Home Care In Lakeside, CA

Tulare Lake re-emerged after intense storms battered the state this winter, and will likely remain in the Central Valley for months — and maybe years — to come.

By Shawn Hubler

Photographs by Mark Abramson

Reporting from the shoreline of Tulare Lake in California

June 25, 2023

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It sounds like the sea and approaches the size of Lake Tahoe. Its wind-driven waves are unexpectedly silky and warm. Tulare Lake seems to go on forever on the immense brown and green flat of California’s Central Valley, shimmering like a great blue mirage.

Three months have passed since the lake, which dates to the Ice Age, re-emerged in the basin that once held the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. Dammed dry by humans, it has periodically attempted a comeback, though rarely with the force seen after this winter’s storms.

First a trickle, then a flood, the water that coursed into the lake bed over a handful of months swallowed one of the nation’s largest and most valuable stretches of cropland in about the time it takes to grow a tomato. Thirty square miles, then 50. Then 100. Then more.

Flooding data via Floodbase, U.S. Census Bureau, USACE

Leanne Abraham

Now, at the onset of summer, Tulare Lake sits at about 168 square miles, trapped by thousands of acres of clay soil and the lack of a natural outlet, so big that it is best tracked by satellites. Caused initially by climate-amplified sheets of rain over the riversheds coursing through the Sierra Nevada, it is being fed by the melting snowpack that piled up in the mountains to near-record levels.

Detours and roadblocks bedeck its shores. Chemicals, manure and diesel pollute it. Palm trees and power poles poke from its surface. Day brings dragonflies. Dusk brings mosquitoes. Flocks of birds are settling in — swallows, wrens, ducks, egrets, chattering red-winged blackbirds.

Algae bobs on the waves; underneath, on the tomato and cotton fields that make up most of the lake bottom, abandoned cars rust and catfish lurk.

“I’ve never seen something of this magnitude,” Jeffrey Coughlin, an airboat pilot, said on a recent weekday, threading his bayou-style craft across the debris-filled water. “The devastation that’s affected some of these poor people, farms, homes.”

State water engineers have used virtually every trick in California’s considerable playbook to preserve as much of that water as possible and divert it elsewhere. Models suggest the lake’s growth has finally topped out.

But the phenomenon that remains is promising to be a formidable long-term guest in California farm country. Mr. Coughlin, who normally works in the San Francisco Bay about 230 miles northwest, has been ferrying crews from the Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which has been painstakingly removing sunken electrical transformers from the lake bed. With him on a recent day was a member of the Kings County Sheriff’s Office, which, because of Tulare Lake’s resurrection, is buying its own airboat.

“It’s a lot bigger than I anticipated,” marveled Sgt. Nate Ferrier, who, like most people in the region, had not yet ventured much beyond the shoreline. Like most law enforcement, he has spent the past several months telling the public to stay off the lake and respect the “Do Not Enter” warnings.

Most have obeyed, he said, but it isn’t easy. Tulare Lake has been a hazard and, for many farmers, an economic disaster, Sgt. Ferrier said. But in some respects, he added, it also is “freaking cool.”

Tulare Lake selfies have become a genre, for instance — couples watching the sun set, adventurous souls wading out into the toxic water. Some have tried driving through it, only to end up swimming to shore or having to be rescued. A pair of journalists recently kayaked across to see if they could paddle their way from Bakersfield to the San Francisco Bay.

Some 2.5 million acre-feet of snow water remains frozen and ready to melt into the Kern, Tule, Kaweah and Kings rivers, which feed the basin. The size of the lake depends on how fast the snowmelt races down and how much can be channeled somewhere else.

Water is already being captured by reservoirs before it reaches the lake bed. Some is being siphoned off to irrigate farms and orchards. Some is being moved to spots where it can percolate into the ground, gradually replenishing groundwater that was depleted in recent years by drought and excessive pumping. Some evaporates.

And, for the first time since 2006, tens of thousands of acre feet of water from the Kern River have been diverted via a canal to the California Aqueduct to buttress water supplies for Los Angeles and other cities.

Fortunately, the Tulare Lake area isn’t heavily populated. Most of the land in the lake bed is agricultural and owned by huge farming operations. The biggest community in the immediate basin, Corcoran, has worked with county, state and federal agencies to shore up surrounding levees that protect its population of about 22,500. In late May, state officials said that Corcoran and two smaller communities, Allensworth and Alpaugh, appeared to be out of harm’s way.

