Life resumes, questions linger in crippled dam’s shadow

OROVILLE, Calif. — People who live below the nation’s tallest dam returned home yesterday as officials declared damage to the Oroville Dam’s two spillways under control for now and lifted an evacuation order. Life resumed in what had become a ghost town less than 48 hours earlier when engineers feared they could lose control of an emergency spillway holding back California’s second-largest reservoir (Greenwire, Feb. 13). By yesterday afternoon, state and Butte County authorities expressed confidence they would be able to flush enough water down the reservoir’s primary spillway to make room for inflows from storms forecast later this week.