The Latest: Water levels at Lake Oroville continue to drop
Water gushes down the Oroville Dam’s main spillway Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, in Oroville, Calif. The Oroville Reservoir is continuing to drain Wednesday as state water officials scrambled to reduce the lake’s level ahead of impending storms. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
The Latest on problems with an emergency spillway at the nation’s tallest dam (all times local):
10:00 p.m.
State officials say the Lake Oroville water level was 26 feet below the emergency spillway by Wednesday night.
The Department of Water Resources says crews continue to work around the clock to make emergency repairs.
It says barges and cranes are being mobilized to remove debris and sediment from the diversion pool.
The department says about 100,000 cubic feet of water was flowing from the reservoir each second, enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Forecasts call for 2-4 inches of rain and snow in the foothills and mountains starting Wednesday night or early Thursday. But the storm was looking colder than projected, meaning less rain and less runoff than last week’s storms.
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12:50 p.m.
A California sheriff says a number of homes in an evacuation zone below a dam’s damaged spillways have been burglarized and arrests have been made.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Wednesday that he didn’t know exactly how many arrests deputies have made.
Also at a news conference, he called on private drone operators to refrain from flying the devices over Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest. He says private drones can interfere with repair work.
Dump trucks and helicopters have dropped thousands of tons of rocks and sandbags to shore up the dam’s spillways and avoid what officials had warned could be a catastrophic failure and flood downstream.
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12:30 p.m.
California water officials say cementing rocks in place at the damaged spillways of the nation’s tallest dam is a “short-term and long-term fix.”
Dump trucks and helicopters have dropped thousands of tons of rocks and sandbags to shore up the spillways at Oroville Dam and avoid what officials had warned could be a catastrophic failure and flood downstream.
Department of Water Resources acting Director Bill Croyle also says the storms this week won’t pose a threat to an emergency spillway other than to slow crews.
National Weather Service forecaster Tom Dang says the first of two storms was expected to be light. The first could bring 2-3 inches of rain Wednesday followed by a smaller accumulation from the second storm.
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12:25 p.m.
California water officials say they’re making “great progress” on the repairs to the damaged spillways of the nation’s tallest dam.
Department of Water Resources acting chief Bill Croyle says Oroville Lake behind the dam is draining rapidly and has dropped some 20 feet since it reached capacity early Sunday and overflowed an emergency spillway.
Croyle says a storm Wednesday appears to be small and that the reservoir’s water levels should keep shrinking.
He says crews “are still removing more water from the reservoir than we would receive from the storm system coming in.”