Now comes the hard part: History and science suggest it will take two years, and maybe longer, for the lake to fully recede. Current efforts have helped, but meteorologists say the coming winter could be wet again.

The Corcoran city manager, Greg Gatzka, said that the area’s large farms have so far avoided significant layoffs by offering employees work in less impacted parts of their operations and that the local schools offered remote instruction to the few students whose families had to relocate.

The local economy, he said, diversified after 1983, when the lake made another major appearance. The loss then in jobs and population helped prompt the construction of California State Prison, Corcoran, which opened in 1988.

Some issues have not worked themselves out: Disputes have arisen about the order in which land has been allowed to flood and whether some farms put their financial interests ahead of community safety. There have been second thoughts, too, about the damage that might have been avoided had large agricultural landowners been more receptive to partnering with the state and local governments on flood control.

But authorities say the situation has turned a corner: Tulare Lake is now officially whatever a giant prehistoric lake becomes after the chaos that unleashed it.

“It is settling in to a longer duration event,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “What you see there is going to be a fact of life for some time to come.”

Mark Abramson contributed reporting.

Shawn Hubler is a national correspondent based in California. Before joining The Times in 2020 she spent nearly two decades covering the state for The Los Angeles Times as a roving reporter, columnist and magazine writer, and shared three Pulitzer Prizes won by the paper's Metro staff. More about Shawn Hubler

A version of this article appears in print on June 28, 2023, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Last Year, It Was Farmland. Now, It’s a Vast Lake.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

New satellite images released from Nasa this week showcase the dramatic reappearance of California’s Tulare Lake after water swallowed swaths of land across the state’s agricultural center that had long been dry.

Taken between the start of February and the end of April and colored artificially to help distinguish the water from vegetation and bare ground, the images highlight the scale of the transformation across the region still grappling with the aftermath of this winter’s heavy rains and snow.

This isn’t the first time the “ghost lake” has caused widespread flooding, but the onslaught of weather whiplash wreaked havoc on residents, agricultural workers and farms – and it’s far from finished.

Tucked against the Sierra Nevada’s white-capped peaks, the region will have to reckon with surges of snowmelt filling its waterways as the weather warms. On Thursday, the snowpack in the southern Sierra was 436% of normal for this time of year, according to California’s department of water resources (DWR).

“This year’s massive snowpack is posing continued flood risks in the San Joaquin Valley,” said the DWR director, Karla Nemeth, in a written statement, noting the bittersweet outcome of very wet winter after years of drought.

The snowpack will lead to sustained high flows across the San Joaquin and Tulare basins over several months, Nemeth said.

Widespread damage has already been done. The rapidly rising waters forced evacuations across the region in early spring, as communities rushed to higher ground. In Tulare county – one of the world’s largest milk-producing regions – thousands of cows were lost to the floods, while roughly 75,000 had to be trailered to safety. Growers were washed out of key crops and workers lost out on jobs across the waterlogged valley.

Decades have passed since Tulare – once the largest body of fresh water in the west – served as a vibrant wetland sprawling across nearly 800 sq miles. Carved up with canals and cleared for the cropland and livestock pastures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the basin now spans across multiple counties and is home to roughly 4 million Californians.

About half a dozen towns remain at risk from flooding, including Corcoran, where city officials are rushing to raise a sinking levee before the waters rise further. Stretching across 14.5 miles, the levee protects against flood waters up to 188ft. In March, Tulare Lake levels crept close, rising to 178ft.

“The Corcoran community only has a small window of time and dry conditions before the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range snowmelt runoff converges with existing floodwaters in the Tulare Lake, and against the Corcoran Levee,” emergency officials warned in a press release in April, noting that requests for state and federal funding had been made.

Snowmelt is “projected to increase the Tulare Lake water to a dangerously high level that significantly intensifies the risk of overflow and erosion on the Corcoran Levee”, they added.

Nasa’s satellite images show areas where water managers have already redirected flows, filling ponds that will allow the water to seep underground and feed depleted aquifers. The DWR has initiated emergency work to pump high river flows away from the floodplain and into these recharge basins. Over the next four months, the plan could capture more than 55,000 acre-feet of water, according to the agency. (One acre-foot represents the amount of water needed to cover a football field a foot deep.)

