Oroville >> Work at the Oroville Dam will carry on in spite of the 110 degree-plus temperatures anticipated this week.

There are protections in place for construction employees with the contractor, Kiewit, and concrete has to undergo a cooling techniques to be able to keep applying it, said Jeff Petersen, the company’s project director in a press conference call Wednesday morning.

Shifts have been changed in an effort to avoid the most intense heat of the day, with 10-hour shifts starting at 5 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Workers are briefed on the signs of heat-related health problems, use a buddy system and have a designated shift monitor, Petersen said. They are also reminded to keep hydrated, provided with fruit and advised to stay in the shade of portable tents as much as possible.

“We work really hard to prevent any heat-related illness,” Petersen said.

Gaps in the rock of the lower spillway chute will be filed with roller-compacted concrete, or RCC, and layered with structural concrete on top. The RCC batch plant has been running since June 17 and the structural concrete plant is expected to be ready for production early next week, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

Just how much concrete will go into the spillways over the course of the project?

DWR projects the RCC plant will produce 800,000 cubic yards of concrete and the structural concrete plant will pump out 146,000 cubic yards, also requiring the production of 8.5 million pounds of reinforcing steel. That is the equivalent of 289 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of concrete, or a football field stacked 41 feet high with the material.

More meeting updates

• The Board of Consultants’ seventh memorandum will be published this week, with — for the first time — no information removed deemed to be a potential national security threat by DWR.

• No asbestos has been measured on site “beyond established health-based threshold values,” and crystalline silica may be present, but poses no threat to the public, DWR officials said. Construction workers’ exposure levels have been “well below” California Division of Occupational Safety and Health limits.

• Eight additional time lapse cameras are being installed on site and their feeds will go live once they are installed.

• Demolition of the lower spillway is nearing completion, DWR officials said. Crews also continue to dig out trenches for the secant wall foundation, which will go 700 feet down the hill from the emergency spillway.

Reach reporter Risa Johnson at 896-7763.