Just west of this normally dusty prison town, a civic nightmare is unfolding: Tulare Lake, a body of water that did not exist just two months ago, now stretches to the horizon — a vast, murky sea in which the tops of telephone poles can be seen stretching eerily into the distance.
More than 140 water districts in the central San Joaquin Valley have yet to apply for state water debt relief, leaving thousands of customers susceptible to water shutoffs after the state’s moratorium expires on Dec. 31. The deadline to apply is Monday at 5 p.m. California residents who fell behind on paying their water bills during the pandemic are protected from having their water shut off through the end of the year.
Life in Tooleville wasn’t easy before the latest drought.
Residents of this tiny, two-road farmworker community, tucked into the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills in eastern Tulare County, have been living on bottled water since 2014 because its two wells are contaminated with hexavalent chromium.
Then in July, one of those wells started to dry up, thanks to plummeting groundwater levels. State Water Resources Control Board officials agree Tooleville’s other well will likely hit sand in a matter of months.
Help may be on the horizon for the about 700 residents of East Orosi dependent on bottled water. The Tulare County Board of Supervisors has directed county staff to begin negotiating the scope of work and a budget with the State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water for the county to take control of the East Orosi Community Services District public water system.
Of the thousands of water systems in the state, East Orosi CSD is one of just seven California water systems under a mandatory consolidation order by way of Senate Bill (SB) 88, which enables the state water board to order consolidations for water systems in disadvantaged communities that are consistently out of compliance.
Severe drought is gripping most of California, but its misery isn’t spread equally. While most of the state compares today’s extreme conditions to previous droughts, people in Tulare County speak of drought — in the singular, as in a continuous state of being. “The drought has never stopped in north Tulare County. It never left,” said county Supervisor Eddie Valero. “Domestic wells are drying up at an alarming rate.” The entire West is suffering from extreme dryness, heat and fire risk, and the small, rural towns of northern Tulare County, outside of Visalia, are caught in its vortex.
The Friant Water Authority cleaned up some of the most important work in the last month of the year hashing out a legal settlement with farmers in southern Tulare County.
Represented by the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency farmers agreed to contribute at least $125 million to repair the significant subsidence-caused sag in the gravity-fed canal that has cut water deliveries by 60%.
In what was hailed as a “landmark agreement,” farmers in an area of southern Tulare County blamed for sinking the Friant-Kern Canal from excessive groundwater pumping will chip in a hefty amount to help pay for a fix.
How hefty could be decided by their payment choice.
A longer term payment option would be $200 million.
After years of efforts to provide needed repairs of the Friant-Kern Canal, the first stage of those repairs is on the verge of finally happening.
And the repairs will be done to the canal in Southeastern Tulare County.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation signed a record of decision to advance construction to repair a portion of the Friant-Kern Canal. The decision gives final approval on the required environmental reviews for the first phase of repairs to the canal.
When it comes to poor water quality, Tulare County is ground zero in the state. Of the state’s 300 water systems out of compliance with water quality standards, 10% are located in Tulare County affecting an estimated 100,000 people, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, more commonly known as the State Water Board.
Work to build the nation’s largest solar farm in Tulare County may begin by the end of this year. At its Aug. 26 meeting, the Tulare County Planning Commission unanimously approved environmental documents for the Rexford Solar Farm in southeastern Tulare County.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
