1976-1983, New Melones Lake Project, time lapse скачать в хорошем качестве

1976-1983, New Melones Lake Project, time lapse

The following video was digitized from a couple of old reels of 16mm film that appears to be have been cutting room floor stock footage. The film was shot during the construction of the New Melones Dam located in the central Sierra Nevada foothills within Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties in California. This dam was built to replace the original 211 foot Melones dam that was constructed in 1926 by the Oakdale and South San Joaquin Irrigation Districts. The film also records the construction of the Stevenot Bridge that carries State Route 49 over New Melones Lake on the Stanislaus River. The bridge was named after Archie Stevenot who helped found the California Chamber of Commerce and was completed in 1976. I found the following information on the Bureau of Reclamation website. In the late 1890's, settlers in area of Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties in the Sierra Foothills of California began to divert water from the rivers to various areas throughout the foothills. Later in the decade, utilities began harnessing the rivers for hydroelectric power which was exported out of the basin. The United States Congress passed the Reclamation Act of 1902 which created the Reclamation Service. Today it is referred to as the Bureau of Reclamation. Around the same time, local irrigation districts were created in the foothills. Two of these were the Oakdale and the South San Joaquin Irrigation Districts. In 1926 their combined efforts saw the construction of a 211 foot high dam referred to here as the “Old Melones Dam”. This dam was designed to store up to 112,500 acre-feet of water providing plenty of water for agriculture in the valley below. In 1944, Congress authorized the construction of the New Melones Dam to prevent flood damage caused by rain and snowmelt to the 35,000 acres of downstream agricultural land and the communities of Oakdale, Riverbank, and Ripon as well as others further downstream. Congress modified this authorization in the 1962 Flood Control Act to include irrigation, power, wildlife and fishery enhancement, recreation, and water quality as reasons for construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction in 1966. Public controversy caused years of construction delays. Despite this the dam was completed in 1978, and the spillway and powerhouse were completed in 1979. Today the reservoir is part of the Central Valley Project, created to provide water to arid areas in California, and minimize downstream flooding. There is always some impact on the environment when projects of this magnitude are undertaken but in the case of the New Melones dam project, history was also affected. The history of the folks that had called the area their home for at least hundreds if not thousands of years is now covered by a lake. Hundreds of years before the old Melones dam was constructed, the area that became Melones lake and much of California was occupied by a group of indigenous people we know today as the Me-Wuk Indians but there is evidence that the location of the New Melones lake and dam has been occupied for much longer. Stone tools and artifacts give evidence that humans have made their home there for about 9,600 years. When the first explorers arrived in California, they estimated that the Me-Wuk were the most populous of the Indian groups and numbered around 9000. These were divided into three groups by dialect and geography, Northern, Central and Southern, the Central Sierra Me-Wuk inhabited the New Melones Lake project area. The Me-Wuk were believed to be the most populous of the California Indian groups, but by the 1910 census, only 670 surviving Me-Wuk Indians were recorded and of those, only half were full blooded.