Following is a complete list of the approximately 340 dams owned by the United States Bureau of Reclamation as of 2008. [1]
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The Bureau was established in July 1902 as the "United States Reclamation Service" and was renamed in 1923. The agency has operated in the 17 western states of the continental U.S., divided into five administrative regions. Within the United States Department of the Interior, it oversees water resource management, specifically the oversight and/or operation of numerous diversion, delivery, and storage projects it built throughout the western United States for irrigation, flood control, water supply, and attendant hydroelectric power generation.
Currently USBR is the largest wholesaler of water in the country, bringing water to more than 31 million people, and providing one in five Western farmers with irrigation water for 10 million acres of farmland, which produce 60% of the nation's vegetables and 25% of its fruits and nuts. USBR is also the second-largest producer of hydroelectric power in the western United States. [2]
All major dams are linked below. The National Inventory of Dams defines any "major dam" as being 50 feet (15 m) tall with a storage capacity of at least 5,000 acre-feet (6,200,000 m3), or of any height with a storage capacity of 25,000 acre-feet (31,000,000 m3). [3]
