Tulare Lake was drained by farmers more than a century ago, and it has reappeared only rarely when floods have reclaimed farmlands in its ancient lake bed in the San Joaquin Valley.
Now, a coalition of tribal leaders, community activists and environmental advocates has begun an effort to restore the lake. They have been discussing a proposal to bring back a portion of its once-vast waters by building a reservoir fringed with wetlands on the west side of the valley, within sight of Interstate 5.
“Water brings life,” said Robert Jeff, vice chairman of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe. “Putting that water back on the land is going to benefit everybody and everything.”
Jeff and other supporters of the concept, including leaders of the nonprofit group Friends of the River, say setting aside space for lake restoration would provide an outlet to capture floodwaters when needed, helping to protect low-lying towns and farms. They say restoring part of the lake and its marshes would revive vital habitat for wildlife, bringing the area a new park where people could fish, watch migrating birds and walk along the water’s edge.
An engineering proposal that was recently submitted to state officials calls for acquiring nearly 24,000 acres of farmland near Kettleman City and building levees to contain the new lake and wetlands.
Turning the proposal into a viable plan, however, would require addressing various challenges, including securing funds, acquiring property from landowners and obtaining water that would consistently flow to the lake.
The farmlands that would be set aside for the project include 11,640 acres owned by Sandridge Partners, a company controlled by the family of Silicon Valley businessman John Vidovich, and 1,100 acres owned by farming giant J.G. Boswell Co., the area’s largest landowner. A third piece of land, totaling 11,240 acres, is owned by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, which uses the fields to spread compost and grow crops.
Supporters of the plan have begun to approach landowners to share the idea, but so far none of them have publicly endorsed the concept. Vidovich and J.G. Boswell Co. didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Buying the land, moving earth and installing pump stations might cost nearly $1 billion if the project is built as currently proposed, according to a preliminary cost estimate. Supporters say one option would be to tap the state’s Proposition 1 bond funds, which are being used for projects including water storage, stormwater capture and ecosystem restoration. State officials have been selecting projects through a rigorous process, and some funds have yet to be allocated.
For the Tachi Yokut Tribe, the idea of bringing back the lake, which they call Pa’ashi, holds cultural and spiritual significance.
The lake was once the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. It teemed with birds, beavers and tule elk, and sustained Yokut tribes who made their homes along the lakeshore and the rivers.
That ended when settlers drove the Native people from their lands, and farmers diverted and choked off the rivers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Since then, the dry lake has come back to life occasionally during California’s wettest years. In 2023, surging floodwaters inundated thousands of acres of farmland. The rising waters triggered a chaotic scramble to contain the damage, and a levee was raised and reinforced to protect the city of Corcoran.
At the time, members of the Tachi Yokut Tribe celebrated the return of their ancestral lake, which grew nearly as large as Lake Tahoe, holding a ceremony at the shore where they sang and offered prayers. But the lake soon retreated and farming resumed on the dry lake bed.
Jeff said his tribe now sees a historic opportunity to work with others in the San Joaquin Valley to permanently bring back some portion of Pa’ashi.
“We need this water to be on the land,” Jeff said. “It makes me feel good that a lot of people are coming together to be on the same page.”
He spoke during a workshop in June at the tribe’s Tachi Palace Casino Resort in Lemoore, where more than two dozen supporters met in a conference room to discuss ideas for restoring the lake.
The group listened to a presentation detailing the engineering proposal, which was recently submitted to Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary. Prepared by John Ennis, a civil engineer from Fresno, the plan calls for a new lake that would be smaller in size but deeper than the lake that formed during the 2023 flooding.
After studying maps and geographic data, Ennis decided on an area of Kings County where he calculated floodwaters could be pumped into a reservoir that would be up to 30-40 feet deep.
By capturing excess water, he said, it would protect communities such as Corcoran, Alpaugh and Allensworth when the next extreme flood comes.
“The first and foremost reason for this project is flood protection,” Ennis said during his presentation. “It’s only going to happen again, and it’s probably going to be worse the next time.”
A spokesperson for the California Natural Resources Agency said Crowfoot reviewed the proposal but declined to comment on it at this time.
In designing the project, Ennis considered how to build a reservoir that would bring other benefits, including added water-storage capacity. He selected a location near the California Aqueduct, where a conduit would be built to pump supplies in or out of the state’s main north-south water system.
