Clifton Court Forebay is a

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...

in the San Joaquin River Delta region of eastern

Contra Costa County, California ) of the San Francisco Bay , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = California , subdivision_type2 ...

, southwest of Stockton. The estuary region the forebay is located in is only 1m to 3m above mean sea level.

History

The body of water was created in 1969 by inundating a tract as part of the

California State Water Project The California State Water Project, commonly known as the SWP, is a state water management project in the U.S. state of California under the supervision of the California Department of Water Resources. The SWP is one of the largest public wate ...

. It serves as the intake point of the

California Aqueduct The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after Cali ...

for transport to

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...

, and feeds the Delta–Mendota Canal (a part of the Central Valley Project) to recharge

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

river systems.

Geological context

If a large enough earthquake happens near or at the Clifton Court Forebay, the California water system for irrigation and municipal use will be adversely affected. Several earthquakes have nearly shut down the Forebay. The

2014 South Napa earthquake The 2014 South Napa earthquake occurred in the North San Francisco Bay Area on August 24 at . At 6.0 on the moment magnitude scale and with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (''Severe''), the event was the largest in the San Francisco Bay Ar ...

and the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

came very close to shutting down the Forebay intake system. The Clifton Forebay is a wetland system that drained nearby small rivers into the Pacific Ocean. Only in recent times was its freshwater drainage functions turned into a gateway to water storage. The Central Valley region that this forebay interfaces with is very gradually filling in the central valley with sediments. The region may be rebounding from recent run ins with glaciations that affected North America.

In popular culture

A documentary about the decline of the United States' infrastructure, ''The Crumbling of America'', was commissioned by the U.S.

A&E network A&E is an American basic cable network, the flagship television property of A&E Networks. The network was originally founded in 1984 as the Arts & Entertainment Network, initially focusing on fine arts, documentaries, dramas, and educational ent ...

in the late 2000s. The documentary is typically shown on the

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

television channel in the United States, although other educational broadcasters globally have shown it. It features the Clifton Court Forebay as a "strategic piece of California freshwater infrastructure" subject to shutdown for up to two years if struck by an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or greater.

References

{{San Francisco Bay watershed California State Water Project Reservoirs in Contra Costa County, California Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta Infrastructure completed in 1969 1969 establishments in California Reservoirs in Northern California

History

Geological context

In popular culture

See also

Related sites

References