"California Ordering Inspections At Aging Dams After Crisis"

"SAN FRANCISCO — California is ordering immediate spillway inspections at about 70 aging dams that it believes might not be sound enough to protect downstream communities in a flood, a state dam regulator said Wednesday.

The engineering and on-site reviews are part of stepped-up inspections following February's surprise failures of both spillways at California's 770-foot-high (230-meter-high) Oroville Dam, the nation's tallest. Authorities ordered nearly 200,000 people to evacuate in that crisis.

Since then, regulators at California's dam-safety division began reviewing their records on the 1,250 dams they monitor, focusing on 100 big, aging dams that have people downstream, supervising engineer Daniel Meyersohn said.

The state has since written to owners of about 70 of the dams, ordering them to carry out a thorough review of the spillways' engineering and, if necessary, on-site inspections of the soundness of the spillways and the rock supporting it.

Meyersohn declined to identify the dams that had received the orders for extra inspections, saying some of the owners may not yet have received their notices."

Ellen Knickmeyer and Scott Smith report for the Associated Press June 14, 2017.