Workers rescued after penstock bursts at New Colgate Powerhouse in Yuba County
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- Crews rescued workers after a penstock pipe burst at the New Colgate Powerhouse.
- A Cal Fire helicopter crew rescued one worker who was missing after the pipe failure.
- The powerhouse is located along the Yuba River south of Dobbins.
Authorities on Friday rescued a group of workers — including one who was briefly unaccounted for — after a pipe burst at the New Colgate Powerhouse, the Yuba Water Agency’s main hydroelectric facility south of Dobbins.
The incident occurred just before 3 p.m. at the plant’s penstock, a 14-foot-diameter, high-pressure pipe that carries water roughly five miles from New Bullards Bar Dam to the powerhouse along the Yuba River, according to the Yuba Water Agency, which operates the reservoir and powerhouse. Officials said the pipe burst during testing of a new protective valve. Contractors have been upgrading the penstock and tunnel since September.
As of Saturday morning, all personnel had been accounted for and one person remained hospitalized, according to the agency. The agency said it was focused on securing the site and responding to potential environmental impacts along the North and Middle Yuba rivers.
“Our team is currently conducting helicopter surveys of the North and Middle Yuba rivers between New Colgate Powerhouse and Lake Englebright to map debris in the water,” the agency said in a Saturday update. The agency said it was working with Clean Harbors, an environmental mitigation company, and coordinating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns and operates Englebright Dam.
Yuba Water urged the public to stay out of the North and Middle Yuba rivers between the powerhouse and Englebright Lake in the coming days because of hazardous debris along the banks and in the water. The agency said there was no risk of downstream flooding related to the incident.
After the penstock burst Friday, a technical rescue team from the Cal Fire Nevada-Yuba-Placer Unit was called to the powerhouse, which is located below Lake Francis about 4½ miles from New Bullards Bar Reservoir and 2½ miles from Dobbins.
The Yuba County Sheriff’s Office and the Dobbins Fire Department also responded to the incident. In all, five workers were rescued, officials said.
At 5:38 p.m., Cal Fire officials reported rescue crews were searching for one worker who was unaccounted for. Authorities used aerial drones and a helicopter to search for the missing worker.
In a 6:03 p.m. update, authorities announced the missing worker had been found and was rescued by a Cal Fire helicopter and taken to a hospital.
The area is safe at this point’
“We had major water and debris transported down the hill and deposited in the river and adjacent to our powerhouse,” Willie Whittlesey, general manager of Yuba Water Agency, said in a video alongside Yuba County Sheriff Wendell Anderson. “We want to let everyone know that all Yuba Water Agency personnel, contract personnel and our partners have been accounted for. That’s the best news. The area is safe at this point.”
Whittlesey said New Bullards Bar Dam and the reservoir behind it remained safe and stable.
“We don’t know a lot at this point,” he said. “In the coming days, we will analyze the situation and provide more information.”
Anderson said deputies and other personnel were continuing to check “up and down the river right now” to make sure other people weren’t swept up in the rush of water and debris along the Yuba.
“We’re using thermal imaging to make sure that we don’t have any people out there that we’re not aware of,” he said. “We don’t have any specific missing persons at this time. This is just due diligence and making sure that no one is in need of help.”
PG&E said more than 15,000 customers in Nevada, Yuba, Sierra and Butte counties lost power after the penstock rupture washed water and debris into a substation at the bottom of the run, as well as another substation downstream. The utility restored electricity to parts of Dobbins and Smartsville, and areas west of Grass Valley on Friday night. About 400 homes and businesses remained offline Saturday morning in North San Juan, just below New Bullards, as well as in Pike City.
Officials said power could be restored as early as 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
In response to the outage, local agencies opened resource centers for affected residents.
A community resource center was scheduled to open by 3 p.m. Saturday at the Camptonville Community Center, 15333 Cleveland Ave., providing a warm space to charge devices and obtain outage information.
In Pike City, fire personnel planned to staff the Pike City Fire Station, 100 Pike City Road, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday to distribute supplies, including cellphone chargers, power banks, blankets and bottled water. Grab-and-go bags containing a small battery pack and light blanket were to be available for residents impacted by the outage.
The New Colgate Powerhouse went online in 1969 as part of the New Bullards Bar project, a multipurpose hydroelectric and flood control system built for Yuba County after the devastating Christmas flood of 1955. Unlike most hydroelectric plants, it is not located at the base of the dam, but carries water down about 1,000 feet in elevation to generate more water pressure and electricity.
The facility’s two Pelton turbines — manufactured in Switzerland and among the largest ever built — have a combined capacity of about 315 megawatts.
The incident came just months after a fatal accident at the same facility.
In August, Daniel Bustos Mendez died while working as a contractor for the Yuba Water Agency near the powerhouse. Bustos Mendez, 33, of Hayward died when equipment he was operating slipped down the steep embankment, according to the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office.
That incident remains under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office and Cal-OSHA but the Yuba Water Agency’s board was expected to discuss its “significant exposure to litigation” by the worker’s family in a closed session Tuesday.
Agency officials have not said what caused Friday’s penstock rupture or whether Cal-OSHA will investigate.
The Bee’s Daniel Hunt contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Workers rescued after penstock bursts at New Colgate Powerhouse in Yuba County."
