California is a state run by big-thinking leftists, yearning to have their own independent foreign policy, but can’t find time for mundane responsibilities like making sure dams don’t fail when it rains.
I would call California’s management of the Oroville Dam a comedy of errors, but it’s no laughing matter when a potential failure of what is the tallest dam in the nation forced 200,000 people to evacuate their homes.
Now the Associated Press (AP) reports an independent panel of dam safety experts termed the Oroville crisis a result of "Long-term and systemic failures" on behalf of California’s Department of Water Resources. This is no surprise to me.
I wrote about the dangers of living in an area with a faulty dam and depending on the state to fix it before winter rain began here. We weren’t reassured by the empty promises of state officials responsible for the crisis, here. And here we read that the state had been warned repeatedly about the dam and done nothing.
That’s bad enough, but now after the report from members of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials and the U.S. Society on Dams, we learn the level of incompetence and complacency on the part of state officials is enough to get someone in the private sector indicted.
According to the report, "The independent panel of safety experts said the dam was badly built from the start in the 1960s. The principal designer of the spillway told the dam safety team that he had just completed post graduate work at the time he worked on the Oroville project decades ago, had had no previous engineering employment beyond two summer stints, and had never designed a spillway before." Yet state officials signed off on his design for the tallest spillway in the history of the country.
Even after the flawed design was built, "there were many opportunities to intervene and prevent the incident," yet nothing was done.
Now California taxpayers are looking at a repair bill of $500 million for the dam alone, plus more than $1 billion in damage claims that have been filed after the near disaster.
After receiving this scathing report, Joel Ledesma, a deputy director at the water agency, responded with a flood of buzzwords and corp-speak that essentially means no one will be held responsible and keep your fingers crossed that we get it right this time.
Strange isn’t it? California has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, yet the state can’t seem to execute basic responsibilities like building and maintaining safe dams. One wonders if California voters will ever get fed up with leftist posturing and try competence for a change?
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker’s bureau. Read more reports from Michael Reagan — Go Here Now.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.