Folsom Dam
For the settlement called Folsom Dam, see Morgans Landing, California. Folsom Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the American River of Northern California in the United States, about 25 mi northeast of Sacramento; the dam is 1,400 ft long, flanked by earthen wing dams. It was completed in 1955 opening the following year. Located at the juncture of the north and south forks of the American River, the dam was built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, was transferred to the United States Bureau of Reclamation upon its completion; the dam and its reservoir, Folsom Lake, are part of the Central Valley Project, a multipurpose project that provides flood control and irrigation and municipal water supply. In order to increase Sacramento's flood protection to 200 year flood protection the US Army Corps of Engineers constructed an auxiliary spillway, completed in October 2017 and enables Folsom Dam operators to increase outflows to prevent lake level from reaching or exceeding the height of the main dam gates.
Another Central Valley Project dam, Nimbus Dam, is located further down river. Folsom Dam is located just north of the city of Folsom and consists of a 340 ft high, 1,400 ft long hollow core concrete gravity dam containing 1,170,000 cu yd of material; the dam is flanked by two earthen wing dikes, the reservoir is held in place by an additional nine saddle dams on the west and southeast sides. The wing dams total a length of 8,800 ft, the saddle dams measure 16,530 ft long combined; the dam and appurtenant dikes total a length of more than 5 mi. Floodwaters are released by a spillway located on the main channel dam, controlled by eight radial gates with a capacity of 567,000 cu ft/s, as well as a set of outlet works with a capacity of 115,000 cu ft/s; the impounded water behind the dam forms Folsom Lake, with a normal maximum pool of 977,000 acre⋅ft and a surcharge capacity of 110,000 acre⋅ft, for a total capacity of 1,087,000 acre⋅ft. The original capacity was 1,010,000 acre feet, but it has been reduced somewhat due to sedimentation.
At its maximum elevation of 480 ft, the reservoir covers 11,930 acres, with 75 mi of shoreline. The dam and reservoir control runoff from an area of 1,875 sq mi, or 87.6% of the 2,140 sq mi American River watershed. The average amount of runoff entering the reservoir is 2,700,000 acre feet, forcing the release of 1,700,000 acre feet for flood control. Folsom Power Plant is located at the base of the dam, it has three Francis turbines with a combined capacity of 198.72 megawatts, uprated from its original capacity of 162 MW in 1972. The power plant's electricity production is intermediate, between base load, it operates during the day, when the demand and price for electricity is the highest. The plant produces an average of 691,358,000 kilowatt hours each year. Folsom Dam was proposed as early as the 1930s under California's State Water Plan, in response to chronic flooding in low-lying Sacramento; the flood risk to the state capital had been exacerbated since the 1850s by hydraulic mining debris and the construction of levees to protect farms and towns, which reduced the channel capacity of the Sacramento and American Rivers.
The current dam was authorized by Congress in 1944 as a 355,000 acre⋅ft flood control unit, was reauthorized in 1949 as a 1,000,000 acre⋅ft multiple-purpose facility. The current Folsom Dam replaced an earlier, smaller dam, completed in 1893 by Horatio Gates Livermore; the earlier dam had fed the Folsom Powerhouse, generating electricity, transmitted to Sacramento over a 22 mi -long distribution line, the longest electrical distribution system in the world at the time. The remains of the earlier dam can be seen downstream from the Folsom Lake Crossing. Construction of the dam began in 1951 with preliminary excavations for the Folsom Power Plant; the primary contract was awarded to Savin Construction Corp. of East Hartford and Merritt-Chapman & Scott of New York for $29.5 million, with oversight by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. On October 29, 1952, the first concrete was poured for the foundation. Flooding washed out the temporary cofferdam three times in 1953, delaying work and causing damage to Nimbus Dam, under construction at the time.
