The C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant (formerly the Tracy Pumping Plant) located northwest of

Tracy, California Tracy is the second most populated city in San Joaquin County, California, San Joaquin County, California, United States. The population was 93,000 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Tracy is located inside a geographic triangle form ...

, was constructed between 1947 and 1951, and is a key component of the

Central Valley Project The Central Valley Project (CVP) is a federal power and water management project in the U.S. state of California under the supervision of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). It was devised in 1933 in order to provide irrigation and ...

. The Delta Cross Channel intercepts

Sacramento River The Sacramento River () is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for before reaching the Sacramento–San Joaquin River D ...

water as it travels westwards towards

Suisun Bay Suisun Bay ( ; Wintun for "where the west wind blows") is a shallow tidal estuary (a northeastern extension of the San Francisco Bay) in Northern California. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River, forming the e ...

and diverts it south through a series of man-made channels, the

Mokelumne River The Mokelumne River ( or ; ''Mokelumne'', Miwok for "People of the Fish Net") is a -long river in northern California in the United States. The river flows west from a rugged portion of the central Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada into the C ...

, and other natural

sloughs A slough ( or ) is a wetland, usually a swamp or shallow lake, often a Backwater (river), backwater to a larger body of water. Water tends to be Water stagnation, stagnant or may flow slowly on a seasonal basis. In North America, "slough" may re ...

marsh In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p More in genera ...

es and

distributaries A distributary, or a distributary channel is a stream channel that branches off and flows a main stream channel. It is the opposite of a ''tributary'', a stream that flows another stream or river. Distributaries are a result of river bifurca ...

. From there, the water travels to the C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant, which raises water into the Delta-Mendota Canal, which in turn travels southwards to Mendota Pool on the

San Joaquin River The San Joaquin River ( ; ) is the longest river of Central California. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francis ...

, supplying water to other CVP reservoirs about midway. The Tracy Fish Collection Facility exists at the entrance of the pump plant in order to catch fish that would otherwise end up in the Delta-Mendota Canal. The Jones Pumping Plant provides water service to 32 water districts within the western San Joaquin Valley, San Benito and Santa Clara counties. Of the approximate of water distributed, is delivered to farms, to urban areas, including Tracy and cities with in the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and for wildlife refuges.

Specifications

* pumps: six 22,500 HP electric motors * normal lift: * maximum pumping rate: 5200 cubic feet per second (2,000,000 gallons per minute, per day)

References

External links

CDEC daily sensor data
{{coord, 37.796603, -121.585494, display=title Central Valley Project Buildings and structures in Contra Costa County, California Water supply infrastructure in California Water supply pumping stations in the United States Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta