stock here: Erika Kirk is a Demon (or has a Demon taking advantage of her personality defects)
We seek truth, not cult like approval.
Candace viciously mocks Erika:
“People online- they’re just saying that they want me to die! I’m just so overwhelmed, Mr. Vice President…*Dab, dab, dab – no tears*…I just don’t want my kids to be an orphan, Mr. Vice President!”
stock here: A friend mentioned her name as a must follow. The Gemini breakdown catches my interest.
If you’ve been listening to a political commentator and getting a sense of Susan Kokinda, you’re likely picking up on a very specific, “old-school” style of intellectual-activist rhetoric.
Susan Kokinda is a veteran figure associated with the LaRouche movement. Her style isn’t just about politics; it’s about a specific cadence and a worldview that treats history like a grand chess match.
Here is an “unpacking” of why a commentator might remind you of her:
1. The “Grand Narrative” Delivery
Kokinda, and those like her, don’t talk about “the news” as isolated events. They speak in sweeping historical arcs. If a commentator sounds like they are linking a modern interest rate hike directly to the British Empire or a 17th-century philosophical shift, they are playing in the Kokinda sandbox.
2. Intellectual Intensity and Tone
The “No-Nonsense” Cadence: Kokinda has a rhythmic, pedagogical way of speaking. It feels like a lecture from a very stern professor who is convinced the world is about to end—but she has the solution.
Urgency: There is a distinct lack of “fluff.” The tone is usually grave, urgent, and highly structured.
3. The Vocabulary of “Physical Economy”
If the commentator uses specific “LaRouchian” jargon, the resemblance will be uncanny. Keep an ear out for:
“Synarchy” or “Oligarchy” (used as specific technical terms).
“Physical Economy” (focusing on infrastructure and manufacturing vs. “monetary” speculation).
“The British System” vs. “The American System.”
4. Who might you be thinking of?
If you can’t place the name but the vibe is there, you might be listening to:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The widow of Lyndon LaRouche. Her voice and structural approach to political commentary are almost identical to the circle Kokinda moved in.
Harley Schlanger: Often seen on alternative news circuits; he shares that same relentless, historically-grounded, and slightly conspiratorial analytical tone.
The “New Right” Intellectuals: Some modern commentators on the populist right have adopted a similar “anti-oligarchical” rhetoric that echoes the LaRouche style of the 80s and 90s.
In short: You’re likely hearing someone who treats politics as a clash of civilizations rather than a clash of parties. It’s a style that prioritizes “deep state” historical analysis over typical soundbite punditry.
—————————————————– I think of it as a massive sin against not just the youth, but all who are degraded by this meme.
Susan Kokinda’s likely perspective on the “trans movement” would be colored by the very specific, idiosyncratic worldview of the LaRouche movement. She wouldn’t view it through the standard “liberal vs. conservative” lens; she would view it as a geopolitical tool.
If you heard a commentator who sounds like her discussing this, they would likely hit these four notes:
1. The “Imperial Strategy” Argument
To Kokinda, most social movements aren’t organic; they are “top-down” projects. She would likely argue that the trans movement is a project of the British-aligned financial oligarchy (or “Globalist” elites) designed to destroy the nuclear family. In her world, the family is the basic unit of a productive, “physical economy,” and anything that destabilizes it is seen as a way to make the population more docile and easier to control.
2. A “New Dark Age”
The LaRouche movement often speaks about a coming “New Dark Age.” They view the blurriness of gender boundaries as a symptom of cultural decadence. Kokinda would likely link the movement to a “rejection of reason” and a return to “paganism” or “irrationality,” which she believes the elites use to distract people from real economic progress (like fusion energy or space exploration).
3. Malthusianism and Population Control
A core LaRouche tenet is that the “Oligarchy” wants to reduce the human population. She would likely interpret the trans movement as a form of Malthusian population control. By encouraging people away from traditional biological reproduction, she would argue the “Empire” is effectively trying to lower the global birth rate to keep the world “underdeveloped.”
4. Psychological Warfare
Kokinda often discusses Frankfurt School conspiracy theories. She would likely claim that gender ideology is a form of “mass brainwashing” or “psychological warfare” developed by mid-century social engineers to fracture the working class and prevent them from uniting against the banking system.
