Dam 'stuff happens' when Gov. Moonbeam is in charge

It really gives you a good feeling when your leader, the guy in charge of the whole shebang, reacts to a near catastrophe that could have killed thousands, displaced millions and cost billions by saying, "Stuff happens."

He didn't even show up to take a look at the disaster scene. In fact, he doesn't plan to.

But that's Jerry Brown for you, the governor of the state of California. He's not known as "Governor Moonbeam" for nothing. It was a moniker he got his first go-round as governor for two terms, 1975-1983. That was when he was the state's 34th governor.

Now he's the 39th, serving the second of two terms, from 2011 to the present. And now that he's on his second try at the job, he's doing his "moonbeam act" again.

He never gives up, and the people of California keep giving him permission to do it to them. And do it he does.

Then Mother Nature steps in and ends the long drought that has engulfed the state for years.

California is being inundated by a record-breaking series of gigantic storms. Not only is the state getting record snow in the mountains, both Southern and Northern California are being plagued by water and wind damage from torrential rain. The news is filled with coverage of landslides, mudslides, fallen trees, sinkholes, power outages, traffic accidents, wild surf, beach erosion and the concomitant damage to homes and apartments.

That's all bad enough, but now Californians face the reality that many of the state's more than 1,500 dams and reservoirs might fail, causing epic floods. Which ones? Who knows, but even one would be a calamity of unimagined proportions. The possibility of a dam collapse was something most Californians never considered.

After all, they felt secure that they'd elected officials whose job it is to oversee such state infrastructure. They believe they have legions of people being paid to do the jobs of running those operations – dams, bridges, rails, water systems and more. They rely on those people to do their jobs responsibly. They believe there are laws to ensure that, and they feel secure in knowing those people will protect them. After all, Californians pay billions in taxes to the state to have people to deal with such issues.

Well, now the truth is known. Now that the possibility of the Oroville Dam collapsing still exists as I write this, Californians have learned that those hundreds of laws, thousands of people and millions of dollars don't protect them at all.

And don't forget that Gov. Brown is in the midst of plans to remove four dams from the Klamath River, one of which, at this point, has already flooded. And the rains are not over.

As for Oroville, it's cold comfort when it's revealed that Gov. Brown said he didn't know anything about a 2005 motion filed with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by three environmental groups that the Oroville Dam, and especially the earthen spillway, was vulnerable to collapse and that in 2008 that same commission said it knew nothing about such concerns.

I'm sure that the 200,000 people who had to be evacuated from their homes on short notice last week as the dam and the spillway both threatened to breach were stunned to learn how little the state had done to protect them when, in fact, they had been warned.

How can that be?

It's called power. No, not electrical power, but the power of government and laws and the ability to levy taxes ostensibly to deal properly with the problems and the infrastructure of the state.

The Oroville Dam is the tallest in the country, and it is old. It has neither been properly maintained nor has it been properly upgraded over the years. It wasn't because no one knew the needs but because local, state and federal officials simply refused to spend the money needed to get the job done.

Out of sight, out of mind.

The responsible parties include not only elected officials on the state and federal level – keep in mind that Obama's stimulus funds in 2009 had no money for the Oroville Dam – but also the powerful water agencies, including the SoCal Metropolitan Water District. All decided that spending any money to upgrade Oroville was unnecessary.

Easy for them to say. They don't live or work downstream.

Now that all of those agencies and officials face the prospect of making the necessary upgrades and repairs when the storms are over – and the storms are not over. More are predicted this week. The question is, where will they get the money?

Taxpayers, hang on to your wallets!

Consider that Jerry Brown is in the midst of two financial boondoggles of historic proportions: building a high-speed train from Southern to Northern California for which the estimated cost has escalated from $40 billion to more than $64 billion and building two gigantic, underground tunnels to move water from the north to the south of the state, for which costs have escalated from $17 billion to more than $62 billion.

This is the same governor who arrogantly derides everything President Trump does or says, implies that California would be better to be independent and yet, when faced with the Oroville disaster, goes to Washington, hat in hand, asking for federal funds to bail out California.

Gov. Moonbeam, indeed. Gov. Hypocrite is more like it.

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