Water storage in Folsom Lake began in February 1955, the final concrete in the main dam was poured on May 17, 1955. The first hydroelectric power was generated in September of that year. In order to acquire the necessary land in the future Folsom Lake bed, the government had to relocate families on 142 properties, including the settlements of Mormon Island and Salmon Falls. Before the dam was complete, it demonstrated its effectiveness as a flood control facility during the record storms of December 1955, which filled Folsom Lake in a matter of weeks, preventing $20 million of property damage; the dam was dedicated on May 5, 1956, operation was transferred to the Bureau of Reclamation on May 14. On the morning of July 17, 1995, the Folsom Dam power plant was shut down and Spillway Gate 3 was opened to maintain flows in the American River; as the gate was operated, a diagonal brace between the lowest and second lowest struts failed. The failure resulted in the uncontrolled release of nearly 40 percent of Folsom Lake and a flood of 40,000 cubic feet per second moving d
Central Valley Project
The Central Valley Project is a federal water management project in the U. S. state of California under the supervision of the United States Bureau of Reclamation. It was devised in 1933 in order to provide irrigation and municipal water to much of California's Central Valley—by regulating and storing water in reservoirs in the northern half of the state, transporting it to the water-poor San Joaquin Valley and its surroundings by means of a series of canals and pump plants, some shared with the California State Water Project. Many CVP water users are represented by the Central Valley Project Water Association. In addition to water storage and regulation, the system has a hydroelectric capacity of over 2,000 megawatts, provides recreation and flood control with its twenty dams and reservoirs, it has allowed major cities to grow along Valley rivers which would flood each spring, transformed the semi-arid desert environment of the San Joaquin Valley into productive farmland. Freshwater stored in Sacramento River reservoirs and released downriver during dry periods prevents salt water from intruding into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during high tide.
There are eight divisions of the project and ten corresponding units, many of which operate in conjunction, while others are independent of the rest of the network. California agriculture and related industries now directly account for 7% of the gross state product for which the CVP supplied water for about half. Many CVP operations have had considerable environmental consequences, including a decline in the salmon population of four major California rivers in the northern state, the reduction of riparian zones and wetlands. Many historical sites and Native American tribal lands have been flooded by CVP reservoirs. In addition, runoff from intensive irrigation has groundwater; the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, passed in 1992, intends to alleviate some of the problems associated with the CVP with programs like the Refuge Water Supply Program. In recent years, a combination of drought and regulatory decisions passed based on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 have forced Reclamation to turn off much of the water for the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in order to protect the fragile ecosystem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and keep alive the dwindling fish populations of Northern and Central California rivers.
In 2017 the Klamath and Trinity rivers witnessed the worst fall run Chinook salmon return in recorded history, leading to a disaster declaration in California and Oregon due to the loss of the commercial fisheries. The recreational fall Chinook salmon fishery in both the ocean and the Trinity and Klamath rivers was closed in 2017. Only 1,123 adult winter Chinook salmon returned to the Sacramento Valley in 2017, according to a report sent to the Pacific Fishery Management Council by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife; this is the second lowest number of returning adult winter run salmon since modern counting techniques were implemented in 2003. By comparison, over 117,000 winter Chinooks returned to spawn in 1969; the CVP stores about 13 million acre feet of water in 20 reservoirs in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the Klamath Mountains and the California Coast Ranges, passes about 7.4 million acre feet of water annually through its canals. Of the water transported, about 5 million acre feet goes to irrigate 3,000,000 acres of farmland, 600,000 acre feet supplies municipal uses, 800,000 acre feet is released into rivers and wetlands in order to comply with state and federal ecological standards.
Two large reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Trinity Lake, are formed by a pair of dams in the mountains north of the Sacramento Valley. Water from Shasta Lake flows into the Sacramento River which flows to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and water from Trinity Lake flows into the Trinity River which leads to the Pacific Ocean. Both lakes release water at controlled rates. There, before it can flow on to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, some of the water is intercepted by a diversion channel and transported to the Delta-Mendota Canal, which conveys water southwards through the San Joaquin Valley, supplying water to San Luis Reservoir and the San Joaquin River at Mendota Pool in the process reaching canals that irrigates farms in the valley. Friant Dam crosses the San Joaquin River upstream of Mendota Pool, diverting its water southwards into canals that travel into the Tulare Lake area of the San Joaquin Valley, as far south as the Kern River. New Melones Lake, a separate facility, stores water flow of a San Joaquin River tributary for use during dry periods.
