Kings County, California
Kings County is a county in the U. S. state of California. The population was 152,982 at the 2010 census; the California Department of Finance estimated the county's population was 151,662 as of January 1, 2018. The county seat is Hanford. Kings County comprises the Hanford-Corcoran, CA metropolitan statistical area, included in the Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, CA combined statistical area, it is in a rich agricultural region. The area was inhabited for thousands of years by American Indians including the Tachi Yokuts tribe, it was colonized by Spain and the United States. An 1805 expedition led by Spanish Army Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga recorded discovering the river, which they named El Rio de los Santos Reyes after the Three Wise Men of the Bible. At the time of the United States conquest of California in 1848, the new government changed the name to Kings River after which the county was named. In 1880, a dispute over land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad resulted in a bloody gun battle on a farm 5.6 mi northwest of Hanford.
This event became known as the Mussel Slough Tragedy. Kings County was formed in 1893 from the western part of Tulare County. In 1909, by an act of the state legislature, 208 square miles of Fresno County territory was added to the northwest portion of Kings County. Settlers reclaimed its wetlands for agricultural development. In surface area, it was the largest body of freshwater west of the Great Lakes, supported a large population of migratory birds as well as local birds and wildlife. Monoculture has reduced habitat for many species. In 1928, oil was discovered in the Kettleman Hills located in the southwestern part of Kings County; the Kettleman North Dome Oil Field became one of the most productive oil fields in the United States. In 1933 during the Great Depression, over 18,000 cotton pickers in the southern San Joaquin Valley migrant Mexican workers, went on strike. During the strike, 3,500 striking farm workers lived in a four-acre camp on the land of a small farmer on the outskirts of Corcoran.
The federal government intervened to force both sides to negotiate a settlement. Lemoore Army Airfield was established for training and defense during World War II. In 1961, the U. S. Navy opened NAS Lemoore 9 miles west of Lemoore, not far from the earlier site; the completion of the California Aqueduct in the early 1970s brought needed water for agriculture and domestic use to the west side of the county. Kingston Mussel Slough Tragedy El Adobe de los Robles Rancho built by Daniel Rhoads Vaca Adobe Cox & Clark Trading Post and Steamboat Landing Witt Site According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,392 square miles, of which 1,389 square miles is land and 2.1 square miles is water. Kings County is bordered on the north and northwest by Fresno County, on the east by Tulare County, on the south by Kern County and a small part of San Luis Obispo County and on the west by Monterey County. Most of the historic Tulare Lake was within Kings County. Although reclaimed for farming late in the 19th century, it was the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes.
The 2010 United States Census reported that Kings County had a population of 152,982. The census included inmates of the three men's state prisons. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there were 18,640 inmates in Kings County prisons on March 31, 2010, 12.2% of the population. The inmate population had been reduced to 13,894 on December 31, 2013; the racial makeup of Kings County was 83,027 White, 11,014 African American, 2,562 Native American, 5,620 Asian, 271 Pacific Islander, 42,996 from other races, 7,492 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 77,866 persons; the U. S. Census does not identify. However, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a report in July 2011, which estimated there were 9,000 illegal immigrants living in Kings County in 2008, which would be 5.8% of the county’s population. According to the California Board of State and Community Corrections, Kings County had the highest incarceration rate of California's 58 counties in 2014 at 1,384 per 100,000 population.
Statewide, the rate was 567 per 100,000. As of the 2000 census, there were 129,461 people, 34,418 households, 26,983 families residing in the county. However, the California Department of Finance estimates that the population had grown 154,434 as of January 1, 2008; the population density based on the 2000 census was 36/km². There were 36,563 housing units at an average density of 26 per square mile; the racial makeup of the county was 53.7% White, 8.3% Black or African American, 1.7% Native American, 3.1% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 28.3% from other races, 4.8% from two or more races. 43.6% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 7.1% were of Portuguese, 6.2% German, 5.3% Irish and 5.1% American ancestry according to Census 2000. 63.6% spoke English, 30.9% Spanish, 1.4% Tagalog, 1.4% Portuguese and 1.3% Samoan as their first language. There were 34,418 households out of which 46.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.0% were married couples living together, 14.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 21.6% were non-families.
