Delta Transmission TowersThe Delta area is home to four separate transmission towers which provide reception for television and radio stations serving the residents of Northern California. Three of the towers rival some of the tallest structures in the world. The four towers are known as: Twin Cities Tower, McCormick Tower, Walnut Grove Tower and Sacramento Tower. Each of the towers can be seen directly to the northeast and southeast of this site.
Twin Cities Tower - 2000 Feet, Channels 40 and 6
Walnut Grove Tower - 1549 Feet, Channels 10-13-3 Backup
McCormick Tower - 2007 Feet, Channels 3 & 31
Sacramento Joint Tower - 200 Feet, Channels 10 13 58
Comparable StructuresEmpire State Building 1475 Feet
Eiffel Tower 1052 Feet
Statue of Liberty 305 Feet
Delta Cross Channel GatesBuilt in 1946, the Delta Cross Channel is a man-made channel, less than a mile long, connecting the Sacramento River with Snodgrass Slough and the Mokelumne River System. There is a pair of hydraulically controlled gates on the Sacramento River end of the channel, with usual low-tide overhead clearance of about 8-1/2 feet - when the gates are in the open position. (Although these gates often referred to as "locks" they are not locks.) These gates may be closed often for various reasons - sometimes for flood control, sometimes for improvement of water quality, sometimes to improve protection of migrating fish. Bureau of Reclamation (part of the US Department of the Interior) standing operations procedures call for gate closure when flow on the Sacramento River reaches the 20,000 to 25,000 cfs range. The opening and closing of the gates generally takes 30 minutes to one hour.
The channel is deep and allows transit of low-overhead-clearance boats when the gates are open. The channel has a bottom width of 210 feet and a capacity of 3,500 cubic feet per second. This provides a shortcut between the two waterway systems. Without this shortcut, a boater must travel the entire distance of Georgiana Slough and back upstream the entire distance of the North Fork of the Mokelumne River (or visa versa) to go this same one-mile distance - a cruise of many miles.
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