Opinion ID: 2763492
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Central Valley and the River Systems

Text: The Central Valley is a flat-bottom basin covering 22,500 square miles in inland California. The walls of the basin are created by several mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains to the east, the Klamath Mountains to the north, the Coast Range to the west, and the Tehachapi Mountains to the south. See infra, Fig. A. The Valley is long and narrow. It stretches from Bakersfield in the south to Redding in the north (about 450 miles) and is between 40 and 60 miles wide from east to west. The Central Valley contains several major river systems. Those systems are comprised of the San Joaquin River (which flows west from the Cathedral Range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, turns north around Fresno, and enters the San Francisco Bay north of Berkeley), the Sacramento River (which flows south from the Salmon and Trinity Mountains around Redding and passes through Sacramento before joining the San Joaquin River), and their tributaries. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers converge around Antioch, about thirty miles northeast of Oakland, where they form the San Joaquin River Delta. The water from the Delta flows past Chipps Island, into the Suisun Bay, through Bulls Head Channel, and into the San Francisco Bay. The water passes the city of San Francisco and flows under the Golden Gate Bridge where it finally enters the Pacific Ocean. See 24 SAN LUIS V. LOCKE infra, Fig. A. The brackish body of water through which the rivers flow on their way to the Pacific Ocean is called the “Bay-Delta.” The river delta is called simply “the Delta.” Fig. A. Delta Map.2 2 California Water Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, http://ca.water.usgs.gov/gama/Provs/CenVly.htm (last visited Oct. 21, 2014, 9:09 a.m.). SAN LUIS V. LOCKE 25