The C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant (formerly the Tracy Pumping Plant) located 9 miles northwest of

Tracy, CA Tracy is the second most populated city in San Joaquin County, California, United States. The population was 93,000 at the 2020 census. Tracy is located inside a geographic triangle formed by Interstate 205 on the north side of the city, Inters ...

, 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 m ...

. The

Delta Cross Channel The Delta Cross Channel is a facility in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that diverts water from the Sacramento River. The facility was built in 1951 in Walnut Grove, California. It diverts water to Snodgrass Slough, from where it flo ...

intercepts Sacramento River 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 ent ...

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 Ce ...

, and other natural sloughs, marshes and distributaries. 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, 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.https://www.usbr.gov/mp/mp140/pim/docs/Tracy_FactSheet_12-21-06.pdf US Bureau of Reclamation fact sheet

Specifications

* pumps: six 22,500 HP electric motors * normal lift: 197 feet * maximum pumping rate: 5200 cubic feet per second (2,000,000 gallons per minute, per day)

References

External links

CDEC daily sensor data
{{Central Valley Project infrastructure 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