On February 12, 2017, the Butte County Sheriff ordered the evacuation of more than 180,000 people in the communities surrounding California’s Oroville Dam after officials spotted severe erosion in the dam’s emergency spillway. The Oroville Dam facilities are managed on by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which licenses the project to California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR). In his Law360 article “Who Would Face Liability For Oroville Dam Management,” Attorney Brett Moore discusses the liability of the agencies involved in managing the Oroville facilities should the dam fail again.
“As the environmental groups and local government appear to have predicted, the spillway was subject to significant erosion after water breached the concrete portion of the spillway,” wrote Moore. “Although other avenues may exist to pursue liability against the agencies involved in management of the Oroville facilities, those agencies might avoid state tort liability on preemption grounds.”
He added, “As another storm appears on the horizon, should the dam fail, litigation would be sure to follow, but the question remains whether the agencies involved in managing the Oroville facilities would face tort liability under California law.”