Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Oroville, CA

Oroville is the county seat of Butte County in Northern California; its name combines the Spanish oro, "gold," with ville, "town," and its nickname is the "City of Gold."

Oroville grew up during the California Gold Rush as the head of navigation on the Feather River, supplying miners in the Sierra foothills; the area's original inhabitants were the Konkow Maidu people.

Originally called Ophir City, the town was renamed Oroville when its first post office opened in 1854, and the city incorporated on January 3, 1906.

The 2020 census counted 20,042 residents in Oroville, up from 15,546 in 2010, and Census estimates put the city at roughly 7,000 households.

Just east of Oroville stands Oroville Dam on the Feather River: at 770 feet high and about 1.3 miles long, it is the tallest dam in the United States and the nation's largest earthfill dam.

Oroville Dam, the centerpiece of the California State Water Project, was built between 1961 and 1968 at a cost of about $564 million, and its underground Edward Hyatt Powerplant was the largest underground power station in the country when it was completed.

The dam impounds Lake Oroville, California's second-largest reservoir, holding about 3.54 million acre-feet of water with roughly 167 miles of shoreline; the State Water Project delivers water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

In February 2017, damage to Oroville Dam's spillways forced the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people from communities downstream.

In September 2021, Lake Oroville fell to a historic low of about 629 feet, just 22 percent of capacity, forcing the Hyatt Powerplant offline for the first time since 1967.

Oroville's Chinese Temple, built in 1863 for a Chinese community of some 10,000 people, then the largest Chinese colony north of Sacramento, was partly funded by the Emperor and Empress of China; deeded to the city in 1935, it is now a museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places.