California Reclamation Districts are legal subdivisions within California's Central Valley that are responsible for managing and maintaining the

levee A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually soil, earthen and that often runs parallel (geometry), parallel to ...

s, fresh water channels, or sloughs (pronounced slü),

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they u ...

s, and other flood protection structures in the area. Each is run autonomously and is run by an elected board and funded with taxes to property owners in the local area. However, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board has the power to determine that a district is not satisfactorily maintaining the structures and causing the

California Department of Water Resources The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is part of the California Natural Resources Agency and is responsible for the management and regulation of the State of California's water usage. The department was created in 1956 by Governor ...

to declare an area as a ''maintenance area''.

History

Historically, a reclamation district represents former

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

s that were "reclaimed" for agriculture. The reclamation districts were created by acts of State Legislature, mostly in the early 1900s in order to allow land to be used for agriculture. For example, Reclamation District No. 1000 was created on April 8, 1911. Reclamation was usually accomplished by the introduction of levee systems along with other flood control mechanisms to prevent flooding in wetland areas. In the state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, the levees also enabled large amounts of silt runoff from gold mining to be channeled all the way out to the

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

area, even at water levels that would normally flood the banks and therefore move too slowly for

sediment transport Sediment transport is the movement of solid particles (sediment), typically due to a combination of gravity acting on the sediment, and/or the movement of the fluid in which the sediment is entrained. Sediment transport occurs in natural system ...

. Most of the structures were built as part 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 an ...

authorized by congress in 1917 and ultimately finished in 1960 by the

US Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

. There are currently about 1600 miles of project levees as well as many pumps, canals, sloughs, bypasses and other flood protection structures which became the responsibility of the State of California in 1960. In total, there are around 13,000 miles of levees (if the non-project levees are included) in the State of California. Non-project levees are the levees which do not fall under the auspices of the state government and are considered the responsibility of the individual land owners. The vast majority of the water in the California watershed (or

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

) falls into the central valley area which drains into the

Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta The Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, or California Delta, is an expansive inland river delta and estuary in Northern California. The Delta is formed at the western edge of the Central Valley by the confluence of the Sacramento and San ...

, and so this is also where most of the levee systems and reclamation districts fall.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Cdec.water.ca.gov: Aerial and Plat Maps for specific California Reclamation Districts
Water management authorities in California Central Valley (California) Sacramento Valley San Joaquin Valley Special districts of California Water in California

History

See also

References

External links