5 ms·

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 am

by pdkl95 9y ago

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 9y ago
If no one gets injured on a $500M project, safety standards are almost certainly too stringent.
- jychang 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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_would_you_do_for_100000000_but_not_for_100000/d38pkhv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4jqfka/what_woul... 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 9y ago
        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 9y ago
        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.
- megaman22 9y ago
  Considering that even 100 years ago, such a project would have figuratively (and sometimes literally) mixed a good bit of blood into the mortar, yeah. Having worked a little bit of industrial construction in a past life, it's amazing anything gets done at all, if you do follow all the rules. And even then all it takes is one slipup to get somebody hurt.
- amptorn 9y ago
  Are you volunteering?
- decker 9y ago
  In that case, what's the "correct" number of deaths that safety standards should target per $1M spent?
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    The statistical value of a human life in the US is ~$10M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life Serious injuries are some fraction of that, e.g., ~$1M for a limb. The correct tradeoff between safety and cost obviously depends on the marginal cost to increase safety, which is known to the project leaders but not us, but I'd be surprised if the optimal number wasn't between 5% and 25% of total cost. 5% of $500M is $25M, so for a project of this size I'd expect, as a lower bound, at least one death and a dozen serious injuries. To be clear: by not making this trade off and by spending huge amounts of money to ensure such tiny injury rates, we are wasting resources that could be spent on saving lives at the rate of $10M/life. Indeed, this number is the key threshold by which the EPA decides which environmental interventions to fund, or the NHTSA decides which traffic safety measure to take.

by pdkl95 9y ago

jessriedel 9y ago

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

jychang 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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_would_you_do_for_100000000_but_not_for_100000/d38pkhv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4jqfka/what_woul... 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 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        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.
megaman22 9y ago
Considering that even 100 years ago, such a project would have figuratively (and sometimes literally) mixed a good bit of blood into the mortar, yeah. Having worked a little bit of industrial construction in a past life, it's amazing anything gets done at all, if you do follow all the rules. And even then all it takes is one slipup to get somebody hurt.
amptorn 9y ago
Are you volunteering?
decker 9y ago
In that case, what's the "correct" number of deaths that safety standards should target per $1M spent?
- jessriedel 9y ago
  The statistical value of a human life in the US is ~$10M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life Serious injuries are some fraction of that, e.g., ~$1M for a limb. The correct tradeoff between safety and cost obviously depends on the marginal cost to increase safety, which is known to the project leaders but not us, but I'd be surprised if the optimal number wasn't between 5% and 25% of total cost. 5% of $500M is $25M, so for a project of this size I'd expect, as a lower bound, at least one death and a dozen serious injuries. To be clear: by not making this trade off and by spending huge amounts of money to ensure such tiny injury rates, we are wasting resources that could be spent on saving lives at the rate of $10M/life. Indeed, this number is the key threshold by which the EPA decides which environmental interventions to fund, or the NHTSA decides which traffic safety measure to take.