Floodwaters rushing back to long

Jan 16, 2024

CORCORAN, Kings County — Beneath the big skies of California's San Joaquin Valley, on a rural stretch between Fresno and Bakersfield not far from Interstate 5, a vast lake once occupied what today is farm country.

Known as Tulare Lake, the freshwater body was said to be the largest west of the Mississippi River. Steamships trafficked its ports, elk and antelope visited its shores, and the distant Sierra Nevada peeked above its waters. By the 20th century, its eventual demise was underway, the inflows diverted and the land reclaimed for agriculture.

But this year, after one of the wettest winters in modern times, the storied Tulare Lake is re-emerging. The rivers and creeks that fed it have swelled with so much rain and snowmelt that they’re overwhelming the dams and levees designed to hold the water back. Already, a small inland sea has formed. When the wind picks up, there are even waves and whitecaps.

The stunning influx of water has set off what many fear is a slow-rolling crisis. Farmland is being submerged and roads and rural homes are going under. With heavy runoff from the mountains expected through spring, several low-lying communities in Kings and Tulare counties, if they haven't taken in water yet, remain at chronic risk of flooding.

Meanwhile, another chapter in California's water wars is unfolding: not the usual fight over trying to get water but instead over trying to get rid of it. Nobody wants to see the torrents directed at them. Additional tensions are flaring over why the area isn't better protected from flooding and why some of the most vulnerable populations are among the most threatened.

Above: Cecilio Garcia stopped near submerged farmland in the Corcoran area (Kings County) on Monday, opting to sleep in his truck rather than try to make it home on flooded roads. Top of page: A home sits in rising waters south of the Kings County community of Corcoran on Tuesday. Flooding in the southern San Joaquin Valley has revived the long dormant Tulare Lake.

"It's all kind of scary," said Josephine Arellano, owner of a party supply store in Corcoran, a small city that bills itself the "Farming Capital of California" and is home to many of the industry's laborers.

With floodwater rising on surrounding farms, Arellano is keeping an emergency go-bag alongside her inventory of piñatas and balloons. She also is having to deal with delayed candy deliveries to her shop and fewer customers because of impassable roads.

"The flooding is affecting everyone," Arellano said. "It's affecting businesses. It's affecting jobs in the field. And I don't know how long it will last."

A century and a half ago, Corcoran's 22,500 residents — a few thousand of whom are at the city's other big industry, the state prison — would have been at the bottom of Tulare Lake. A series of levees today prevents water from returning. The recent flooding, though, is testing these defenses.

"At this point, we feel like the city is doing reasonably well," said City Manager Greg Gatzka at his office at City Hall, previously a tortilla factory and tractor repair shop, where he has been monitoring the re-emerging lake. "But there's a lot of uncertainty with the snowmelt. If it becomes too much water, it's a whole different situation."

A water control valve sits in flooded farmland around Corcoran (Kings County) on Monday as water poured into the bed of the old Tulare Lake.

Before Tulare Lake began to dry up in the late 1800s, four major rivers carried their cold, free-running flows from the High Sierra to the valley floor.

No fewer than 40 native Yokut groups lived along the shores, using tule reeds to fashion homes, boats and baskets and fishing for salmon, clams and trout, according to Bill Black, a historian at the Sarah Mooney Museum in nearby Lemoore.

During wet years, the lake spanned nearly 1,000 square miles, more than four times the size of Lake Tahoe. It was fairly shallow, though, measuring maybe 50 feet at its deepest spot.

European settlers were drawn by the fertile earth. By the middle of the 19th century, farms were operating with irrigated lake water and agricultural communities were coming to life, a precursor to the giant cotton, tomato, alfalfa and pistachio operations today.

"There were about eight ports at the lake at one point, and a ferry," Black said. "There were all kinds of ducks and geese and tules around, and it was a real interesting (ride) for a Sunday outing."

But as farming continued, so did the de-watering of the lake, an effort that was supported by the state of California in the form of inexpensive land sales to those who agreed to help build levees and turn the sloughs to soil.

Decades later, the construction of upstream dams on the Kings, Kaweah, Tule and Kern rivers sealed the lake's fate. For the most part, anyway.

Every now and then, during times of extreme winter weather, the runoff from the mountains is too much for the modern water systems to handle, and the lake makes a reappearance. The last time the lake emerged in earnest was 1983, with a smaller showing in 1997.