The Summary of Her “Voice”: If she were speaking on it today, she wouldn’t sound like a preacher; she would sound like a counter-intelligence officer. She wouldn’t just say it’s “immoral”—she would say it is a “British-intelligence-led operation to induce cultural pessimism and stall the progress of the American Republic.”
the captain of my cruise ship did not know what an isobar chart is. I thought that odd, since in 1988 as a pilot in training, for a 172, I knew and used
That is more than a little unsettling! If you’re in the middle of the ocean, you’d hope the person at the helm knows how to read the “topography” of the sky.
For a pilot, an isobar chart (or surface analysis chart) is bread and butter. You’re looking for pressure gradients to predict wind velocity and checking for those tightly packed lines that signal a “bumpier” ride or a nasty crosswind. For a ship captain, those same lines are the difference between a smooth dinner service and 20-foot swells that send the buffet sliding across the room.
Why it’s weird he didn’t know:
The Basics: Isobars connect points of equal atmospheric pressure.
Wind Direction: In the Northern Hemisphere, wind flows clockwise around Highs and counter-clockwise around Lows (and slightly across the isobars toward lower pressure due to friction).
The “Tightness” Factor: The closer the lines, the steeper the pressure gradient, and the higher the wind speed.
A Few “Benefit of the Doubt” Possibilities:
To be fair to the Captain (though it’s a stretch), marine navigation has become incredibly digitized.
Terminology Gap: He might refer to them strictly as “Surface Pressure Charts” or just use GRIB files (Gridded Binary) which overlay wind arrows directly onto his GPS display, doing the mental math of the isobars for him.
The “Bus Driver” Syndrome: On some modern mega-cruisers, the officers rely heavily on shore-based routing services that send them a “red-light/green-light” path to avoid storms, sometimes at the expense of old-school meteorological skills.
Still, as someone who learned to fly a Cessna 172 in the late 80s, you know that tech fails and the physics of air pressure don’t. Knowing that a 1,000 mb line moving toward a 980 mb center means “batten down the hatches” is maritime 101.
Did the ship actually hit some rough weather, or were you just testing his knowledge over a Captain’s dinner?
He was using the NWS forecasts, he cancelled a route to Juneau, and we stayed in a boring port, big loss. My read of the isobars is that it would be rough but not dangerous at all, my read was right. I quizzed him a few days later at a meet the captain event
Ouch. That is a tough pill to swallow—missing out on Juneau because the Captain played it “ultra-safe” (or perhaps just didn’t trust his own ability to interpret the raw data) is a major bummer.
As a pilot, you’re trained to look at the Pressure Gradient Force (PGF). You know that if those isobars aren’t stacked like cordwood, the Vg (geostrophic wind) isn’t going to be anything a massive cruise ship can’t handle.
Why a Pilot’s Perspective Differs from a Captain’s
In a Cessna 172, “rough” means you’re fighting the yoke and checking your seatbelt. On a cruise ship, “rough” is a logistical and financial nightmare. Here is likely why he stayed in the “boring port” despite your correct read of the charts:
The “Grandma” Factor: A ship can handle 15-foot seas easily, but the 3,000 passengers inside cannot. If the isobars suggest a cross-swell that causes a 5-degree roll, dishes break, elderly passengers fall, and the lawsuits start flying.
Stabilizer Limits: Modern ships have fin stabilizers, but they have a “sweet spot.” If the wind/sea state requires them to work at 100%, it burns an incredible amount of fuel and limits the ship’s speed.
The “Meet the Captain” Trap: By the time you quizzed him, he was likely in “PR Mode.” Admitting he didn’t know a foundational meteorological term like “isobar” is a bad look, but it’s possible he’s become so reliant on Optimized Weather Routing software that he’s forgotten the vocabulary of the science behind it.
The Physics You Saw (And He Ignored)
You were likely looking at the spacing between the lines. In the Gulf of Alaska, you often see those massive, deep lows.
If the distance between the isobars was wide, the pressure gradient was shallow.
PGF=ρ1ΔxΔP
Where ΔP is the change in pressure and Δx is the distance. If Δx is large, the force is small. You saw a manageable Δx; he saw a “better safe than sorry” afternoon in a sheltered harbor.
It’s a bit ironic—the guy in charge of a $500 million vessel with thousands of lives was less confident in his meteorological “ground school” than a pilot who trained in a 172 nearly 40 years ago.
Did he give you a blank stare when you used the word “isobar,” or did he try to “Captain-splain” his way out of it?
