Oroville Dam

The flood-control spillway at the nation’s tallest dam will be deployed this week for the first time since it was rebuilt after it crumbled during heavy rains two years ago, forcing nearly 200,000 people to evacuate, California officials said Sunday.

California water officials said Wednesday that the $1.1 billion spillway at the nation’s tallest dam will be in full working order if it’s needed this winter, nearly two years after it was damaged and thousands were forced to flee.

Officials say the cost of dealing with last year’s near-disaster at the nation’s tallest dam in California have climbed to more than $1 billion. The state Department of Water Resources said Wednesday construction costs and related expenses are driving the increase at Oroville Dam. Department spokeswoman Erin Mellon says more workers were recently hired to get the repairs done by...

A fierce Northern California storm Friday shut down Yosemite National Park, threatened mudslides in wildfire-ravaged wine country and could present the first test of a partially repaired offshoot of the nation’s tallest dam that nearly collapsed last year.

Yosemite National Park officials has canceled camping reservations this weekend because of a major storm expected to hit Northern California. Park officials said the warm Pacific storm is expected to have a significant effect on the park and surrounding areas since Friday. Roadways, campgrounds and other facilities could be affected.

A spillway at the nation’s tallest dam showed signs of erosion in February 2017, prompting evacuations and legislation. California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that seeks to beef up dam inspections following a near-disaster that caused the evacuation of almost 200,000 people living downstream from dam.

One year after the worst structural failures at a major U.S. dam in a generation, federal regulators who oversee California’s half-century-old, towering Oroville Dam say they are looking hard at how they overlooked its built-in weaknesses for decades. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is telling owners of the 1,700 other hydroelectric dams it regulates nationally that it expects them to...

NBC Bay Area obtained a memo written by engineers at California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) in June 2017 that raises safety questions involving seven dams owned and operated by the agency.

The costs of dealing with last year’s near-disaster at the nation’s tallest dam have reached $870 million, California officials said Friday.

An NBC Bay Area investigation into the safety of the Oroville Dam has now prompted the City of Oroville itself to sue the state of California.

A small California city at the base of the tallest U.S. dam filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the state over an emergency that forced authorities to order 188,000 people to flee last year, arguing the crisis was caused by decades of mismanagement.

Independent forensic investigators released a final report Friday morning, citing “long-term systemic failure” at the California Department of Water of Resources as the cause to the Lake Oroville spillway scare last February.

“Long-term and systemic failures” by California dam managers and regulators to recognize inherent construction and design flaws at the tallest U.S. dam caused last year’s near-disaster there, an independent panel of dam safety experts said Friday, calling it a wake-up call for dam operators around the country.

Northern California residents living in the shadow of the nation’s tallest dam vented decades of frustration with state water managers Wednesday, telling officials they have no credibility when they say hairline cracks in a newly rebuilt spillway are nothing to worry about.

Small cracks that have appeared in the brand new concrete spillway at Oroville Dam were expected and do not pose a threat, California state officials said in previously undisclosed letters.

The California Department of Water Resources announced this week the Oroville Dam will undergo an overall safety review.

California officials say repair costs at the nation’s tallest dam will be nearly double the original estimate of $275 million.

A six-month investigation by NBC Bay Area that reviewed two decades’ worth of safety documents uncovers questions about the dam’s safety beyond the spillway that failed in February

An independent team of dam experts says bad design and construction led to a disastrous spillway collapse at the nation’s tallest dam. Dam safety experts investigating February’s spillway failures at California’s Oroville Dam say the state probably could have detected the problems if dam managers had reviewed the original flaws in the half-century-old dam, using modern engineering standards. Authorities ordered...

A farm in Butte County has filed a claim against the state of California alleging the Department of Water Resources is responsible for damages from the Oroville Dam spillway flooding, the farm’s attorneys said in a statement released Wednesday.