 What a difference a day makes The amount of water flowing into Lake Oroville dropped from a hundred ninety thousand cubic feet per second to a hundred thirty thousand in less than fifteen hours a Beautiful sunny day without rain allowed that to happen and California Department of Water Resources officials say they expect that to drop another Fifty percent by tomorrow Saturday. So we're looking okay. We fully expect that we won't have to use the emergency spillway If the rain had continued today There was a strong possibility that the water would have come over the top of the emergency spillway That slope of land next to the controlled spillway and that's the way this dam was designed as part of that contingency plan DWR cleared much of the trees and brush from the emergency spillway That will reduce the amount of debris that would end up in the lake below and float into the Feather River Also, they were able to reduce water releases overnight from sixty five thousand cubic feet per second to fifty five We've released more than double this amount in 1997 and only as recently as 2006 released more water than this and there wasn't any any impacts to the community in 2006 So we don't expect to see any flood event the controlled spillway suffered massive erosion a hole nearly the size of a football field That sent water off its man-made path taking land and trees with it The downstream effects of that turn the Feather River into a mud bath in downtown Oroville The Department of Fish and Wildlife moved about four million small salmon and steelhead from the Feather River fish hatchery to keep them alive Meanwhile officials reassured the public at a news conference that neither the dam nor communities downstream are in any danger This problem is with the spillway is not with Orville Dam There's no erosion going on with Orville Dam Orville Dam is completely intact and is not in jeopardy in any way from this event