Other smaller, independent facilities exist to provide water to local irrigation districts. Despite the rich soils and favorable weather of the 42,000-square-mile Central Valley, inhabitants of the valley who were unfamiliar with its natural rainfall patterns and started to practice intense irrigated agriculture on the arid land soon found themselves troubled by frequent floods in the Sacramento Valley and a general lack of water in the San Joaquin Valley; the Sacramento River, which drains the northern part, receives between 60–75% of the precipitation in the Valley, despite the Sacramento Valley covering less area than the much larger San Joaquin Valley, drained by the San Joaquin River, which receives only about 25% of the rainfall. Furthermore, cities drawing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta faced problems in dry summer and autumn months when the inflowing water was low. In order to continue to sustain the valley's
Inflow (hydrology)
In hydrology, the inflow of a body of water is the source of the water in the body of water. It can refer to the average volume of incoming water in unit time, it is contrasted with outflow. All bodies of water have multiple inflows, but one inflow may predominate and be the largest source of water. However, in many cases, no single inflow will predominate and there will be multiple primary inflows. For a lake, the inflow may be a river or stream that flows into the lake. Inflow may be speaking, not flows, but rather precipitation, like rain. Inflow can be used to refer to groundwater recharge; the dictionary definition of inflow at Wiktionary
Coho salmon
The coho salmon is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family, one of the several species of Pacific salmon. Coho salmon are known as silver salmon or "silvers"; the scientific species name is based on the Russian common name kizhuch. During their ocean phase, coho salmon have dark-blue backs. During their spawning phase, their jaws and teeth become hooked. After entering fresh water, they develop bright-red sides, bluish-green heads and backs, dark bellies and dark spots on their backs. Sexually maturing fish develop a light-pink or rose shading along the belly, the males may show a slight arching of the back. Mature adults have a pronounced red skin color with darker backs and average 28 inches and 7 to 11 pounds reaching up to 36 pounds, they develop a large kype during spawning. Mature females may be darker with both showing a pronounced hook on the nose; the eggs hatch in early spring after six to seven weeks in the redd. Once hatched, they remain immobile in the redd during the alevin life stage, which lasts for 6–7 weeks.
Alevin no longer have the protective egg shell, or chorion, rely on their yolk sacs for nourishment during growth. The alevin life stage is sensitive to aquatic and sedimental contaminants; when the yolk sac is resorbed, the alevin leaves the redd. Young coho spend one to two years in their freshwater natal streams spending the first winter in off-channel sloughs, before transforming to the smolt stage. Smolts are 100–150 mm and as their parr marks fade and the adult's characteristic silver scales start to dominate. Smolts migrate to the ocean from late March through July; some fish leave fresh water in the spring, spend summer in brackish estuarine ponds, return to fresh water in the fall. Coho salmon live in salt water for one to three years before returning to spawn; some precocious males, known as "jacks", return as two-year-old spawners. Spawning males develop kypes, which are hooked snouts and large teeth; the traditional range of the coho salmon runs along both sides of the North Pacific Ocean, from Hokkaidō, Japan and eastern Russia, around the Bering Sea to mainland Alaska, south to Monterey Bay, California.
Coho salmon have been introduced in all the Great Lakes, as well as many landlocked reservoirs throughout the United States. A number of specimens, were caught in waters surrounding Denmark and Norway in 2017, their source is unknown, but the salmon species is farmed at several locations in Europe, making it probable that the animal has slipped the net at such a farm. The total North Pacific harvest of coho salmon in 2010 exceeded 6.3 million fish, of which 4.5 million were taken in the United States and 1.7 million in Russia. This corresponds to some 21,000 tonnes in all. Coho salmon are the backbone of the Alaskan troll fishery. Coho salmon average 3.5 % by 5.9 % by weight of the annual Alaska salmon harvest. The total North Pacific yields of the pink salmon, chum salmon and sockeye salmon are some 10–20 fold larger by weight. In North America, coho salmon is a game fish in fresh and salt water from July to December with light fishing tackle, it is one of the most popular sport fish in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada.
