California Reclamation Districts are legal subdivisions within California's Central Valley that are responsible for managing and maintaining the levees, fresh water channels, or sloughs (pronounced slü),[1] canals, pumps, and other flood protection structures in the area.
The reclamation districts were created by acts of State Legislature, mostly in the early 1900s in order to allow land to be used for agriculture.
The levees also enabled large amounts of silt runoff from gold mining to be channeled all the way out to the San Francisco Bay area, even at water levels that would normally flood the banks and therefore move too slowly for sediment transport.
Most of the structures were built as part of the Central Valley Project authorized by congress in 1917 and ultimately finished in 1960 by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
There are about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) of project levees as well as many pumps, canals, sloughs, bypasses and other flood protection structures which became the responsibility of the State of California in 1960.