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
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo
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
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4AGuQ5gMo