Oroville Dam: Cost to repair spillways nearly doubles in price to $500M
I&#x27;m not surprised at the cost, given the nature of the project. Filling in the <i>massive</i> canyons that were cut when the spillway failed has taken an incredible amount of RCC (roller compacted concrete) and man-hours of difficult,dangerous labor. Last I heard the project is still zero injuries, which is really impressive.<p>The blancolirio channel that nraynaud mentioned has a <i>lot</i> of very impressive reporting and flyover footage, and the CA DWR itself has also been posting regular drone footage[1], which I highly recommend for a sense of <i>scale</i>. The spillway is a <i>lot</i> larger than it looks like from most of the overview photos. The closeup drone footage that includes the repair crew shows how massive the structure really is. It&#x27;s supposed to be able to handle 270,000 cfs outflow (the outflow that damaged the old spillway was &quot;only&quot; ~100,000 cfs).<p>I&#x27;d also like to point out this[2] video from blancolirio, which shows just how close the emergency spillway was to being undercut. Yah, this repair is going to be expensive, but it&#x27;s good to see that proper repairs are being done. Some things are worth the money; the central valley flooding would be a lot worse.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;calwater&#x2F;videos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;calwater&#x2F;videos</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo</a>