Madera Canal

The Madera Canal is a 35.9-mile (57.8 km) aqueduct in central California. It is part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project (CVP) and conveys water northward from Friant Dam (Millerton Lake) to augment irrigation in Madera County. Completed in 1945, the canal has an initial capacity of about 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) (28 m³/s), gradually decreasing to 625 cfs (17.7 m³/s) at its terminus at the Chowchilla River. In 1965, its headworks at Friant Dam were rebuilt to increase the peak delivery capacity to 1,250 cfs (35 m³/s). The Madera Canal supplies water to thousands of acres of farmland and remains a key component of the CVP’s Friant Division. It was also the subject of a United States Supreme Court case, Central Green Co. v. United States (2001), which addressed liability for flood-related damage along the canal.