In a letter to Crowfoot, Ennis described it as a “multi-purpose flood protection, water storage and wetland restoration project.” The reservoir, he said, would be built with enough capacity to store 500,000 acre-feet of water — comparable to the annual water use of Los Angeles.
The lake bed’s thick clay layer, called the Corcoran Clay, would prevent water from soaking underground, but some of the stored water could be pumped to nearby sites to replenish groundwater.
Ennis said this would help address declines in aquifer levels caused by overpumping, as well as related problems of sinking land. In parts of the Tulare Lake basin, the ground has sunk as much as six feet over the last decade as water levels have declined beneath farmlands where wells irrigate cotton, tomatoes and other crops.
The project would include a 2,280-acre wetland restoration zone, with about five constructed islands that would provide habitat for birds along the Pacific Flyway migratory route, Ennis said.
In his letter, Ennis told Crowfoot the lake could become a new state park. He said it would enable “the partial re-creation of the once majestic Tulare Lake” and “restore sacred lands of the Yokut people,” while creating thousands of acres of wildlife habitat.
Ennis drove to the area just outside Kettleman City on a recent afternoon, stopping on the roadside by a field of parched dirt, sparse grass and shrubs. Several cattle grazed in the distance, but the barren land by the road seemed abandoned.
“This looks like the Mojave Desert, and it used to be tules and elk,” Ennis said. “Let’s put some water back where it belongs. Let’s let the tules grow. Let’s let some habitat come back.”
Ennis said he remembers driving through the area after the 2023 floods and thinking, “This lake really needs to come back.” He said he agrees with the Tachi Yokut Tribe that restoring part of the lake would improve life in the valley and allow its original ecosystem to take root again.
Ennis said he prepared the proposal on a pro-bono basis because he wanted to help develop a multifaceted solution.
He runs a consulting business and has done engineering work for cities and developers. When Ennis designed a 3.5-acre wetland in a new subdivision in Madera County, he saw that after five years the habitat was flourishing, with cottonwood trees that grew rapidly from wild seeds to stand more than 20 feet tall.
“It taught me that all most of us just have to do is add water,” he said.
In addition to tomatoes and cotton, the area’s farms produce crops such as safflower, alfalfa and pistachios, some of which ended up underwater during the flooding two years ago.
The 1,100 acres of J.G. Boswell’s land, a small portion of the company’s vast croplands, would provide a strategic location for a low-lying forebay to take in floodwaters from the Kings and Tule rivers and pump water into the reservoir, Ennis said.
This would benefit the company by reducing crop losses during floods, he said, and eliminate a practice of routing high flows into the San Joaquin River to the Pacific Ocean.
Just south of the proposed restoration site, the L.A. County Sanitation Districts operate the Tulare Lake Compost facility, which processes sewage sludge and agricultural waste to produce high-grade compost. The compost is then used on the agency’s farmlands, growing wheat and other crops for livestock.
The sanitation districts’ officials cannot comment on the proposal because they have not received it, said Maria Rosales-Ramirez, a spokesperson. She said the agency’s farming process complies with state water rules and “follows strict standards to ensure no threat to the environment.”
Attendees at the workshop said they are excited about the effort to restore the lake. They agreed to join a work group and start holding meetings.
“The historic Pa’ashi was once the heart of a great interconnected waterscape that fed a beautiful world, filled with verdant land, clean water, abundant life and a great culture of peoples,” said Jann Dorman, executive director and board chair of Friends of the River.
Restoring a modern version of the lake would represent a rethinking of the region’s relationship to water, she said.
“It’s a fascinating idea to pursue, and it has the potential to really enhance the ecosystems of the valley for all the people that live there,” Dorman said. “It’s really the people in the valley who need to lead this.”
Several supporters said the concept still needs to be further developed but that they are feeling energized to bring it to fruition. They said restoring the lake would fit with California’s efforts to rein in the depletion of groundwater by repurposing some farmland as habitat areas, and would help prepare for the more intense flooding that climate change is projected to bring.
“We need to look at every possible alternative in trying to develop a systemic approach to the restoration,” said Richard Harriman, a volunteer consultant for the Tachi Yokut Tribe. “We need to reach out and educate people and bring in allies.”
Harriman suggested that it’s time to start designing bumper stickers with a motto to build support.
Jeff, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he likes the idea. He suggested the bumper stickers could read: “We need Pa’ashi back, we need Tulare Lake back.”
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