Its popularity is due in part to the reckless abandon which it displays chasing bait and lure while in salt water, the large number of coastal streams it ascends during its spawning runs. Its habit of schooling in shallow water, near beaches, makes it accessible to anglers on the banks, as well as in boats. Ocean-caught coho is regarded as excellent table fare, it has a moderate to high amount of fat, considered to be essential when judging taste. Only spring chinook and sockeye salmon have higher levels of fat in their meat. Due to the lower fat content of coho, when smoking, it is best to use a cold-smoking rather than hot-smoking process. Coho, along with other species, has been a staple in the diet of several indigenous peoples, who would use it to trade with other tribes farther inland; the coho salmon is a symbol of several tribes, representing life and sustenance. In their freshwater stages, coho feed on plankton and insects switch to a diet of small fish upon entering the ocean as adults.
Spawning habitats are small. Salmonid species on the west coast of the United States have experienced dramatic declines in abundance during the past several decades as a result of human-induced and natural factors; the U. S. National Marine Fisheries Service has identified seven populations, called Evolutionary Significant Units, of coho salmon in Washington and California. Four of these ESUs are listed under the U. S. Endangered Species Act; these are the Lower Columbia River, Oregon Coast, Southern Oregon and Northern California Coasts, Central California Coast. The long-term trend for the listed populations is still downward, though there was one recent good year with an increasing trend in 2001; the Puget Sound/Strait of Georgia ESU in Washington is an NMFS "Species of Concern". Species of Concern are those species for which insufficient information prevents resolving the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's concerns regarding status and threats and whether to list the species under the ESA.
On May 6, 1997, NMFS, on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce, listed as threatened the Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast coho salmon ESU
Irrigation
Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals. Irrigation helps to grow agricultural crops, maintain landscapes, revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of less than average rainfall. Irrigation has other uses in crop production, including frost protection, suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. In contrast, agriculture that relies only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming. Irrigation systems are used for cooling livestock, dust suppression, disposal of sewage, in mining. Irrigation is studied together with drainage, the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given area. Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5,000 years and is the product of many cultures, it was the basis for economies and societies across the globe, from Asia to the Southwestern United States. Archaeological investigation has found evidence of irrigation in areas lacking sufficient natural rainfall to support crops for rainfed agriculture.
The earliest known use of the technology dates to the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan in the south-west of present-day Iran. Irrigation was used as a means of manipulation of water in the alluvial plains of the Indus valley civilization, the application of it is estimated to have begun around 4500 BC and drastically increased the size and prosperity of their agricultural settlements; the Indus Valley Civilization developed sophisticated irrigation and water-storage systems, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BCE, an early canal irrigation system from c. 2600 BCE. Large-scale agriculture was practiced, with an extensive network of canals used for the purpose of irrigation. Farmers in the Mesopotamian plain used irrigation from at least the third millennium BCE, they developed perennial irrigation watering crops throughout the growing season by coaxing water through a matrix of small channels formed in the field. Ancient Egyptians practiced basin irrigation using the flooding of the Nile to inundate land plots, surrounded by dykes.
The flood water remained until the fertile sediment had settled before the engineers returned the surplus to the watercourse. There is evidence of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet III in the twelfth dynasty using the natural lake of the Faiyum Oasis as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during dry seasons; the lake swelled annually from the flooding of the Nile. The Ancient Nubians developed a form of irrigation by using a waterwheel-like device called a sakia. Irrigation began in Nubia some time between the third and second millennia BCE, it depended upon the flood waters that would flow through the Nile River and other rivers in what is now the Sudan. In sub-Saharan Africa irrigation reached the Niger River region cultures and civilizations by the first or second millennium BCE and was based on wet-season flooding and water harvesting. Evidence of terrace irrigation occurs in pre-Columbian America, early Syria and China. In the Zana Valley of the Andes Mountains in Peru, archaeologists have found remains of three irrigation canals radiocarbon-dated from the 4th millennium BCE, the 3rd millennium BCE and the 9th century CE.
