Oroville presents ambiguous evidence for dam advocates and opponents.
California dam politics are darn contentious. For example, environmentalists have been fighting for decades to dismantle the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, created when a valley adjacent to Yosemite–and allegedly as beautiful–was flooded and dammed to provide water for San Francisco.
The basic argument is that most of the nation's dams are extraneous and outdated, artifacts of a bygone age that almost inevitably destroy river ecosystems. Plenty of people will see Oroville as evidence that dams are ticking time bombs, capable of frightening catastrophe upon failure.
But others will take the opposite tack, arguing that Northern California needs more dams, not fewer, to deal with the conversion of its water sources from snowpack to rainfall in a warming climate.