17.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 6.8% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.18 and the average family size was 3.56. In the county, the population was spread out with 29.0% under the age of 18, 11.8% f
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Endorheic basin
An endorheic basin is a limited drainage basin that retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but converges instead into lakes or swamps, permanent or seasonal, that equilibrate through evaporation. Such a basin may be referred to as a closed or terminal basin or as an internal drainage system or interior drainage basin. Endorheic regions, in contrast to exorheic regions, which flow to the ocean in geologically defined patterns, are closed hydrologic systems, their surface waters drain to inland terminal locations where the water evaporates or seeps into the ground, having no access to discharge into the sea. Endorheic water bodies include some of the largest lakes in the world, such as the Caspian Sea, the world's largest saline inland sea. Endorheic basins constitute local base levels, defining a limit of erosion and deposition processes of nearby areas; the term comes from the Ancient Greek: ἔνδον, éndon, "within" and ῥεῖν, rheîn, "to flow".
Endorheic lakes are bodies of water. Most of the water falling on Earth finds its way to the oceans through a network of rivers and wetlands. However, there is a class of water bodies that are located in closed or endorheic watersheds where the topography prevents their drainage to the oceans; these endorheic watersheds are called terminal lakes or sink lakes. Endorheic lakes are in the interior of a landmass, far from an ocean in areas of low rainfall, their watersheds are confined by natural geologic land formations such as a mountain range, cutting off water egress to the ocean. The inland water flows into dry watersheds where the water evaporates, leaving a high concentration of minerals and other inflow erosion products. Over time this input of erosion products can cause the endorheic lake to become saline. Since the main outflow pathways of these lakes are chiefly through evaporation and seepage, endorheic lakes are more sensitive to environmental pollutant inputs than water bodies that have access to oceans, as pollution can be trapped in them and accumulate over time.
Endorheic regions can occur in any climate but are most found in desert locations. In areas where rainfall is higher, riparian erosion will carve drainage channels, or cause the water level in the terminal lake to rise until it finds an outlet, breaking the enclosed endorheic hydrological system's geographical barrier and opening it to the surrounding terrain; the Black Sea was such a lake, having once been an independent hydrological system before the Mediterranean Sea broke through the terrain separating the two. Lake Bonneville was another such lake; the Malheur/Harney lake system in Oregon is cut off from drainage to the ocean, but has an outflow channel to the Malheur River, dry, but flows in years of peak precipitation. Examples of humid regions in endorheic basins exist at high elevation; these regions are subject to substantial flooding in wet years. The area containing Mexico City is one such case, with annual precipitation of 850 mm and characterized by waterlogged soils that require draining.
Endorheic regions tend to be far inland with their boundaries defined by mountains or other geological features that block their access to oceans. Since the inflowing water can evacuate only through seepage or evaporation, dried minerals or other products collect in the basin making the water saline and making the basin vulnerable to pollution. Continents vary in their concentration of endorheic regions due to conditions of geography and climate. Australia has the highest percentage of endorheic regions at 21 percent while North America has the least at five percent. 18 percent of the earth's land drains to endorheic lakes or seas, the largest of these land areas being the interior of Asia. In deserts, water inflow is low and loss to solar evaporation high, drastically reducing the formation of complete drainage systems. Closed water flow areas lead to the concentration of salts and other minerals in the basin. Minerals leached from the surrounding rocks are deposited in the basin, left behind when the water evaporates.
Thus endorheic basins contain extensive salt pans. These areas tend to be large, flat hardened surfaces and are sometimes used for aviation runways or land speed record attempts, because of their extensive areas of level terrain. Both permanent and seasonal endorheic lakes can form in endorheic basins; some endorheic basins are stable, climate change having reduced precipitation to the degree that a lake no longer forms. Most permanent endorheic lakes change size and shape over time becoming much smaller or breaking into several smaller parts during the dry season; as humans have expanded into uninhabitable desert areas, the river systems that feed many endorheic lakes have been altered by the construction of dams and aqueducts. As a result, many endorheic lakes in developed or developing countries have contracted resulting in increased salinity, higher concentrations of pollutants, the disruption of ecosystems. Within exorheic basins, there can be "non-contributing", low-lying areas that trap runoff and prevent it from contributing to flows downstream during years of average or below-average runoff.