These canals provide the earliest record of irrigation in the New World. Traces of a canal dating from the 5th millennium BCE were found under the 4th-millennium canal. Ancient Persia used irrigation as far back as the 6th millennium BCE to grow barley in areas with insufficient natural rainfall; the Qanats, developed in ancient Persia about 800 BCE, are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today. They are now found in the Middle East and North Africa; the system comprises a network of vertical wells and sloping tunnels driven into the sides of cliffs and of steep hills to tap groundwater. The noria, a water wheel with clay pots around the rim powered by the flow of the stream, first came into use at about this time among Roman settlers in North Africa. By 150 BCE the pots were fitted with valves to allow smoother filling as they were forced into the water; the irrigation works of ancient Sri Lanka, the earliest dating from about 300 BCE in the reign of King Pandukabhaya, under continuous development for the next thousand years, were one of the most complex irrigation systems of the ancient world.
In addition to underground canals, the Sinhalese were the first to build artificial reservoirs to store water. These reservoirs and canal systems were used to irrigate paddy fields, which require a lot of water to cultivate. Most of these irrigation systems still exist undamaged up to now, in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, because of the advanced and precise engineering; the system was further extended during the reign of King Parakrama Bahu. The oldest known hydraulic engineers of China were Sunshu Ao of the Spring and Autumn period and Ximen Bao of the Warring States period, both of whom worked on large irrigation projects. In the Sichuan region belonging to the state of Qin of ancient China, the Dujiangyan Irrigation System devised by the Qin Chinese hydrologist and irrigation engineer Li Bing was built in 256 BCE to irrigate a vast area of farmland that today still supplies water. By the 2nd century AD, during the Han Dynasty, the Chinese used chain pumps which lifted water from a lower elevation to a higher one.
These were powered by manual foot-pedal, hydraulic waterwheels, or rotating mechanical wheels pulled by oxen. The water was used for public works, providing water for urban residential quarters and palace gardens, bu
Jurassic
The Jurassic period was a geologic period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era known as the Age of Reptiles; the start of the period was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. Two other extinction events occurred during the period: the Pliensbachian-Toarcian extinction in the Early Jurassic, the Tithonian event at the end; the Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations; the Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains within the European Alps, where limestone strata from the period were first identified. By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north, Gondwana to the south; this created more coastlines and shifted the continental climate from dry to humid, many of the arid deserts of the Triassic were replaced by lush rainforests.
On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated by both dinosauromorph and crocodylomorph archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, having evolved from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards, the evolution of therian mammals, including primitive placentals. Crocodilians made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic mode of life; the oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The chronostratigraphic term "Jurassic" is directly linked to the Jura Mountains, a mountain range following the course of the France–Switzerland border. During a tour of the region in 1795, Alexander von Humboldt recognized the limestone dominated mountain range of the Jura Mountains as a separate formation that had not been included in the established stratigraphic system defined by Abraham Gottlob Werner, he named it "Jura-Kalkstein" in 1799.
The name "Jura" is derived from the Celtic root *jor via Gaulish *iuris "wooded mountain", borrowed into Latin as a place name, evolved into Juria and Jura. The Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations known as Lias and Malm in Europe; the separation of the term Jurassic into three sections originated with Leopold von Buch. The faunal stages from youngest to oldest are: During the early Jurassic period, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana; the Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous period, when Gondwana itself rifted apart. The Tethys Sea closed, the Neotethys basin appeared. Climates were warm, with no evidence of a glacier having appeared; as in the Triassic, there was no land over either pole, no extensive ice caps existed.
The Jurassic geological record is good in western Europe, where extensive marine sequences indicate a time when much of that future landmass was submerged under shallow tropical seas. In contrast, the North American Jurassic record is the poorest of the Mesozoic, with few outcrops at the surface. Though the epicontinental Sundance Sea left marine deposits in parts of the northern plains of the United States and Canada during the late Jurassic, most exposed sediments from this period are continental, such as the alluvial deposits of the Morrison Formation; the Jurassic was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, invertebrate faunas with dominantly calcitic skeletons; the first of several massive batholiths were emplaced in the northern American cordillera beginning in the mid-Jurassic, marking the Nevadan orogeny. Important Jurassic exposures are found in Russia, South America, Japan and the United Kingdom.