But along with bolstering the levees and other protections, some have advocated for a more permanent return of the lake, stewarded as an environmental resource.

Others are also pushing for more water to be diverted into the historic lakebed ahead of the snowmelt, arguing that flooding the basin will alleviate overflows upstream and protect those who call the area home.

“This year will result in record high amounts of water entering the Central Valley between Fresno and Bakersfield,” resident Martin Chavez wrote in both English and Spanish on an online petition signed by hundreds. “Communities on the front line will first face the danger of this statewide issue, as the water is directed downstream out of stressed reservoirs.”

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, spilling from canals and broken levees into fields.

Here is a history of Tulare Lake from the pages of The Times.

What is the history?

This is not the first time Tulare Lake has reemerged. It also happened in 1997, another epic rain year. But officials say it was 1983 when the lake last reached a high point, amid heavy rain and snow runoff that submerged about 82,000 acres.

“Every 15 years or so, in the wake of a record winter storm or heavy spring snowmelt, the dams and ditches cannot contain the rivers. When that happens, the great inland sea, at least a hint of it anyway, rouses from its slumber,” Mark Arax wrote in The Times that year.

Climate & Environment

March 24, 2023

Arax described the history this way:

Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, this basin has a strange, slightly menacing feel, wet or dry. While it qualifies as desert, averaging less than 10 inches of rain a year, it also happens to sit at the foot of one of the nation’s most generous watersheds, the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

Before agriculture subdued the mountain rivers, much of the southern San Joaquin Valley was transformed each spring into marsh teeming with tule elk and antelope, honkers, and gray and Canada geese. No land sat lower than this basin, the terminus of the Tule, Kaweah, Kings and Kern rivers.

Feb. 13, 1997

The shallow lake that sprang from their waters — dubbed La Laguna de los Tulares by Spanish explorers — covered more than 1,200 square miles, bigger than the Great Salt Lake. On rafts and canoes made from the thick tule reeds, Yokut hunters fished for salmon, perch and sturgeon while the women waded far into the waters to dig for clams and mussels.

So bountiful was the harvest that white settlers named the area Mussel Slough, and commercial fishermen in the 1870s plied the lake in schooners and steamers and caught terrapin turtles served as delicacies in San Francisco restaurants.

Visitors never forgot the roar of the big birds alighting.

“An immense body of wild geese whose wings and cries as they moved from place to place caused this kind of roaring noise,” wrote Charles Nordhoff, a New York journalist who penned one of the first travel books about California in 1873. “A noise like the rush of a distant railroad train.”

In 1880, in the name of reclamation, the state Legislature allowed newcomers to buy marshland for $2.50 an acre, $2 of which would be refunded if they helped construct a levee system. This touched off a decades-long stampede of “sandlappers,” the derisive name given farmers who cultivated swampland.

Tulare Lake may have continued to turn up blue on most maps but it was pretty much a mirage.

Arax wrote more about Tulare Lake.

What is happening now?

As The Times’ Ian James and Susanne Rust reported, Tulare Lake’s sudden reemergence has fueled conflict in one of California’s richest agricultural centers, as the spreading waters swallow fields and orchards and encroach on low-lying towns.

In a region where the major agricultural landowners have a history of water disputes, the floods streaming into Tulare Lake Basin have reignited some long-standing tensions and brought accusations of foul play and mismanagement.

March 18, 2023

Residents in rural towns such as Alpaugh and Allensworth fear their homes won’t be prioritized for protection from the rising waters. And as the water has overwhelmed canals, tensions have flared over where the floods should be directed, and which farmland should go under first.

The view of native Californians

In satellite images of the San Joaquin Valley, the footprint of the old lake bed stands out as a darker, grayish area in the patches of farmland. In the days before the damming of rivers, the lake could stretch for 790 square miles, four times the size of Lake Tahoe, with depths of 30 feet.

Before white settlers arrived in the Central Valley in the 1800s, Tulare Lake was the center of life for the Native Yokut people who lived by its shores and along the rivers. Then farmers began diverting water and claiming land in the lake bottom.

More than a century later, members of the Santa Rosa Rancheria of the Tachi Yokut Tribe live near what was once the lake’s north shore. The tribe’s leaders have agreed to diversions that will channel some of the floodwaters onto their lands, easing pressure on the system while helping to recharge groundwater.

California

Feb. 20, 2023

The lake’s rise is “just a very small reminder of what was once here,” said Leo Sisco, the tribe’s chairman.

