This large 2,500 surface acre body of water was one of our stops during a road trip to the East Bay area on 3/10/2019. Jeff and I took a drive with our pups, Summer and Skye to the San Francisco Bay Area to take a tour of all of the lakes in Contra Costa County and a couple in Alameda County. Clifton Court Forebay is located just south of the City of Byron at an elevation of just 3 feet above sea level. Clifton Court Forebay is a reservoir in the San Joaquin River Delta region of eastern Contra Costa County, California, 17 miles southwest of Stockton. Since it is so low in elevation and not much accessible elevation nearby it was difficult to find a good advantage point to get a picture of the entire Forebay.
The body of water was
created in 1969 by inundating a 2,200-acre tract as part of the California
State Water Project. It serves as the
intake point of the California Aqueduct for transport to Southern California,
and feeds the Delta–Mendota Canal (a part of the Central Valley Project) to
recharge San Joaquin Valley river systems.
Earthquakes are
commonplace in the Bay area of California.
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 and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake 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 clashes with
glaciations that affected North America.
No comments:
Post a Comment