Stony Gorge Dam (National ID # CA10194) is a dam in

Glenn County, California Glenn County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 28,917. The county seat is Willows, California, Willows. It is located in the Sacramento Valley, in the northe ...

. The concrete buttress dam was constructed between 1926 and 1928 by the

United States Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

, with a height of 153 feet and 868 feet long at its crest. Structurally it is a relatively early example of an Ambursen-type dam, using contraction joints between all face slabs and buttresses for stability. It impounds Stony Creek for irrigation storage and flood control. Hydroelectric power is also produced. Along with the

East Park Dam East Park Dam is an agricultural irrigation dam and reservoir built by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, on Little Stony Creek, about southwest of Orland, California on the northern end of the California Central Valley. The dam was comp ...

about fifteen miles upstream, it is part of the Orland Project in the Sacramento valley, one of the Bureau of Reclamation's first generation of water projects. The dam is owned by the Bureau and is operated by the local Orland Unit Water Users` Association. The reservoir it creates, Stony Gorge Reservoir, has a water surface of 1,280 acres, a shoreline of about eighteen miles, and a maximum capacity of 58,500

acre-feet The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows. An acre-f ...

. Recreation includes camping, boating, and fishing (for largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, bluegill, crappie, and catfish). The

California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, commonly referred to as OEHHA (pronounced oh-EEE-ha), is a specialized department within the cabinet-level California Environmental Protection Agency ( CalEPA) with responsibility for evaluatin ...

(OEHHA) has developed a safe eating advisory for fish caught in the Stony Gorge Dam based on levels of mercury or

PCBs Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by t ...

found in local species.

References

{{authority control Dams in California Reservoirs in Glenn County, California United States Bureau of Reclamation dams Dams completed in 1928 Energy infrastructure completed in 1928 Buildings and structures in Glenn County, California Hydroelectric power plants in California Dams in the Sacramento River basin Reservoirs in California 1928 establishments in California Reservoirs in Northern California

See also

References