South Bay Pumping Plant

Bethany Reservoir State Recreation Area is a state park unit of California, United States, adjoining the Bethany Reservoir. It is located in Alameda County, near Livermore. Situated in the northernmost part of the San Joaquin Valley, Bethany Reservoir State Recreation Area is a popular place for water-oriented recreation, especially fishing and windsurfing. The reservoir stores water for a pumping plant on the California Aqueduct.

The Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant is located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southwest of the Clifton Court Forebay and 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Tracy, CA. The plant is the first pumping plant for the California Aqueduct and the South Bay Aqueduct. It provides the necessary fluid head (potential energy) for the California Aqueduct to flow for approximately 80 miles (130 km) south past the O'Neill Forebay and the San Luis Reservoir to the Dos Amigos Pumping Plant. The Banks Pumping Plant initially flows into the Bethany Reservoir. It is from the Bethany Reservoir that the South Bay Aqueduct begins. The John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective Facility is located 2 miles upstream from the facility and prevents fishes from reaching the pumping plant.Limits on water pumping from the Sacramento Delta is a politically contentious issue. In dry years, water pumped from the Delta creates a hazard to spring-run salmon. As the Banks Pumping Plant pulls water from the Sacramento River southward across the Delta, it disrupts the normal flow direction of east to west that salmon smolt follow to the Pacific Ocean. Populations of salmon and steelhead trout have reached critically low levels in the decades after SWP water withdrawals began. The fish migration issue has become hotly contested in recent years, with rising support for the construction of the Peripheral Canal, which would divert water around the Delta, restoring the natural flow direction.

The Bethany Reservoir is located 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Livermore, California, USA, on the California Aqueduct. It serves as the forebay for the South Bay Pumping Plant that feeds the South Bay Aqueduct.

The Byron-Bethany Irrigation District (BBID) is a special district serving the water needs of regions of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Joaquin Counties in California. This area is about 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) and serves 160 agricultural customers, as well as residents of the all-inclusive Mountain House village community are served as well. Notable recipients of BBID's services in the area are The Patterson Pass Business Park, Prologis International Park of Commerce, and Cordes Ranch. The water comes from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and the Delta–Mendota Canal.

The C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant (formerly the Tracy Pumping Plant) located 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Tracy, California, was constructed between 1947 and 1951, and is a key component of the Central Valley Project. The Delta Cross Channel intercepts Sacramento River water as it travels westwards towards Suisun Bay and diverts it south through a series of man-made channels, the Mokelumne River, 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 117 miles (188 km) 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 3,000,000 acre-feet (3.7×109 m3) of water distributed, 2,500,000 acre-feet (3.1×109 m3) is delivered to farms, 200,000 acre-feet (250,000,000 m3) to urban areas, including Tracy and cities with in the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and 300,000 acre-feet (370,000,000 m3) for wildlife refuges.

Altamont Pass, formerly Livermore Pass, is a low mountain pass in the Diablo Range of Northern California between Livermore in the Livermore Valley and Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley. The name is actually applied to two distinct but nearby crossings of the range. The lower of the two, at an elevation of 741 ft (226 m), carries two railroad rights-of-way (ROWs) and Altamont Pass Road, part of the old Lincoln Highway and the original alignment of US 50 before it was bypassed c. 1937. The bypass route travels over the higher summit, at 1,009 ft (308 m), and now carries Interstate 580, a major regional highway heavily congested by Central Valley suburbanization. Of the two railroad lines through the old pass, one is still in use: the ex-Western Pacific line built in 1908 over the pass, which is sometimes known as the Altamont Corridor, now owned by Union Pacific. It carries freight trains as well as the Altamont Corridor Express, which gives its occasional name (ACE) and operates between Stockton, Livermore, Pleasanton, Fremont, and San Jose. The other and older right-of-way was the line built in 1869 with a 1,200-foot-long (370 m) summit tunnel by the original Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) as part of the transcontinental railroad. After 1879, when a sea level ferry crossing at the Carquinez Strait replaced the 1869 route, it remained in use for other purposes by the Southern Pacific. In 1984 it was abandoned and deeded to Alameda County by Southern Pacific Railroad in favor of trackage rights on the aforementioned ex-Western Pacific line. From 1966 to 2008, the Altamont Pass area was home to the Altamont Speedway, which became famous as the site of the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, a large outdoor concert featuring The Rolling Stones and marred by violence. The pass is also known for the Altamont Pass Wind Farm, one of the earliest in the United States.

Altamont is an unincorporated community in Alameda County, California. It is located 7.5 miles (12 km) northeast of Livermore, at an elevation of 741 feet (226 m) in the Altamont Pass. It was in 1969 the site of the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway. Originally called The Summit, the name was changed to Altamont when the Central Pacific Railroad arrived in 1869.

The Altamont Pass wind farm is located in the Altamont Pass of the Diablo Range in Northern California. It is one of the earliest wind farms in the United States. The first wind turbines were placed on the Altamont in the early 1980s by Fayette Manufacturing Corporation on land owned by cattle rancher Joe Jess. The wind farm is composed of 4930 relatively small wind turbines of various types, making it at one time the largest wind farm in the world in terms of capacity. Altamont Pass is still one of the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world, with a capacity of 576 megawatts (MW), producing about 125 MW on average and 1.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) yearly. They were installed after the 1970s energy crisis in response to favorable tax policies for investors.

Mountain House (formerly, Zimmerman's and Zimmerman's Mountain House) was a historic waystop for forty-niners halfway from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada gold country. Today it is an unincorporated community in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located 12 miles (19 km) east-northeast of Livermore, and 6 miles (9.7 km) east of the Altamont Pass, historically the Livermore Pass, at an altitude of 207 feet (63 m), between the California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal. San Joaquin County's Mountain House borrowed the name of the historic Mountain House and is located two miles (3 km) to the northeast further downstream on Mountain House Creek.

The John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective Facility or the Skinner Fish Facility is a fish collection and diversion facility located 2 miles upstream from the Banks Pumping Plant. In operation since 1968 by the California Department of Water Resources, the facility utilizes behavioral devices (fish screens) that divert most fish away from the pumping plant. Fish that make it past the behavior devices are collected into concrete tanks where they are later released back into the Sacramento River or the San Joaquin River.