Northern water snake The belly also varies in color. It can be white, yellow, or gray. Usually it also has reddish or black crescents. The northern water snake is nonvenomous and harmless to humans, but superficially resembles the venomous cottonmouth and is often killed unnecessarily as a result of this mistaken identity. The two can be easily distinguished by morphological traits: the water snake has a longer, more slender body and a flattened head the same width as the neck, round pupils, and no heat-sensing pits. The cottonmouth has a fatter body, a wedge-shaped head with prominent venom glands that are wider than
Moccasin Dam its water is imported through the Hetch Hetchy Project pipelines. In order to protect the high-quality Hetch Hetchy water, local flows from Moccasin Creek are captured upstream and routed through a bypass system that discharges downstream of Moccasin Dam. The bypass includes a small hydroelectric plant with a capacity of 2.9 megawatts (MW). The main Moccasin Powerhouse is situated at the eastern (upstream) end of the reservoir, and consists of two units with a total capacity of 100 megawatts. In 2004, the powerhouse generated 391 million Kilowatt hours (KWh). In 2009, it generated 348 million KWh. Moccasin is the furthest