By Lisa McEwen
SJV Water Editor/CEO Lois Henry contributed to this report
Outflow from Success and Kaweah lakes is back down to a trickle but bewilderment is still riding high among Tulare County water managers.
The sudden and untimely belch of water from those lakes and – more importantly – how it happened was the main topic during the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District meeting on Tuesday.
“In the big picture, the amount of water was not huge. It was the process,” said board member Brian Watte. “He (President Trump) has no idea how bad he effed up.”
The releases were made starting Jan. 30 by the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates both dams, per a Jan. 24 presidential executive order that mandated federal officials exert all efforts to get more water to southern California to fight wildfires.
Tulare County river water would have to be pumped into a series of canals at great expense, requiring numerous permits to travel hundreds of miles to southern California.
Also, the water isn’t owned by the federal government. It belongs to, mostly, local irrigation and ditch companies under rights that go back more than 110 years.
Ultimately, about 2,500 acre feet were released from Lake Success above Porterville and 4,800 acre feet from Lake Kaweah. Some was used for irrigation while most was used for groundwater recharge, according to managers of the Lower Tule River and Tulare irrigation districts.
The end result wasn’t calamitous, but growers and water managers spent more than half of Tuesday’s meeting unpacking what happened and discussing how to prevent it from happening again, especially with two storms forecast to hit the region this week.
“This event showed a real disconnect between some agencies and the lack of taking input from the locals who know how to manage the water,” said Don Mills, Kaweah Delta’s board president. “We need to leverage that.”
The board discussed crafting a letter but General Manager Shane Smith said other statements have already been sent.
“In the big picture, the amount of water was not huge. It was the process. He (President Trump) has no idea how bad he effed up.”
Kaweah Delta Conservation District Board member Brian Watte.
He referred to a joint statement released Monday by the Tule, Kaweah & St. Johns river associations and the Lower Tule River and Tulare irrigation districts that politely let outsiders know that blindly cranking valves on local systems wasn’t appreciated.
“The movement of water supplies requires an extensive understanding of the plumbing, safety concerns, laws, and coordination among the various owners and operators of water and canals,” the joint statement reads.
Local irrigation districts with storage rights in Army Corps lakes, including Kaweah, Success, Pine Flat on the Kings River and Lake Isabella on the Kern River, follow a set of Army Corps guidelines for how much water can be kept in the lakes over winter.
The Army Corps draws the lakes down significantly during fall to make enough room for winter storms and spring runoff. If it’s dry, as this year has been, water districts are allowed to store extra water, or “encroach,” on the flood control space.
Success had about 5,000 acre feet and Kaweah about 39,000 acre feet of “encroachment” water. But with both lakes only about half full, scant snow cover and little precipitation anticipated from coming storms, water managers expected no problems.
That went out the window Jan. 30 as the Army Corps gave Tulare County water managers about an hour’s notice that they were opening both dams to release water at “channel capacity,” as much as the rivers could handle, sparking fears of downstream flooding. Pine Flat and Isabella weren’t included as water levels had not encroached into flood control space.
Many of those at Tuesday’s meeting were at a conference in Reno when they got the call from the Army Corps about 3 p.m.
“We were on the phone nonstop, pushing this issue from both angles of Sacramento and D.C.” said Aaron Fukuda, General Manager of Tulare Irrigation District. “Luckily, we minimized it. It came down to Friant. They don’t manage local water, but they were with us in it, trying to get through to the right people.”
He referred to the Friant Water Authority, which manages the federally-owned Friant-Kern Canal, a separate water system from the Success and Kaweah systems.
Johnny Amaral, Friant’s chief operating officer, was invited to Tuesday’s meeting to shed light on the releases.
Amaral said “data gaps” still exist in determining how the decision was made to release water at full capacity and more importantly, why it was celebrated. President Trump posted on X and Truth Social, taking credit for sending the water to Los Angeles to fight wildfires, which didn’t happen.
“One of these days we will have beers over it and laugh about it, but it was no laughing matter at the time,” Amaral said of the mad scramble to get the Army Corps to release water at more manageable levels. “A new administration means there are new opportunities but it also means there is a lot of work to do.”
The Army Corps ultimately agreed to release water at much lower levels, and has left about 1,000 acre feet of encroachment water in Success and 22,000 acre feet of encroachment water in Kaweah. It has not answered questions about whether that encroachment water could again be subject to being dumped.
Speaking of the delta…
Though neither Success nor Kaweah lakes have a direct tie to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the squall over this water dump is being used to highlight delta management disagreements.
“That’s a fight we want to have,” Amaral said of the delta “We need to get out of this cycle of not knowing what to expect from the delta year in and year out. There’s a lot that will unfold. We have an opportunity to fix things long-term.”
The Trump administration has long been at odds with California over how best to operate the delta, which is a shared resource, bringing State Water Project water to farms and cities via the California Aqueduct and delivering federal water via the Central Valley Project. Many Tulare County farms and towns depend on CVP water.
Specifically, Amaral said keeping the federal government’s five pumps at the Jones Pumping Plant at the south end of the delta in operation is key.
“The administration’s goal is to keep those operating at full capacity and we will be there to back that up,” Amaral said.
Talking points on that issue are already lining up.
The joint statement about Success and Kaweah lakes by local water managers ends with a blurb about the delta and the “essential” need to keep the pumps going.
And Rep. Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) – who did not respond to requests for comment on the water dump – sent SJV Water a text stating he is glad President Trump is engaged on California water policy and that “…keeping the pumps operational at Jones Pumping Plant now and moving forward and building more water infrastructure continues to be my high priority to get more water to our Central Valley farmers and communities.”
