Arguing Over the Inevitable

People are arguing about how to manage the reappearance of Tulare Lake as the snow starts to melt, but there's a "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" character about the disagreements. As Led Zeppelin sang in their version of "When the Levee Breaks":

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good 

No, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good 

When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move, ooh

In previous flood years, Grewal said, levees were typically cut open in an agreed-upon order, sending water from one enclosed “cell” to another, and filling the lake bottom in an orchestrated way. This time, he said, there have been delayed responses and more levee breaches than in the past.

“The flood isn’t being handled properly,” said Grewal, noting he works with one grower who has 2,400 acres of pistachio trees choking underwater. “It’s a mess, because there are breaks everywhere.” In one mysterious incident, Jack Mitchell of the area’s Deer Creek Flood Control District alleged that someone had intentionally cut open a levee with a backhoe in the dark of night. He says he knows who did it, but the report hasn’t prompted an investigation. 

Elsewhere, Mitchell said, the Boswell company at one point used a massive piece of equipment as a barrier, keeping Mitchell’s crew from cutting into a levee to send water flowing toward the basin bottom and away from towns. 

“It’s silly the way they’re doing it,” he said at the time. “It wants to go to the lake, and they won’t let it go.” 

The Kings County Board of Supervisors stepped in to settle the dispute, ordering Boswell’s managers to cut a levee and send water toward the lake bottom — and into their fields and those of other growers — rather than trying to pump the water up to higher elevation areas. 

“They weren’t really happy with me,” said Supervisor Doug Verboon. “To have someone come and tell them what they have to do is not good for them. But what it did was, it opened a line of communication. So now we’re speaking to each other and sharing ideas.” 

…Over the years, the company has built levees on the old lakebed bottom to control floodwaters. “The idea is that you want to flood the least amount of acres the highest you can to minimize losses,” Grewal said. Local responsibility for flood control in the basin is split among about a dozen reclamation districts, which are controlled by landowners. State officials have visited the area to discuss response efforts. Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth told the news website SJV Water that she and her team are assessing the state’s authority to intervene, if needed, to help “deal with the challenges we’ve already seen emerging in the last 10 days.” 

Verboon said one issue that has complicated matters is bad blood between the Boswell company and John Vidovich, who also owns vast acreage in the basin. Their disputes, some rooted in disagreements over water rights, have led to litigation, and Verboon said they have refused to talk to each other. 

“We all pay the price when they’re fighting,” Verboon said. But he said he anticipates the flooding, which is set to worsen in the coming weeks, could spur the two camps to “work together to move this water out of here.” During the 1983 floods, Grewal said, a decision was made to take a large portion of the water that was rushing in and divert it to Southern California cities. “They pumped a million acre-feet to L.A. that would have gone to the lake,” he said. “Boswell paid for that, just to dewater the lake faster.”