by For a while last year, it was difficult to drive through a large swath of central California without running into the new shore of a long dormant lake.
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Resurrected for the first time in years by an epic deluge of winter rain and snow, by spring the lake covered more than 100,000 acres, stretching across cotton, tomato and pistachio fields and miles of roads.
Tulare Lake, or Pa’ashi as it is known to the Tachi Yokut Tribe, was back.
The view was amazing. Tulare Lake was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi before it was drained for agriculture in the 19th century. Although it has reappeared during other periods of wet weather, the lake has not been seen anywhere near this scale for 40 years.
His resurrection prompted an abundance of visitors and news coverage. Scientists and officials predicted the lake could remain for years to come, prompting panic among local farmers whose land was now flooded, and excitement from others who saw the lake as a fertile nature reserve and sacred site.
But today, such fears and hopes did not come out completely as expected. On a narrow and dusty back road in Kings county, California’s agricultural heartland, there are sprouts of grass and thick mud, but no signs of the body of water. Despite the predictions, the lake is almost gone.
Tulare Lake was reduced to just 2,625 acres, according to the King County emergency services office. Officials expect it to be “missing”, said Abraham Valencia, of the emergency services office, “which prevents unexpected snowmelt runoff and upstream flooding”. The lake covered private land, and now some farming is starting again, Nate Ferrier with the county sheriff’s office told a local news outlet.
“Tractors and trucks are moving around and fields are getting ready to grow crops again,” Ferrier said.
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Most Californians only knew of Tulare Lake from historical accounts. Before the endless rows of walnut trees, Pima cotton and hemp, turtles and beavers surrounded the lake and weed reeds surrounded it.
It has come up several times over the past century, including in 1998, and last winter’s most dramatic, when back-to-back atmospheric river storms swept through the state from December to March. The water overtook a normally dry landscape, covering acres and acres of crops – and for a time towns in the area were threatened and forced to evacuate thousands of cows, as well as roads and power lines.
Although the bay was a hardship for the agricultural industry and area workers, it attracted many people. Visitors flocked to new viewing points and road closure signs with drones, although officials warned them to stay away from the water, which was laden with irrigation hoses, manure and agricultural chemicals.
The scene that greeted them was blue as far as the eye could see, with wildlife returning to the area – fish swimming along sunken fence posts and birds darting around the shore.
“You’re driving along and the road doesn’t end — it’s just ducks under water,” said Vivian Underhill, a feminist environmental justice scholar who has studied the lake. “You see these nut trees just filled with water, ducks swimming in the shade of the almond trees. “You could see blackbirds, hawks, geese. You could hear fish splashing out of the water.”
By last summer, the lake covered an area around the edge of Lake Tahoe and was between 5 and 7 feet deep. The re-emergence was particularly important for the Tachi, who humbled the lake their ancestors depended on before settlers forced the tribe out of the area and drained it to make way for crops. . In their creation stories, the Tachi were made from the sediment at the bottom of the lake, Underhill said.
Members of the tribe grew up hearing stories of how the lake that supported the Tachi was taken from them, the Los Angeles Times reported. They hoped that the lake would remain in place rather than being drained to resume agriculture as before.
“I’m very happy the lake is back,” Leo Sisco, chairman of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe, told the newspaper last year. “It makes me proud to know that I get to experience it in this lifetime. My daughters, my grandson get to experience the lake, and the stories we heard when we were children, for us it comes true.”
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These days the crowds of eager tourists have dwindled, and the shore is becoming harder to find. On a recent drive through the central valley, I decided to try my best to see what was left of it.
On a sunny evening in late February, almost a year after his arrival, the most visible reminder of the lake was the road closure signs that are still in place across the county. They blocked long stretches of muddy roads leading to agricultural facilities.
The remains of Tulare Lake are located entirely on private land, far from where the public can see it. It quickly shrunk in size as local agencies moved water from the lake to nearby farmland. Evaporation also played a “major role”.
Pacific Gas and Electric, the area’s power utility, mounted a massive effort to recover its submerged equipment in the lake last year – using helicopters and dive teams in some cases. It has slowly begun to restore services to its customers in the area, which are mainly agricultural services, said Denny Boyles, the company’s spokesman.
It is estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost to the area’s agricultural industry as a result of its recurrence. Local officials have expressed gratitude that some farmers can resume work.
“Farming is the heart of life for Kings County. One out of every four jobs in this county is in agriculture, so it’s one of our biggest commodities,” Ferrier said.
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But this won’t be the last we hear of Tulare Lake. As the climate crisis exacerbates California’s wet and dry extremes, the lake will likely continue to return in wet years, Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis, wrote last year.
And allowing the lake to remain could have benefits by reducing groundwater and boosting wildlife in the area, Underhill said. The aquifer in the lake basin, land mainly owned by the agricultural giant JG Boswell Company, has been significantly depleted, causing land in the area to flood.
“Any attempts to make this anything other than a lake bed will ultimately play against the powers of the floodwater,” Underhill said. “We have a duty to leave it as it is because that is clearly where the water wants to go, and it will continue to go there.”
The lake is the natural state of this area, she said.
“It was a rich and kind ecosystem. It says something about how the birds, the fish, they are always waiting for the lake to return. And when it comes back they’re ready to go and be a part of it.”