In flat river basins, non-contributing areas can be a large fraction of the river
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
Naval Air Station Alameda
Naval Air Station Alameda was a United States Navy Naval Air Station in Alameda, California, on San Francisco Bay. NAS Alameda had two runways: 07-25 and 13–31. Two helicopter pads and a control tower were part of the facilities. In 1927, wetlands at the west end of Alameda Island on the east shore of San Francisco Bay were filled to form an airport with an east/west runway, three hangars, an administration building, a yacht harbor; the airport site included the Alameda Terminal of the First Transcontinental Railroad. By 1930, United States Army Air Corps operations referred to the site as Benton Field. Pan American World Airways used the yacht harbor as the California terminal for China Clipper trans-Pacific flights beginning in 1935; the China Clipper terminal is designated California Historical Landmark #968. On 1 June 1936, the city of Alameda, California ceded the airport to the United States government a few months before the Army discontinued operations from the field. Pan American World Airways shifted its terminal to Treasure Island in 1939 for the Golden Gate International Exposition.
Congressional appropriations passed in 1938 for construction of naval air station facilities for two carrier air wings, five seaplane squadrons and two utility squadrons. Appropriations were increased in 1940 for construction of two seaplane hangars and an aircraft carrier berthing pier, naval operations began on 1 November 1940. Fleet Air Wing 8 began scouting missions following the attack on Pearl Harbor. In April 1942, the USS Hornet loaded at Alameda the 16 B-25 aircraft that would take part in the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Air support training unit No. 2 at Alameda included the fleet radar operator's school, Link celestial navigation Trainer school, aviation storekeeper school. As World War II continued, Alameda became headquarters for a system of auxiliary airfields: Arcata Auxiliary Airfield Clear Lake Outlying Field Concord Outlying Field Crescent City Outlying Field Crows Landing Naval Auxiliary Air Station Fallon Auxiliary Airfield Half Moon Bay Outlying Field Hollister Auxiliary Airfield King City Auxiliary Airfield Livermore Auxiliary Airfield Monterey Auxiliary Airfield Oakland Auxiliary Airfield Paso Robles Outlying Field San Francisco Auxiliary Airfield San Luis Obispo Outlying Field Santa Rosa Outlying Field Treasure Island Auxiliary Airfield Tulare Lake Outlying Field Vernalis Auxiliary Airfield Watsonville Auxiliary AirfieldAlameda remained an important naval base through the Cold War.
From 1949 to 1953, the Navy based the Lockheed R6V Constitution—the largest airplane listed on the Navy inventory—at NAS Alameda. The two prototypes flew between nearby NAS Moffett Field and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. During the Vietnam War portion of the Cold War and its post-Vietnam era, the base was homeport to the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea ), USS Enterprise and USS Carl Vinson. NAS Alameda housed a major aircraft overhaul facility employing thousand of civilian employees, known as Naval Air Rework Facility Alameda and renamed Naval Aviation Depot Alameda; the base was the focus for northern California Naval Air Reserve operations after 1961, hosting various Reserve Force Squadrons attached to Carrier Air Wing Reserve 30 known as CAG-30, equipped with aircraft such as the C-9 Skytrain II, KA-3 Skywarrior, A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair II, MH-53E Sea Dragon, SH-3 Sea King, A-4 Skyhawk, Sikorsky H-34 Sea Horse, CH-53 Sea Stallion, P-2 Neptune. Runways were lengthened for jet aircraft, the airfield was renamed Nimitz Field in 1967 following the death of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
The base was closed in 1997 pursuant to BRAC action. Its runways were closed and the airfield was not reutilized as a civilian airport. After the base closed on 25 April 1997, the USS Hornet was given to the former air station to be used as a museum ship, the USS Hornet Museum; the television series MythBusters conducted vehicle-based experiments on the grounds of the station, due to the extensive safety zone that could be set up around the test site. For the same reason, this location has been used as a checkpoint for the Bullrun rally race. A two-mile freeway loop was constructed on the base for the filming of a lengthy car chase sequence for the movie The Matrix Reloaded; the loop cost over $1.5 million to construct and was used for shooting the film's chase scenes before it was demolished. The route is still visible on some aerial photography on the former 13/31 runways. Since 2000, the city of Alameda has been planning the redevelopment of the former Naval Air Station, now known as Alameda Point.