In Africa, Early Jurassic strata are distributed in a similar fashion to Late Triassic beds, with more common outcrops in the south and less common fossil beds which are predominated by tracks to the north. As the Jurassic proceeded and more iconic groups of dinosaurs like sauropods and ornithopods proliferated in Africa. Middle Jurassic strata are neither well studied in Africa. Late Jurassic strata are poorly represented apart from the spectacular Tendaguru fauna in Tanzania; the Late Jurassic life of Tendaguru is similar to that found in western North America's Morrison Formation. During the Jurassic period, the primary vertebrates living in the sea were marine reptiles; the latter include ichthyosaurs, which were at the peak of their diversity, plesiosaurs and marine crocodiles of the families Teleosauridae and Metriorhynchidae. Numerous turtles could be found in rivers. In the invertebrate world, several new groups appeared, including rudists (a reef-formi
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprises the legislature of the United States. The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the Capitol, in Washington, D. C; the composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The Senate is composed of senators; each state, regardless of its population size, is represented by two senators who serve staggered terms of six years. There being at present 50 states in the Union, there are presently 100 senators. From 1789 until 1913, senators were appointed by legislatures of the states; as the upper chamber of Congress, the Senate has several powers of advice and consent which are unique to it. These include the approval of treaties, the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, flag officers, regulatory officials, other federal executive officials and other federal uniformed officers.
In addition to these, in cases wherein no candidate receives a majority of electors for Vice President, the duty falls to the Senate to elect one of the top two recipients of electors for that office. Furthermore, the Senate has the responsibility of conducting the trials of those impeached by the House; the Senate is considered both a more deliberative and more prestigious body than the House of Representatives due to its longer terms, smaller size, statewide constituencies, which led to a more collegial and less partisan atmosphere. The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice President of the United States, President of the Senate. In the Vice President's absence, the President Pro Tempore, customarily the senior member of the party holding a majority of seats, presides over the Senate. In the early 20th century, the practice of majority and minority parties electing their floor leaders began, although they are not constitutional officers; the drafters of the Constitution created a bicameral Congress as a compromise between those who felt that each state, since it was sovereign, should be represented, those who felt the legislature must directly represent the people, as the House of Commons did in Great Britain.
This idea of having one chamber represent people while the other gives equal representation to states regardless of population, was known as the Connecticut Compromise. There was a desire to have two Houses that could act as an internal check on each other. One was intended to be a "People's House" directly elected by the people, with short terms obliging the representatives to remain close to their constituents; the other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally; the Constitution provides that the approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation. First convened in 1789, the Senate of the United States was formed on the example of the ancient Roman Senate; the name is derived from Latin for council of elders. James Madison made the following comment about the Senate: In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure.
An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, to balance and check the other, they ought to be so constituted. The Senate, ought to be this body. Article Five of the Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state's consent; the District of Columbia and all other territories are not entitled to representation allowed to vote in either House of the Congress. The District of Columbia elects two "shadow U. S. Senators", but they are officials of the D. C. City Government and not members of the U. S. Senate; the United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959. The disparity between the most and least populous states has grown since the Connecticut Compromise, which granted each state two members of the Senate and at least one member of the House of Representatives, for a total minimum of three presidential electors, regardless of population.
In 1787, Virginia had ten times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has 70 times the population of Wyoming, based on the 1790 and 2000 censuses. This means some citizens are two orders of magnitude better represented in the Senate than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are proportionate to the population of each state, reducing the disparity of representation. Before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were elected by the individual state legislatures. Problems with repeated vacant seats due to the inability of a legislature to elect senators, intrastate political struggles, bribery and intimidation had led to a growing movement to amend the Constitution to allow for the direct election of senators; the party composition of the Senate during the 116th Congress: Art
