Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Water pumps at Tracy. (Department of Water Resources)
power plants, and 600 miles of canals and pipelines. These include the
444-mile-long California aqueduct, a straight blue ribbon that crisscrosses
the golden grass and desert along Interstate 5. The SWP went on-line be-
tween 1968 and 1972. The project delivers water to two-thirds of Califor-
nians today.
Seeking still more supply and efficiency, California expanded the other
water management behemoth in the heart of the state. Between 1950 and
1990, California added hundreds more miles of aqueducts to the Central
Valley Project, and in the 1970s covered 25,000 acres with two huge new
reservoirs (New Don Pedro and New Melones). By the late 1970s, there
were 1,251 reservoirs in California, many on rivers or creeks that drained
into the bay.
Altogether, the state's largest diversions—as well as 1,800 smaller agri-
cultural diversions in the delta—remove about two-thirds of the fresh
water that had historically flowed out through the bay and to the sea each
year. With all of these facilities to catch and move water, California's land-
scape became a patchwork of startling green orange groves next to semi-
arid deserts, turquoise swimming pools amid hot sand and cactus, grey
freeways snaking through palm-lined malls, and red-roofed homes with
backyard koi ponds, where coyotes can eat Japanese every night.