The phantom lake, which the tribe calls Pa’ashi, remains central to its spiritual beliefs. Its traditional songs include passages that say when the water rises, “that’s the lake telling us, ‘OK, it’s time for you guys to get out of here now,’ ” said Robert Jeff, the tribe’s vice chairman.

“So that’s when our people would pack up,” Jeff said, “and we’d head to the mountains, to our other villages, until the water receded.”

Manages USPS Retail & Delivery Services for Lakeside, Barona Communities

LAKESIDE – Jester Tiongco was recently named the Postmaster of the Lakeside Post Office.

He replaces former Lakeside Postmaster Charles Bernardo, who transferred to another facility.

As Lakeside Postmaster, Tiongco supervises 38 employees and oversees retail services at the Lakeside Post Office and the daily distribution of mail on 21 delivery routes and to 2,100 PO Boxes at his facility.

Tiongco is an eight-year postal employee who began his career as a mail carrier and most recently served as the officer in charge of the Eastlake Post Office.

“I’m honored and thankful for this great opportunity,” said Tiongco. “It’s a tremendous privilege to step into this position. I hope to continue the Postal Service’s legacy of outstanding customer service, to foster teamwork and communication, and to contribute to the overall success of the organization.

“As outlined in USPS’s Delivering for America plan, we are modernizing and continually adapting to the changing needs of our customers. Our customers are priority one, whether they’re located in the biggest cities or smaller communities such as Lakeside.

“I want to express my gratitude to my manager Justine Valadez and my colleague Enrique Jean. I’m blessed to have these two mentors to have guided me on the right path and to have given me so much support during my postal career. I’m also grateful to the leadership team at the USPS San Diego District office for believing in me and giving me this opportunity.”

Tiongco was born in the Philippines, raised in San Diego and currently resides in Chula Vista. He is a graduate of Southwest High School and Coleman University, where he earned a certificate in network security.

Tiongco’s hobbies include outdoor activities such as basketball, camping, hiking, mountain bike riding and volunteering his time at the school his son, Jacob, attends.

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund its operations

Note to media: A high-resolution JPEG image of Jester Tiongco is available upon request. Please submit your request to [email protected]

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LAKESIDE, Calif. (KGTV) — Lakeside began as a destination town for San Diegans and has continued to be that escape.

Located about 21 miles east of downtown San Diego, Lakeside is an easy trip through Central San Diego down Interstate 8. The city is prime as an escape from the hustle of the Gaslamp District, something many San Diegans took advantage of in the city's early days.

It's four lakes make Lakeside perfect for outdoor recreation, including boating and fishing, camping, and hiking.

Part of that outdoor heritage is the Lakeside Rodeo and equestrian activities. Lakeside is full of farms, ranches, and dairies and home to the second largest Western parade in the state.

And of course, for those looking for a little fun, Lakeside is home to Borona Casino and Resort.

Brief history...

Lakeside wasn't a "place to live" until about 1886, when the El Cajon Valley Land Company began promoting the town. Even still, there were few residents and homes in the area.

As small businesses cropped up through the late 1800s, and San Diego's population skyrocketed between 1886 and 1887, Lakeside became known as a resort town. The railroad line into Lakeside became the most traveled in the county — before the railroad, daily stages took four hours between San Diego and Lakeside.

But as time went on, Lakeside became less of a resort destination and more of a small town in its own right. By 1937, one man remarked in the Lakeside Farmer that the region looked very different from 1898, "with its paved highway and autos standing on both sides ... there was lots of business in the old days."

Things to do...

Lakeside Rodeo: The first organized rodeo was held in Lakeside in 1920 and remained a big part of the town's history and annual calendar. The rodeo today celebrates the sport's history in Lakeside while providing not only rodeo events, but hosting numerous other community events, concerts, and fundraisers.

Lake Jennings: A trip to Lake Jennings gives families the ability to camp, hike, boat, and fish in a scenic areas like Cloister Cove, Siesta Point, Hermit Cove, and Eagle Point. Families may also catch a glimpse of the abundance of wildlife surrounding the lake.

Borona Cultural Center & Museum: A dose of history awaits at the Borona Cultural Center & Museum, where guests learn about Native American culture and history in San Diego County. The center includes more than 3,000 artifacts, photographic displays, and archives among its treasures — some pieces dating back as far as 10,000 years.

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