
Oroville Dam: Cost to repair spillways nearly doubles in price to $500M - DrScump
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/19/cost-of-repairing-oroville-dams-spillway-nearly-doubles-in-price-to-500-million/
======
pdkl95
I'm not surprised at the cost, given the nature of the project. Filling in the
_massive_ canyons that were cut when the spillway failed has taken an
incredible amount of RCC (roller compacted concrete) and man-hours of
difficult,dangerous labor. Last I heard the project is still zero injuries,
which is really impressive.

The blancolirio channel that nraynaud mentioned has a _lot_ of very impressive
reporting and flyover footage, and the CA DWR itself has also been posting
regular drone footage[1], which I highly recommend for a sense of _scale_. The
spillway is a _lot_ larger than it looks like from most of the overview
photos. The closeup drone footage that includes the repair crew shows how
massive the structure really is. It's supposed to be able to handle 270,000
cfs outflow (the outflow that damaged the old spillway was "only" ~100,000
cfs).

I'd also like to point out this[2] video from blancolirio, which shows just
how close the emergency spillway was to being undercut. Yah, this repair is
going to be expensive, but it's good to see that proper repairs are being
done. Some things are worth the money; the central valley flooding would be a
lot worse.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/calwater/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/calwater/videos)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo)

~~~
jessriedel
If no one gets injured on a $500M project, safety standards are almost
certainly too stringent.

~~~
jychang
I feel like this comment is callous, but unfairly downvoted.

All projects contain risk. Getting out of bed and taking a shower involves
risk, you can slip and fall. The larger the project, the larger the sample
size and the more statistical considerations for risk should be managed.

Modern western society has greatly lost all tolerance of risk. One difference
that struck me for risk culture, compared to the past, is old footage of the
1955 Le Mans disaster: after the catastrophic crash, bystanders themselves
helped carry bodies away from the scene, and clean up wreckage. This calmness
and social damage tolerance in the process of a disaster is very different
from a modern "evacuate and let the professionals handle it" attitude, and I
think this is an example of a clear shift in social tolerance of risk.

I wonder if the Apollo project would have worked today, instead of in the
1960s. At the scale of an infrastructure project of half a billion dollars,
we're not talking about something so big that zero injuries safety standards
are bad. However, as you get larger projects, it is statistically impossible
to keep risk at 0; I'm not sure how willing modern society is to accept that
injuries on large projects is inevitable.

Elsewhere in this thread, user JumpCrisscross comments about comparing the
cost overrun to the second bid. Following up that comment, the top response is
something along the lines of "nobody was injured, so showering the contractor
with money is ok". This attitude is prevalent in modern society, and it
doesn't really get questioned. Let's pose a hypothetical scenario: If a person
has their leg broken, let's say a platform caused someone to fall and hurt
their back. Would that amount of damage be worth a $250million additional
cost? Think of the amount of social good you can do with $250million. At what
level does society overvalue the reduction of risk? This is an important
question to ask.

Let's not even talk about minor injuries. Let's say 1 person died. If you walk
up to a random person, tell them that they have the opportunity to die; BUT
their immediate family would receive $125 million dollars, and $125million
would be donated to the charity of their choice. I suspect a very large
percentage of people would actually be willing to take that offer.

And yet, giving an extra $250million to a contractor to build something is
considered "worth it" to the general public if no injuries were reported. At
which point does society overvalue reducing risk?

~~~
arethuza
So what value would you put on someone being killed or maimed to save some
money? Because that is exactly the calculation you are proposing should
happen.

~~~
jychang
A quite a bit less than $250million, which is how much is being paid.

In fact, people would even volunteer to die for "just" $100million. Just see
this reddit thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4jqfka/what_woul...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4jqfka/what_would_you_do_for_100000000_but_not_for_100000/d38pkhv/)

This is EXACTLY what I mean by "risk management for large projects". For a
small $10k project? A small percentage cost decrease for increased risk of
death isn't worth it. For a multi-billion dollar project? All of the sudden,
the incentives change drastically. How many people would be willing to work on
a project that is a tiny amount more risky, but knowing that their families
will be handsomely compensated in case anything happens? If you told me that
my family will receive $100mil guaranteed if I die/get maimed, there's very
little I'm not willing to do.

Also, to note: $100,000,000 is enough to save around 30,000 children from an
excruciating death by malaria.

TL;DR 1 average human life generally isn't worth throwing away $250million. I
will literally volunteer my own life on this fact.

~~~
arethuza
But how do you know that it is a simple trade off between money and safety
standards? It's been noted on HN that the US seems particularly bad at large
infrastructure projects compared to other developed countries and I'm
struggling to believe that's because the US has wildly better safety
standards.