Complicating the redevelopment are several constraints: land-use constraints consisting of Tidelands Trust. In August 2001, Alameda selected Alameda Point Community Partners as the master developer for the property. APCP was a partnership of financier Morgan Stanley, Shea Homes of Livermore, Centex Homes of Dallas and the Industrial Realty Group; the development was estimated to take 15 years to complete. Alameda Point Community Partners was selected over Catellus and Harbor Bay/Lennar, signed a two-year exclusive negotiating contract as the property's mas
Reservoir
A reservoir is, most an enlarged natural or artificial lake, pond or impoundment created using a dam or lock to store water. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of water, interrupting a watercourse to form an embayment within it, through excavation, or building any number of retaining walls or levees. Defined as a storage space for fluids, reservoirs may hold gasses, including hydrocarbons. Tank reservoirs elevated, or buried tanks. Tank reservoirs for water are called cisterns. Most underground reservoirs are used to store liquids, principally either water or petroleum, below ground. Reservoir is most an enlarged natural or artificial lake. A dam constructed in a valley relies on the natural topography to provide most of the basin of the reservoir. Dams are located at a narrow part of a valley downstream of a natural basin; the valley sides act as natural walls, with the dam located at the narrowest practical point to provide strength and the lowest cost of construction.
In many reservoir construction projects, people have to be moved and re-housed, historical artifacts moved or rare environments relocated. Examples include the temples of Abu Simbel, the relocation of the village of Capel Celyn during the construction of Llyn Celyn, the relocation of Borgo San Pietro of Petrella Salto during the construction of Lake Salto. Construction of a reservoir in a valley will need the river to be diverted during part of the build through a temporary tunnel or by-pass channel. In hilly regions, reservoirs are constructed by enlarging existing lakes. Sometimes in such reservoirs, the new top water level exceeds the watershed height on one or more of the feeder streams such as at Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales. In such cases additional side dams are required to contain the reservoir. Where the topography is poorly suited to a single large reservoir, a number of smaller reservoirs may be constructed in a chain, as in the River Taff valley where the Llwyn-on, Cantref and Beacons Reservoirs form a chain up the valley.
Coastal reservoirs are fresh water storage reservoirs located on the sea coast near the river mouth to store the flood water of a river. As the land based reservoir construction is fraught with substantial land submergence, coastal reservoir is preferred economically and technically since it does not use scarce land area. Many coastal reservoirs were constructed in Europe. Saemanguem in South Korea, Marina Barrage in Singapore and Plover Cove in China, etc are few existing coastal reservoirs. Where water is pumped or siphoned from a river of variable quality or size, bank-side reservoirs may be built to store the water; such reservoirs are formed by excavation and by building a complete encircling bund or embankment, which may exceed 6 km in circumference. Both the floor of the reservoir and the bund must have an impermeable lining or core: these were made of puddled clay, but this has been superseded by the modern use of rolled clay; the water stored in such reservoirs may stay there for several months, during which time normal biological processes may reduce many contaminants and eliminate any turbidity.
The use of bank-side reservoirs allows water abstraction to be stopped for some time, when the river is unacceptably polluted or when flow conditions are low due to drought. The London water supply system is one example of the use of bank-side storage: the water is taken from the River Thames and River Lee. Service reservoirs store treated potable water close to the point of distribution. Many service reservoirs are constructed as water towers as elevated structures on concrete pillars where the landscape is flat. Other service reservoirs can be entirely underground in more hilly or mountainous country. In the United Kingdom, Thames Water has many underground reservoirs, sometimes called cisterns, built in the 1800s, most of which are lined with brick. A good example is the Honor Oak Reservoir in London, constructed between 1901 and 1909; when it was completed it was said to be the largest brick built underground reservoir in the world and it is still one of the largest in Europe. This reservoir now forms part of the southern extension of the Thames Water Ring Main.
The top of the reservoir is now used by the Aquarius Golf Club. Service reservoirs perform several functions, including ensuring sufficient head of water in the water distribution system and providing water capacity to out peak demand from consumers, enabling the treatment plant to run at optimum efficiency. Large service reservoirs can be managed to reduce the cost of pumping, by refilling the reservoir at times of day when energy costs are low. Circa 3 000 BC, the craters of extinct volcanoes in Arabia were used as reservoirs by farmers for their irrigation water. Dry climate and water scarcity in India led to early development of stepwells and water resource management techniques, including the building of a reservoir at Girnar in 3000 BC. Artificial lakes dating to the 5th century BC have been found in ancient Greece; the artificial Bhojsagar lake in present-day Madhya Pradesh state of India, constructed in the 11th century, covered 650 square kilometres. In Sri Lanka large reservoirs were created by ancient Sinhalese kings in order to save the water for irrigation.
The famous Sri Lankan king Pa