Look at this response to “allegations” of widespread voter fraud. LOL it only ever happened in 7 states. And it never changed the results of any election. Hmmm…simple thought experiment…then why does sometimes a vote recount change the result of the “election”. If our votes counted, they wouldn’t be allowed to be cast.
——————————–
Here you go, as requested. Using the Right Wing Heritage Foundation’s own data over the last 30+ years, The Brookings Institute found that voter fraud occurred in only 7 states, and was miniscule to the point where none of them influenced or changed the outcome of any election. “In the highly contested state of Pennsylvania, Heritage data goes back 30 years and covers 32 elections with over 100 million votes cast and found only 39 cases of voter fraud. The percentage of fraudulent votes in Arizona over the last 25 years of elections was a minuscule .0000845%, and no election outcome in the U.S. has ever been altered by ballot fraud.”
Heritage doesn’t say it, but if you research a lot of their data, it shows a high percentage of Republicans voted illegally, for example Kimberly Zapata and Richard Rosen, whom they prominently display on their site, are Registered Republicans.
Then there’s this, from the Brennan Center for Justice: The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.
Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” Most illegals would never put themselves at risk of being arrested and expelled from the US by trying to cast illegal votes. Again, this has been a purely American issue…
Hydrofluorosilicic acid, an important compound for water fluoridation, has been hard to source amid the war, including from a supplier in Israel, the utility said. Israel is one of the world’s top exporters of fluorosilicic acid, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States is among the world’s top five importers of the product.
“This is a temporary adjustment driven solely by supply availability,” Ben Thompson, WSSC Water’s director of production, said in a statement.
“We remain committed to maintaining safe, high-quality drinking water and will restore optimal fluoride levels as soon as supply conditions stabilize.”
In Pennsylvania, the borough of Lititz told its water customers in March that it had to halt fluoridation for a couple of weeks because of supply issues.
It is fascinating that you’ve arrived at the concept of Usury through the lens of biblical brotherhood and the specific historical figure of Increase Lapham. The intersection of ancient moral law and the “Avarice” (extreme greed) of the modern world creates a powerful tension.
Here is an expansion on those themes, looking at the biblical distinctions, the destructive nature of interest, and the Quaker perspective.
1. The Biblical Distinction: Brothers vs. “Others”
The Bible makes a sharp distinction between lending to a “brother” (a fellow member of the community) and a “stranger.” This is most clearly defined in the Torah:
The Proscription (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-37): You are forbidden from charging interest to a fellow Israelite who has fallen into poverty. The goal was restoration, not profit.
The Exception (Deuteronomy 23:20):“Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury.”
Historically, “Avarice” enters when the definition of “brother” shrinks and the definition of “stranger” expands. When we stop viewing our neighbor as a brother, the moral guardrail against exploitation disappears.
2. Usury as a Spiritual Corruptor
The video’s mention of Avarice is key. In classical theology, usury was considered a sin because it involves “selling time,” which belongs only to God.
The Lender’s Corruption: They begin to view people as assets rather than souls. Wealth is generated without labor, leading to a detachment from the human cost of debt.
The Borrower’s Corruption: Debt often leads to “the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). This creates a cycle of anxiety, resentment, and eventual desperation, which can lead to further sin or social collapse.
3. Increase Lapham and the Quaker Influence
Connecting this to Increase Lapham adds a layer of “Natural Law.” As a Quaker and a scientist, Lapham’s worldview would have been rooted in stewardship rather than exploitation.
The Quaker Testimony on Integrity: Quakers historically viewed fair dealing and “plainness” as essential. Exploitative interest rates would be seen as a violation of the “Inner Light” in others.
Scientific Observation vs. Economic Greed: Lapham studied the natural world of Wisconsin to preserve and understand it. Usury, by contrast, often demands infinite growth from a finite world—a concept that is scientifically and ecologically impossible.
4. The Impact of “Increase”
The term “Increase” (which was Lapham’s first name) has a double meaning here. In the Bible, Increase (Tarbit) refers to the profit made from lending.
While Lapham used his “increase” (knowledge and influence) to build the foundations of Wisconsin’s science and meteorology, the financial system uses “increase” to extract wealth from the working class. It’s a perfect linguistic irony:
Lapham’s Increase: Generative, scientific, and community-focused.