But this year is different, and many say the flooding could be a lot more extensive than in the past.

For one, the floor of the valley has dropped in recent decades with increased groundwater pumping by farms, meaning more land might be subject to inundation, said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California.

And secondly, and perhaps more significantly, Mount noted, the amount of snow in the mountains is greater. The southern Sierra, which feeds the rivers that flow to the Tulare Lake basin, has nearly three times its average snowpack, likely the most in a century.

This past week, amid strong wind and rain, the fight to hold back floodwaters was on.

Across the basin, farmers, residents and municipal work crews reinforced levees, revved giant pumps to expel excess water and, if the prospects turned grim, evacuated equipment, livestock and even homes.

About 5 miles south of Corcoran, the mission was to save a large supply warehouse. Water was rising on three sides, and in one direction, it extended all the way to the horizon.

"They just told us, ‘Hey, build a berm around this place,’ " said Jose Delgadillo with Cordoza Co., a hired contractor, as he watched heavy machinery, including three scrapers, one excavator and a bulldozer, pile dirt around the building. "We’re basically making a 5-foot-high dam."

As the afternoon wore on and the water continued to rise, Delgadillo was determined to save the structure. He made the call to bring in outdoor commercial lights, so the work could continue into the night.

Behind the scenes, landowners have been in conversation, and sometimes dispute, with one another as well as with neighboring communities and government officials over where to direct the surge of floodwater.

With the reservoirs at the big upstream dams at near full capacity, water is being allowed to flow downstream, where the valley's grid of canals, pipes and ditches is overstretched and spilling. The surplus water inevitably moves toward the low point, the old Tulare Lake. Unlike many areas, this basin has no outflow to the sea.

A barn sits in flooded farmland after levee breaks caused extensive flooding around Corcoran (Kings County) on Tuesday.

J.G. Boswell Co., one of the biggest farm operators in the nation, owns the bulk of these lowlands, and its system of levees and canals, which normally help usher water to crops, is being used to push water out — at least away from the most valuable acreage.

The company has preemptively allowed some of its fields to flood, to keep other areas from going under, but last week Kings County officials said the business wasn't doing enough. The county Board of Supervisors, fearing water might overrun the city of Corcoran, ordered the company to cut a levee on the northern end of the lakebed and flood additional fields, an effort to relieve pressure on levee systems elsewhere.

Similar fights are taking place on the southern end of the lakebed.

Residents of the Tulare County outposts of Allensworth and Alpaugh, which are seeing high water circle their towns, want J.G. Boswell and other big landowners to do more to fend off the flooding. They say the dry farmland next door, not their neighborhoods, should absorb the excess flows.

"These are rural communities of color that are home to the people who grow and pick the produce of the Central Valley, and we’re bearing the brunt," said Dezaraye Bagalayos, director of program coordination for the Allensworth Progressive Association, a quasi-governmental agency that helps manage the unincorporated area. "This can't continue to happen. It's not acceptable for us to get flooded up."

A driver crosses the swollen Tule River near Corcoran (Kings County) on Tuesday.

Flood protection in California is largely a local affair, with water agencies, special districts and private companies building and maintaining the infrastructure. Smaller towns, like those in the San Joaquin Valley, often don't have the money to develop their own levee systems, and while the state and federal government help out, winning investment from them isn't easy.

The Tulare Lake basin also doesn't have major Army Corps of Engineers flood projects to buffer large amounts of water as do some areas such as the Sacramento region.

J.G. Boswell declined to take calls from The Chronicle to talk about how it's handling the mounting floodwaters. But a company representative, speaking to the Board of Supervisors last week, explained that it's trying to balance everyone's interests.

"We’ve been expending a lot of time and effort and thought process to try to deal with these flows the best we can," said Dominic Sween, a water engineer at the company.

Many of the firm's neighbors don't agree. But what the agriculture business and others do agree on is that the flooding won't stop soon and, in the weeks and months to come, there will be plenty more debate — and dissension — over what should be done to save homes, farms and potentially lives.

San Francisco Chronicle photographer Carlos Avila Gonzalez contributed to this story.

Reach Kurtis Alexander: [email protected]. Twitter: @kurtisalexander