sluice

Yet after back-to-back atmospheric rivers walloped California in less than a week, it wouldn’t take much for water, mud and boulders to sluice down fragile hillsides, experts warned.

As the tide ebbs the water is released through a sluice, which pushes a water wheel, which turns the grinding stones.

The ducts also do not appear to have engineered a flow in a single direction, or debouched into any basin, suggesting they were not used to sluice out sewage or rainfall, added the authority, whose research partner is Tel Aviv University.

The locks and sluice gates that barges and other vessels used to pass through the dam have been blocked by broken stone and debris from the explosion, so there is no way for them to traverse the river, he added.

Satellite images showed water washing over damaged sluice gates.