~~~
jychang
I don't. That's moving the goalposts.

Who cares if Oroville Dam is in the USA or not. The same thing would still
apply if it was in the UK. I'm merely saying the modern public should
reconsider spending $250million extra, instead of applauding it simply because
no injuries happened.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm going to make a guess here and assume that you are not working
construction. And if that's so I would highly recommend you join a
construction crew for a couple of years and then come back here with your
idiotic approach to workplace safety. It's all about _preventable_ accidents,
and your assumption that we could save 250M on a project by compromising
workplace safety is both wrong _and_ the beginning of a slippery slope that
ends with maximum savings and no workplace safety at all. After all, it's not
the life of you and your family that is at risk here.

Fuck those construction workers, fuck those miners and who cares about factory
workers. After all they're disposable. /s

Workplace safety is there for a reason: to stop white collar criminals from
putting a price on human lives and then to optimize for the lowest they can
get away with.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I feel you're missing the point, I can't tell if it's deliberate.

Suppose you wanted to reduce risks for computer programmers - everyone gets a
personal doctor who sits with them to monitor their vitals, state of the art
monitoring device, daily blood tests, screenings for all sorts of diseases.
Each person gets a fitness coach, dietician, sleep coach, whatever.
Programmers with injuries get oxygen therapy and physios on hand. Basically
you treat them like world class racehorses (!). Whatever, hopefully you see
the point.

Would that be overkill? No? Well then you don't think programmers matter at
all and want to see them all die in industrial accidents. /s

If we can accept at any point that we should, maybe not buy the most expensive
chair/table/keyboard/screens, even if there's a chance of injury (eyesight,
cardio problems from 20 years of sitting, cut from a sharp edge on a filling
cabinet, etc.) then you're agreeing with the general concept of the OP IMO.

Now, in public procurement, should we pay $1000 per seat for a currently $100
app to ensure no programmer ever gets a thrombosis/carpal problem/etc.?

------
JumpCrisscross
> _Kiewit, the Nebraska-based construction firm that has the main contract to
> rebuild the main spillway and emergency spillway at Oroville, the nation’s
> tallest dam, estimated in its winning bid in April that the work would cost
> at least $275 million. But the price tag has now grown to at least $500
> million_

Out of curiosity, what was the runner-up bid? Is there no mechanism to re-open
bidding when the circumstances change? What prevents me from bidding $1 and
then busting it to $1 billion after winning?

~~~
Afforess
I find it interesting the default commentary to this sort of event -
ballooning budgets on underbid projects - assumes that bad faith on the part
of the bidder is the problem, and that if only we could punish these few bad
apples - punish those scheming, underbidding contractors, then the problem
would disappear.

It seems unlikely that bad faith is the primary cause. Yes, there are really
contractors and owners who do act in bad faith, like the Trump organization,
but these are unusual, and highly publicized. Punishing dishonesty seems like
the easiest problem to solve, and it's easy to rally around for a quick and
cheap victory. But I have seen these run-up bids for decades and no amount of
punishment has ever seen to stem the flow of these events; it seems as if
every city and state is infected with this problem. Either we are in a system
where bad apples are so numerous that punishing a few has no meaningful effect
on incentives; or we are in a system where bad apples are so rare that we
punish good apples mistakenly, and can't figure out the real cause for our
poor planning. Until we move on from the assumption that a few bad apples are
to blame, we likely won't be able to discover the real underlying problem.

~~~
DigitalJack
The bids aren't in bad faith. They are just over-rationalized and under-
justified until the number is small enough to be in the winnable range. Middle
Management talks out of both sides of their mouth, demanding lower estimates,
while demanding integrity of results (wink wink).

They don't really want integrity, they want to get a number that won't get
them yelled at by their boss. The integrity bit is a pass the buck clause.

So the estimator is in the position of trying as hard as they can to lower the
estimate. "Well, if we assume xyz unreasonable assumption, then we can lower
the amount by this amount."

And then there are "risk" shenanigans. You itemize all the risk items, declare
an arbitrary probability of happening. Then management rolls those up, and
declares that they are not going to fully fund the risk and instead "carry" it
forward.

Fully funding basically would mean multiplying the likelihood of occurring by
the cost, and adding all the items up. Which is already iffy as the
probabilities aren't based on much except a w.a.g.

So you win the bid, the risks are realized, and weren't funded. blow out.

Standard practice. And because everyone does it, the honest bidder is the
loser. Losers go out of business. So the whole bidding practice is self
selecting for cheats.

If you say, "this is unethical, I'm going to do my best to give a realistic
bid", you lose.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Should be easy to fix, if the contract for work includes a "penalty for being
wrong for circumstances completely within the bidders control that they should
have seen".

