Mass Movement of Excavation at Oroville Dam

The Oroville Dam on the Feather River in California is one of the most automated construction jobs in the world. The approaches and equipment used have application to many other construction projects. This paper discusses in detail the design of the embankment dam, the embankment materials, and the equipment used to strip the area of the dam and to move the embankment materials. A railroad was constructed to haul embankment materials from the borrow pits to the main damsite. The railroad hauls the material to a reclaim tunnel at the site, a conveyor belt carries the material to a truck loading hopper, where trucks pick up the material for transport to final placement in the embankment. Excluding the truck drivers, the operation is run by 18 men.