New Melones Dam [SEP] located next to body of water
New Melones Dam
New Melones Dam is an earth and rock filled embankment dam on the Stanislaus River, about west of Jamestown, California, United States, on the border of Calaveras County and Tuolumne County. The water impounded by the -tall dam forms New Melones Lake, California's fourth largest reservoir, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada east of the San Joaquin Valley. The dam serves mainly for irrigation water supply, and also provides hydropower generation, flood control, and recreation benefits.
The dam was authorized in
State Water Resources Control Board set the temporary upper limit for lake level at the old Parrott's Ferry Bridge. With that limit in place, operations of the dam and reservoir were handed to Reclamation.
Over the next two years the state continued to delay allowing the reservoir to fill because the Bureau of Reclamation had not convincingly demonstrated that "the irrigation need will outweigh any damage that results to fish, wildlife and recreation in the watershed above New Melones Dam." Further studies by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and