Oroville >> Before the Oroville Dam spillway drama fades from memory, changes are underway.

The Oroville Strong! movement continues to gain members, more people are visiting Lake Oroville, and local politicians are pushing through a bill to inspect dams more often.

Oroville Strong

The Oroville Strong! campaign includes a video to be produced by the Oroville Chamber of Commerce, local businesses and residents that hopes to rebuild the city’s image, said chamber communications coordinator Amber Marron.

”You can live here; you can work here; you can play here; the dam is not in imminent failure,” Marron said.

Once that video is completed, it will be released to local, state and international markets.

Oroville Strong! also sent the Department of Water Resources a list of questions to which the water agency answered.

“We’re happy that they did respond to the letter, and they answered every question,” Marron said.

Oroville Strong! has gained more members since it first launched about five weeks ago, and membership is up from 103.

“We need to keep the pressure on to keep influence on how the dam is repaired and how its managed after the repair is finished,” said Erik Johansen, sales manager for the reusable bag manufacturer Roplast Industries. “We are getting more and more backup from local enterprises and business and local people as well to rebuild Oroville’s reputation and the image.”

Looking for the view

“We receive multiple calls from people every week from people trying to see the dam,” Marron said. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a viewing area where you can really see (the spillway). I send them to the Visitors Center where at least they can see the dam.”

People from Sacramento, the Bay Area, Los Angeles and even Canada have asked for information about the Oroville Dam from the Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve seen a lot more tourists these last few weeks, so I’ve even had tourist bags made up with lists of things to do in Oroville,” Marron said.

The influx of visitors hasn’t necessarily spread all over the city.

“I am not seeing a change in tourist visits compared to before,” Purple Line Urban Winery’s Kate Barber wrote in an email. “In the very beginning, before evacuation, we did see more people coming in that were in town to check out how high the river level was.”

One place where people have shown up in numbers is at the Lake Oroville Visitors Center.

In February, State Parks counted 24,928 visitors, according to data provided by California State Parks Superintendent Aaron Wright. That’s a 246 percent increase compared to the 7,203 seen in February 2016.

Those numbers went down after a few weeks, but every month since February has seen significant increases over previous years.

March saw an increase of 80 percent, April had 93 percent more, and 63 percent more people went to the Visitors Center in May compared to those months in 2016.

Impact across California

Assemblyman James Gallgher, R-Yuba City, authored a bill to better monitor dams with help from state Sen. Jim Neilsen, R-Gerber.

The latest amendment to AB 1270 was sent Wednesday to the Senate Appropriations Committee with a recommendation to approve.

It makes yearly inspections mandatory for most dams and biannual inspections mandatory for low-risk dams.

The bill also requires the California Water Commission — along with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management from UC Berkeley — to conduct reviews on state-operated dams and reservoirs every three years. Those reviews will be presented to DWR and to the legislature.

In addition, DWR will have to post the last 10 years of inspection reports online for dams classified as high hazard or extremely high hazard.