Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier

Je prend ici des notes sur mes lectures. Les citations proviennent des articles cités.

  • Government severely misjudged strength of Oroville emergency spillway, sparking a crisis - LA Times
    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oroville-spillway-failure-20170216-story.html
    http://www.trbimg.com/img-58a92605/turbine/la-me-oroville-spillway-failure-20170216

    “There are unlined spillways elsewhere that perform well,” Mount said. “But they tend to be in resistant rock, and this rock is not very resistant. That is one of the design errors, not fully considering how soft and erodible that bedrock is. This stuff is all busted.”

    More than a decade ago, several environmental groups asked federal regulators to require the state to armor the hillside that forms the emergency spillway. The dam’s operating rules called for use of the spillway as part of flood-control operations, they argued, so the slope needed to be armored to prevent damaging — and potentially dangerous — erosion.

    In a May 2006 filing with FERC, the Department of Water Resources insisted that the emergency spillway was sound.

    “DWR recently reviewed the geologic conditions at the emergency spillway and concluded that the spillway is a safe and stable structure founded on solid bedrock that will not erode,” the department stated. “The Project Geology Section determined that there are only one to four feet of erodible top soil in the downstream area and that erosion would not compromise the stability of the emergency spillway.”

    On ne va quand même pas écouter ces écologistes qui voient des danger partout, alors que nos ingénieurs sont si conscients...

    #environnement #barrage #usure