Austin government did this for its MoPac toll express lanes and got them for
way cheaper than what they should have paid:
[https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/09/27/big-
settl...](https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/09/27/big-settlement-
reached-in-mopac-expansion-end-in.html)

However, the project ran over for two years longer than it should have (it was
supposed to be completed in September 2015, and they are only just now
wrapping it up). So I guess no one really won there aside from the Austin
transportation budget guys, except the populace hates them now for traffic
jamming the place up for two years longer than they said they would.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't completion something that is at least in part in the bidders control.
Did they employ all available personnel and work 24 hours?

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Sort of, when they could. In this case there were penalties for going longer
on the project. Main problems ended up being weather (heavy rains) and lack of
knowledge of the soil - many changes were made to the project because the
contractor (C2HM) did not do a proper soil survey where they were going to be
digging.

------
nraynaud
For the people interested the blancolirio YouTube channel does an incredible
job reporting on the dam.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/blancolirio](https://www.youtube.com/user/blancolirio)

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
He keeps referencing a "plunge pool" half way down the new slipway. Does
anyone happen to know what the purpose of the plunge pool is?

~~~
imcrs
I think it's the natural depression that eroded where the water first comes
off the top half of the chute.

~~~
nraynaud
I watched everything and I confirm, it’s what was the crack, and it doesn’t
exist anymore, it’s filled in. At about the same place the are putting an
aeration feature to mix air in the water and make it less destructive to the
concrete downstream.

------
mrb
The total construction cost of the Oroville dam, ending in 1968 was $480
million. Inflation-adjusted, that's $3.5 billion in 2017. $500 million just to
repair the spillway seems excessive...

See table 8 in
[http://www.water.ca.gov/swpao/docs/bulletins/bulletin132/Bul...](http://www.water.ca.gov/swpao/docs/bulletins/bulletin132/Bulletin132-69.pdf)

~~~
crooked-v
Modern safety standards in construction are much more stringent than late-60s
safety standards in construction.

~~~
Amygaz
And modern requirement for additional administrative roles and salaries, both
directly and indirectly linked to that business, have probably more to do with
inflation...

------
theyregreat
My folks live in the nearby area not downstream. That’s what happens when
preventative maintenance is ignored by reactive bureaucrats. _Pennywise, ..._

Here’s one of the YT channels that’s been following the progress, filming and
combining DWR footage.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/blancolirio](https://www.youtube.com/user/blancolirio)

------
Amygaz
I feel like this thread is ignoring the main point, which is that preventative
maintenance would have been cheaper.

Also, when this thing started falling, they could have stopped it earlier,
which would have resulted in cheaper repair, but no...

Sure we would not have awesome drone footages, and I like the discussions on
worker's risk and contractor down-biding, but at the end of the day it's a lot
of money for something preventable. Same can be said of worker's riks, health
care, environment, retirement.

------
jackfoxy
All in all, pretty impressive engineering project, correcting engineering
defects dating back more than 50 years.

------
napa15
500 million? Wow. Can't they just lay down a big pipe and decrease the water
level that way? Seems to me like just about any solution would be cheaper than
500 million...

~~~
dragandj
The spillway _is_ a sort of a big half-pipe.

------
mathattack
Lots of patterns here similar to large IT overruns.

------
narrator
They should do an ICO to raise money to fix it. Citizens shall pay for their
water in ETH to the token holders. Kidding, but in 20 years I might not be.

------
m0llusk
cost of not repairing is still higher

~~~
chrisseaton
Well... obviously... otherwise why would they be doing it?

------
uoaei
Why is this on HN?

Whenever non-tech posts are put up on HN, they're ruthlessly hounded. What
does this article have to do with tech that absolves it? The fact that it
comes from San Jose's newspaper?

~~~
_ph_
It is a tech related post, especially an engineering related process. And
beyond the importance of the Oroville dam for California, the repairs are an
interesting case in project management. They have a fix deadline (Nov. 1) and
not meeting the deadline was not an option. And it looks like they are making
the deadline, what an achievement!

~~~
uoaei
That's quite a stretch, though, don't you realize?

The H in HN stands for "hacker". I fail to see the connection to any "hacking"
here in the article other than maybe "hacking bureaucracy to make a dam", but
you must see the incredible lengths to which one must stretch the notion of
hacker-related ideas to apply to this article.

There are other non-SWE-related topics that certainly qualify, like overcoming
natural barriers in engineering a la the Iceland forest article that was
posted a couple days ago.

This news article in OP is little more than a status update about something
that affects California's water infrastructure and nothing else.