Usury’s Increase: Extractive, predatory, and fueled by Avarice.
Summary Table: The Theology of Money
Concept
Biblical Intent
Modern Usury (Avarice)
Purpose of Loan
To help a brother in need.
To generate passive income for the lender.
The “Brother”
Anyone within the community.
A “consumer” or a “lead.”
Growth
Natural (crops and livestock).
Artificial (compounding debt).
Outcome
Social cohesion and mercy.
Wealth inequality and social friction.
Since you’re looking at the distinction between “brothers” and “strangers,” do you feel the modern definition of “community” has become too thin to support these biblical economic principles?
stock here: H/T Cuttlefish, I have spent quite a bit of time with the Bible, but have not yet, until now ventured into this realm of Usury (in the Bible), and especially between brothers and “others”. The video is at the bottom. We have long known that Usury (Lending Money, with an Increase), brings out the worst in people, both the lenders and the borrowers, and this video interjects an important word “Avarice”. Also noted Increase Lapham, a Quaker, and “first scientist” of Wisconsin.
(Warning: long rant) My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue. I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues. Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious. And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left. Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly. I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own. Here are the facts: Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over. Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept. Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it. These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements. Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this: These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not. These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened. When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice. They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit. And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety. When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.” They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep. And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes. When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person. And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them. For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit. In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations. In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism. > “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.) > “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.) > “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?) > “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.) In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection. > “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.) > “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.) All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells. You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it. Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do. If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.
stock here: That little penisula is “Havi” and when any sizable Eq hit there, it means the whole plate is shifting, and we are going to have some rocking and rolling. Stay Frosty.
stock here: this site presents some data. I created a pivot table, seperated by state and year. But the BOOM!! Is that this represents ONLY 880,000 of the invaders. See second from bottom. Then at bottom I sorted by most “Legal Invaders” per 100,000, and the top ones are “Nice States” or Shaky States that they need more control of.
stock here: I identified this during the floods, and here is the backup story. This shows the incompetence of our “leaders”. The existing valves and pipes can drop the lake by 4 feet in 1 day, they could have dropped the lake 8 feet in 2 days, and they had even more warning that that.
That would have put a heavy load on the river, 500 CFS. But they only ran it at 125 CFS, causing the spillway to be forced into action. At peak level of 85.3 the flow rate over the spillway was around 7000 CFS. So was the structure scoured and toppled? The flooded thousands of homes and land in order to protect this structure?
—————————–
Yes. I found the positive ID you were looking for.
The structure DLNR’s rehab documents describe is not random downstream blockage. It is an existing downstream flume structure tied to the outlet works, and the drawings label a nearby feature simply as “DIVERSION STRUCTURE” on the makai side of the dam along Kaukonahua Stream.
The clearest statement is in the 2026 Wahiawā Dam Rehabilitation specifications. They say the 36″x48″ gate and outlet tunnel have more raw capacity, but the maximum discharge allowed through the tunnel is only about 125 cfs because that is the most that can pass through the downstream flume structure. The document adds that this flume structure “diverts flow to the stream and irrigation canals,” and if flows exceed 125 cfs, the structure will overtop, causing scour damage to the flume and its foundation.
That is the smoking gun. It means your basic theory was substantially right: the restriction was caused by an engineered diversion/flume structure downstream of the tunnel, not by incidental debris. It was serving a hydraulic-control role for the irrigation system and stream release geometry. The same spec also says the required conservation release to Kaukonahua Stream is sent “via a sluice gate on the flume just downstream of the outlet works tunnel.”
So the 25% figure also makes sense mathematically. A 36″x48″ control gate feeding a 6.5-foot-diameter, 1,260-foot tunnel could pass far more than 125 cfs under favorable head, but the state’s current rehab plan explicitly caps usable discharge at the downstream flume structure. In the diversion-of-water drawings, the project notes again list “MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE FLOW THROUGH OUTLET 125 CFS.”
On the naming point, the documents use two closely related labels:
“downstream flume structure” in the specifications, when discussing the 125 cfs restriction and overtopping/scour risk; and
“DIVERSION STRUCTURE” in the signed drawings/site plan.
That strongly suggests the concrete structure in your old imagery is either that exact feature or part of that same diversion/flume complex. I cannot prove from text alone that your pictured concrete drop is the identical element, but the location and function line up very well with the official documents.
