O'Neill Forebay is a
forebay to the
San Luis Reservoir
The San Luis Reservoir is an artificial lake on San Luis Creek (California), San Luis Creek in the eastern slopes of the Diablo Range of Merced County, California, approximately west of Los Banos, California, Los Banos on California State Rou ...
created by the construction of
O'Neill Dam across
San Luis Creek approximately west of
Los Banos, California
Los Banos ( ), alternatively Los Baños ( ), is a city in Merced County, California, Merced County, California, United States. It is located in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California, near the junction of California State Route 152, Stat ...
,
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, on the eastern slopes of the
Pacific Coast Ranges
The Pacific Coast Ranges (officially gazetted as the Pacific Mountain System in the United States; ; ) are the series of mountain ranges that stretch along the West Coast of North America from Alaska south to Northern and Central Mexico. Althoug ...
of
Merced County.
Background
Roughly downstream from the
San Luis Dam, O'Neill Forebay collects irregular water releases from the San Luis Dam and the 424 MW
pumped-storage hydroelectric
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing (electrical power), load balancing.
A PSH system stores energy i ...
William R. Gianelli Powerplant in its basin. A
morning-glory type spillway lies at the
left bank
In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water.
Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography.
In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrain alongsid ...
of the reservoir. The reservoir is fed by the
California Aqueduct
The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after California Gov ...
and the
Delta–Mendota Canal. Water from the canal is lifted a vertical distance of into a channel running into the forebay.
O'Neill Dam
O'Neill Dam, constructed from 1963 to 1967, is an , earthfill and rockfill dam, stretching over across the valley of San Luis Creek. With a maximum reservoir depth of , peak inflow to the forebay is per second, from both the San Luis Dam and the Delta–Mendota Canal. The drainage area of the reservoir downstream of the San Luis Dam is only . The O'Neill Pumping-Generating Plant stores 28 megawatts hours of energy.
[
]
Recreation
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 evaluati ...
(OEHHA) has developed an advisory for O'Neill Forebay because of mercury and PCBs found in fish caught here. The advisory provides safe eating advice for multiple fish species.
The largest striped bass
The striped bass (''Morone saxatilis''), also called the Atlantic striped bass, striper, linesider, rock, or rockfish, is an anadromous perciform fish of the family Moronidae found primarily along the Atlantic coast of North America. It has ...
caught in California was caught in the O’Neill Forebay. The fish, and weighing , was caught on August 5, 2008, by Frank Ualat of Gilroy, California
Gilroy is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, south of the San Francisco Bay Area. It had a population of 59,520 as of the 2020 census.
Gilroy's origins lie in the village of San Ysidro, which developed in the early 19th ...
.
See also
*List of dams and reservoirs in California
Following is a list of dams and reservoirs in California in a sortable table. There are over 1,400 named dams and 1,300 named reservoirs in the state of California.
Dams in service
:''Please add to this list from the below sources.''
Former ...
*List of lakes in California
There are more than 3,000 named lakes, reservoirs, and dry lakes in the U.S. state of California.
Largest lakes
In terms of area covered, the largest lake in California is the Salton Sea, a lake formed in 1905 which is now saline. It occup ...
References
*
External links
*
{{authority control
Reservoirs in Merced County, California
Central Valley Project
Reservoirs in California
Reservoirs in Northern California