities downstream, but also could cause a failure, known as \u2018loss of crest control<\/i>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n According to Ron Stark, policy director with Friends of the River, \u201cWe said \u2018are you really sure that running all this water over the emergency spillway won\u2019t cause the spillway to fail?\u2019 They tried to be as evasive as possible. It would have cost money to build a proper concrete spillway.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, FERC dismissed their filing \u201cafter the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Though by Sunday evening officials reported water was no longer spilling over the emergency spillway, they are continuing to release water through the regular, damaged spillway at a rate of 100,000 cubic feet per second, which they claim is consistent with \u201cnormal flood control releases.\u201d Footage from local affiliate Fox40<\/em> shows the Feather River, which is receiving much of the water releases, is brimming. They report it \u201clooks more like a lake today,\u201d though for now, officials say<\/a> Feather River remains below flood stage.<\/p>\n