A vast lake has captivated California where farms stood a year ago
It sounds like the sea and approximates the size of Lake Tahoe. The wind-driven waves are unexpectedly silky smooth and warm. Tulare Lake seems to go on forever on the immense brown and green expanse of California’s Central Valley, shimmering like a great blue mirage.
Three months have passed since the lake, which dates back to the Ice Age, re-emerged in the basin that once contained the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi River. Dammed dry by humans, it has regularly tried to bounce back, though rarely with the strength seen after this winter’s storms.
First a trickle, then a flood, the water that poured into the bottom of the lake over a handful of months swallowed up one of the country’s largest and most valuable tracts of cropland in about the time it takes to grow a tomato. renovate. Thirty square miles, then 50. Then 100. Then more.
Now, at the beginning of summer, Lake Tulare sits on an area of about 160 square miles, trapped by thousands of acres of clay soil and the lack of a natural outlet, so large as to be the best tracked by satellites. Originally caused by climate-enhanced rainfall over the watersheds that flow through the Sierra Nevada, it is fed by the melting snow pack that has built up in the mountains to near record levels.
Detours and roadblocks cover the banks. Chemicals, manure and diesel pollute it. Palm trees and power poles protrude from the surface. Day brings dragonflies. Dusk brings mosquitoes. Flocks of birds settle in – swallows, wrens, ducks, egrets, chattering red-winged blackbirds.
Algae bobbing on the waves; below, in the tomato and cotton fields that make up most of the lake bed, abandoned cars rust and catfish lurk.
“I’ve never seen anything this size before,” Jeffrey Coughlin, an airboat pilot, said on a recent weekday as he floated his bayou-style craft over the debris-filled water. “The devastation that has hit some of these poor people, farms, homes.”
State water engineers have used virtually every trick in California’s considerable playbook to conserve as much of that water as possible and divert it elsewhere. Models suggest that the lake’s growth has finally peaked.
But the phenomenon that remains promises to be a formidable long-term guest in California farmland. Mr. Coughlin, who normally works in San Francisco Bay, some 230 miles northwest, has been transporting crews from the Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which has painstakingly removed submerged electrical transformers from the bottom of the lake. With him recently was a member of the Kings County Sheriff’s Office, which is buying its own airboat because of Tulare Lake’s resurgence.
“It’s much bigger than I expected,” marveled Sgt. Nate Ferrier, who, like most people in the region, hadn’t ventured far beyond the coastline. Like most law enforcement officials, in recent months he has been telling the public to stay off the lake and to respect “Do Not Enter” warnings.
Most have obeyed, he said, but it’s not easy. Tulare Lake has been a hazard and an economic disaster for many farmers, said Sgt. said Ferrier. But in some ways, he added, it’s also “damn cool.”
Tulare Lake selfies for example, have become a genre – couples watching the sunset, adventurous souls wading into the poisonous waters. Some have tried to drive through it, to eventually swim to shore or be rescued. A bunch of journalists recently kayaked across to see if they could paddle their way from Bakersfield to San Francisco Bay.
About 2.5 million acre-feet of snowwater remain frozen and ready to melt in the Kern, Tule, Kaweah and Kings rivers, which feed the watershed. The size of the lake depends on how fast the melting snow rushes down and how much can be drained elsewhere.
Water is already collected by reservoirs before it reaches the bottom of the lake. Part is transferred to irrigate farms and orchards. Some of it is moved to places where it can seep into the ground, gradually replenishing groundwater that has been depleted by drought and over-pumping in recent years. Some evaporate.
And for the first time since 2006, tens of thousands of acres of Kern River water have been channeled into the California Aqueduct to support water supplies for Los Angeles and other cities.
Fortunately, the Tulare Lake area is not densely populated. Most of the land in the bottom of the lake is agricultural and owned by large farms. The largest community in the immediate watershed, Corcoran has worked with provincial, state and federal agencies to strengthen surrounding levees that protect its population of approximately 22,500. In late May, state officials said Corcoran and two smaller communities, Allensworth and Alpaugh, appeared to be out of danger.
Now comes the hard part: History and science suggest it will take two years, if not longer, for the lake to fully recede. Current efforts have helped, but meteorologists say next winter could be wet again.
Corcoran city manager Greg Gatzka said the area’s large farms have so far avoided significant layoffs by employing workers in less-affected parts of their operations and that local schools offered distance learning to the few students whose families had to move.
The local economy, he said, diversified after 1983, when the lake once again played an important role. The loss of jobs and population then helped build the California State Prison, Corcoran, which opened in 1988.
Some issues have not been resolved on their own: Disputes have arisen over the order in which land is allowed to flood and whether some farms are putting their financial interests above the safety of the community. There have also been concerns about the damage that could have been avoided if there had been large landowners more receptive to cooperate with state and local governments on flood control.
But according to authorities, the situation has turned: Tulare Lake is now officially what is becoming a giant prehistoric lake after the chaos it unleashed.
“It’s starting to become a longer-term event,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “What you see there will be a fact of life for a while.”
Mark Abrahamson reporting contributed.