Tulare

CORCORAN, Calif. —  Earlier this year, as floodwaters rushed toward the San Joaquin Valley city of Corcoran — home to roughly 20,000 people and a sprawling maximum-security state prison — emergency workers and desperate local officials begged the state for help raising their levee. Corcoran had been sinking, steadily, for years because of persistent overpumping of groundwater by major landowners in the Tulare Lake Basin that has sent the valley floor into a slow-motion collapse. And the levee raises made in 2017 — a…

TULARE LAKE BASIN, Calif. —  In the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, last winter’s torrential storms revived an ancient body of water drained and dredged decades ago, its clay lakebed transformed into a powerhouse of industrial agriculture.Rivers swollen with biblical amounts of rainfall overwhelmed the network of levees and irrigation canals that weave through the basin diverting water for farm and livestock use. Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, was reborn, swallowing…

LEMOORE, Calif. —  When Leo Sisco was growing up on his tribe’s reservation, he heard elders’ stories about the great lake that once sustained their people, and how it was drained and taken away from them.This year, Sisco has been witnessing a remarkable transformation as Tulare Lake has reappeared on low-lying farmland near the reservation.The chairman of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe has been noticing the water is attracting many birds, and he has been coming regularly to the lakeshore to offer prayers…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The risk of catastrophic flooding in the Tulare Lake Basin has diminished as cool temperatures have predominated this spring, flattening the melt curve of the Sierra's epic snowpack, state officials said Monday. We are "not forecasting nearly as severe of damage as perhaps we were looking at…

A once-mighty body of water is rising again in Central California. Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and was last full in 1878. It was mostly drained in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as its tributaries were dammed and diverted for agriculture.In recent weeks, after relentless storms, once-depleted rivers are roaring from the Sierra Nevada into the valley, spilling from canals and broken levees into fields as the phantom lake reemerges.These satellite images from NASA…

KETTLEMAN CITY, Calif.  —  Here at the western edge of the Tulare Lake Basin dwells a smelly industrial site the size of 150 football fields. Roughly eight times a day, its operations are replenished with a truckload of human waste from the residents of Los Angeles County.Since 2016, the Tulare Lake Compost facility has been converting Southland sewage sludge into high-grade organic fertilizer, and sparing L.A. County the bother of burying its waste in local landfills.But as epic Sierra Nevada snowpack threatens to…

Hello, it’s Monday, April 3, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:TOP STORIES Acres of L.A. County sewage sludge threaten to contaminate Tulare Lake floodwatersAt the western edge of the Tulare Lake Basin dwells a smelly industrial site the size of 150 football fields. Roughly eight times a day, its operations are replenished with a truckload of human waste from the residents of Los Angeles County.Since 2016, the Tulare Lake Compost facility has been converting Southland sewage sludge into high-grade organic…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Sixth Avenue used to cut through miles of farmland. Now, the road has disappeared under muddy water, its path marked by sodden telephone poles that protrude from the swelling lake. Water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse that sits alongside the submerged route. Thousands of acres of cropland…

A winter of epic snow and rain had brought California’s “phantom lake” back to life — and threatened towns and farms in the process.Once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, Tulare Lake was largely drained in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the rivers that fed it were dammed and diverted for agriculture.This month, after powerful storms, rivers that dwindled during the drought are swollen with runoff from heavy rains and snow, and are flowing full from the Sierra Nevada into the valley,…

CORCORAN, Calif. —  Sixth Avenue used to cut through miles of farmland. Now, the road has disappeared under muddy water, its path marked by sodden telephone poles that protrude from the swelling lake. Water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse that sits alongside the submerged route. Thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated in this heavily farmed swath of the San Joaquin Valley. And the water just keeps rising.For the first time in decades, Tulare Lake is reappearing in the valley, reclaiming the…