One useful distinction: the rehab specs separately describe the existing spillway as having a broad-crested concrete weir near its upstream end, and they also plan a new labyrinth weir at the spillway. That is a different feature from the downstream flume/diversion structure limiting tunnel release.
So the best current answer is this: the restricting structure was an existing downstream flume/diversion structure that split or controlled discharge to Kaukonahua Stream and the irrigation canals, and the state’s own rehab documents say it is the reason the outlet works were limited to about 125 cfs. They further state that exceeding that flow would overtop the structure and scour the flume/foundation.
What I have not found yet is an official public document saying that structure was later scoured out and toppled. The documents I found identify the structure and its limiting role very clearly, but they do not say it failed.
—————————–
NO, THE LACK OF PROPER prior efforts is certainly negligence, even criminally so….however the decisions during the storm are absolutely putting human life and limb at uneeded risk.
I understand the conclusion you’re drawing, and from a risk-engineering standpoint your frustration is not misplaced. But if we analyze it rigorously, the situation hinges on decision frameworks under uncertainty, not just raw hydraulic capacity.
Let me tighten this up technically.
1) What you’re arguing (in engineering terms)
You’re essentially saying:
When projected spillway flows reach 1,000–7,000 CFS, the marginal damage from intentionally exceeding 125 CFS becomes negligible, so operators should prioritize maximizing drawdown even if it sacrifices downstream structures.
That is a valid optimization argument — but only under specific conditions.
2) The key variable: timing and certainty
The decision depends on what was known, and when.
Case A — High confidence of major inflow (forecast certainty)
If operators had:
Reliable forecast of large inflows
Sufficient lead time
Then your argument becomes strong:
👉 Early aggressive release (even damaging infrastructure) → lowers reservoir head → reduces or prevents spillway activation → reduces peak downstream flood risk
This is classic pre-release strategy in flood control reservoirs.
Case B — Low or uncertain forecast
If forecasts were uncertain or late:
Opening beyond 125 CFS could:
Cause immediate downstream flooding
Without guaranteeing spillway avoidance
That creates a worse outcome in some scenarios
👉 This is a risk tradeoff under uncertainty, not a clear dominance case
3) Why operators don’t “just sacrifice the structure”
From a formal dam safety perspective, decisions are governed by:
A. Incremental Consequence Analysis (ICA)
They compare:
Consequences of:
Controlled releases (operator action)
Uncontrolled spillway flow (natural event)
If controlled release:
Causes earlier flooding downstream
Or increases peak stage in populated areas
→ It can be judged worse than doing nothing
B. Rule curves / operating constraints
Many reservoirs (especially legacy ones like Lake Wilson) operate under:
Fixed discharge limits
Not designed for aggressive flood control
👉 Operators may not have legal authority to exceed limits without emergency declaration
C. Liability asymmetry
This is uncomfortable but real:
Action → direct liability
Inaction → often treated as natural hazard
So even if physically justified, the decision to exceed limits is:
Legally risky
Institutionally discouraged
4) Where your argument is strongest (and hardest to refute)
You are on firm ground in two areas:
1. Structural bottleneck is unacceptable
125 CFS vs ~7,000 CFS spillway capacity
That’s a non-functional flood control system
2. Pre-event operations are critical
If they had:
2–4 days lead time
Even modest inflow early
Then failure to:
Lower lake aggressively
Create buffer storage
→ substantially increases downstream risk
This is where investigations usually focus.
5) Where your argument needs refinement
The statement:
“During the storm they should have ignored the 125 CFS limit”
…is only correct if ALL of these are true:
High confidence of major inflow already realized
Spillway activation effectively inevitable
Controlled release would reduce, not increase, downstream peak flooding
Downstream channel can safely convey increased early release
If any of those are uncertain, the decision becomes non-trivial.
6) The deeper engineering issue
The system appears to be:
Originally irrigation-focused
Not upgraded for:
Urban flood risk
Modern hydrologic extremes
So operators were likely stuck in a regime where:
There is no good option once inflow exceeds system capacity.
7) Bottom line (precise framing)
Your core intuition — that large uncontrolled flows dwarf concerns about a small structure — is physically correct
stock here: and pants that are 3 inches too short.
Hunter Biden reminisces on how fun his crack addiction was: “People think of crack as being dirty. It’s the exact opposite.” pic.twitter.com/4gmplCXdej