Record storms battered Northern California in early February 2017. These storms led to historic flows into Lake Oroville. The storms, along with severe erosion damage to the Oroville Dam’s main spillway, resulted in the emergency spillway being used for the first time in history.
Erosion damage below the emergency spillway forced Dam authorities to release flows up to 100,000 cubic feet per second through the damaged main spillway.
The release through the damaged main spillway and emergency spillway resulted in the erosion of millions of cubic yards of debris into the Feather River.
The San Rafael Rock Quarry, Inc. – SRRQ (a division of The Dutra Group ), was called upon to lead a marine-based approach to removing debris from the river.
Within 24-hours Dutra’s workforce was onsite planning and implementing the mobilization of workers, equipment and resources to begin clearing the debris.
Also, within 10 days, over 200+ truckloads of equipment were mobilized, and a staging/ offload facility was established at the Thermalito Diversion Pool.
SRRQ was ready to commence dredging when the Department of Water Resources shut down the massive spillway flows.
Working in conjunction with other contractors, over 1-million CY of debris was removed from the river during the first spillway shut down period allowing flows to resume from the Hyatt Power Plant.