Oroville Dam Damage May Reach $13 Billion, 50,000 Homes at Risk

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:46PM EST · Published Feb 16, 6:20AM EST

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Oroville Dam Damage May Reach $13 Billion, 50,000 Homes at Risk — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”509259″ placement=”ros”]Now that residents of areas that could be hit by a breach of the Oroville Dam have been evacuated out of harm’s way, one of the largest challenges of a disaster would be property destruction. A new study claims as many as 50,000 homes are at risk and that the damages could cost $13.3 billion.

That is the reconstruction cost value (RCV) of 50,047 single-family and multifamily residential homes that would be obliterated if the dam fails completely, and they are in Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. Research firm CoreLogic reports:

The majority of homes at risk are between 20 and 60 miles from the dam, totaling 33,967 properties with an estimated RCV of $9.8 billion. Additionally, there are 16,080 homes at risk of damage less than 20 miles from the dam with an estimated RCV of $3.5 billion.

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These costs are comparable to estimates for repairs to deficient dams nationwide. According to the LA Times:

A 2016 survey by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimated the cost of repairing deficient dams that currently place downstream residents at risk at $22.91 billion. Carrying out that task would take many decades.

The warnings about costs to repair America’s infrastructure have, in some cases, become more urgent.

Figure 1: Total Homes at Risk and Reconstruction Cost Value by County

County	Number of Homes	Estimated RCV
Butte	15,750	$3,368,371,427
Colusa	2,344	$633,516,296
Glenn	42	$8,202,197
Sutter	25,504	$7,604,338,675
Yolo	262	$64,058,854
Yuba	6,145	$1,584,443,943
TOTAL	50,047	$13,262,931,392

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.