Agencies gearing up for El Niño in Kings County following 2023 flood lessons

They won’t be caught flat footed this this time around.

That’s the message from Kings County government officials and water agencies as they gear up for another potentially big water year driven by a strong El Niño weather pattern.

“This time around, the county is being more cautious and coordinating with its internal staff and external agencies to prepare for possible flooding,” Kings County Manager Abraham Valencia told SJV Water. “One thing we learned in 2023 is that the impacts extend well beyond just flooded acreage. It impacts us as workers. It destroys our livelihoods.”

That fresh in mind, on Oct. 13 the Kings County Board of Supervisors declared a preemptive state of emergency for potential El Niño flooding.

In 2023, unusually heavy low-elevation snow was swept out of the foothills by several warm, atmospheric storms in March, inundating rivers and filling dry stream beds. The rush of water brought dirt and debris barrelling toward the old Tulare Lake bed, busting through banks and flooding tens of thousands of acres along the way.

It flooded out homes, dairies and businesses and refilled a portion of the now heavily farmed old lake, leaving roads and other infrastructure under water for months.

This year, with the National Weather Service predicting a strong El Niño at more than 83% likely for January through March, Kings County officials have already reached out to water agencies, levee districts and municipalities to get ready.

Valencia said they would be keeping a sharp eye on higher elevations.

“It buys us a little time because if our neighbors up north or in the mountains are flooding, we know where that water is going to end up,” Valencia said.

The old Tulare Lake bed, once the largest freshwater lake in the west, is the southern San Joaquin Valley’s low spot, where rivers and streams head during high water.

Valencia said the county has been meeting with various levee districts and is confident those structures are ready. 

That includes the Corcoran levee, which had to be hastily raised in 2023 after it had sunk – again – from excessive groundwater pumping after being raised in 2017. 

Valencia said the county is also in communication with the giant J.G. Boswell Farming Company, which owns most of the Tulare Lake bottom. 

In 2023, the Board of Supervisors held an emergency meeting to order Boswell to cut one of its levees and flood its own ground to relieve pressure on the surrounding system.

The situation became extremely tense with some farmers publicly accusing Boswell of purposefully flooding them out in order to keep its own land dry and continue to farm.

This year, Valencia is actively working with Boswell as part of its preparation efforts. 

“Our focus is on maintaining open lines of communication, sharing information, and ensuring that key stakeholders are prepared to coordinate should significant flooding occur,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Kings River Conservancy District, which maintains 140 miles of federal levees below Pine Flat across Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties as part of its Kings River Channel Improvement project, has been clearing those channels and working on repairs, district manager David Merritt told SJV Water.

He said Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state of emergency declaration in September helped the levee district allocate $400,000 in additional funds for that work.

“We’ve been very proactive with the current El Niño year,” Merritt said.

Newsom’s declaration also allows regulatory agencies to prioritize permitting for local agencies to clear out water channels. 

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) was sued by the City of Merced for allegedly dragging its feet for years on such permits, which the city says led to several creeks backing up and overflowing across neighborhoods in 2023.

This year, the CDFW has announced that because of the El Niño emergency, landowners and agencies don’t have to notify the agency in advance for emergency work in streams.

Similar problems happened along rivers and streams in the southern San Joaquin Valley, including on the Tule River, which broke through its banks in at least 50 places in 2023 as debris jammed up against bridges and weirs and more water just kept coming.

“We don’t believe any amount of preparation could have prevented that from occurring, particularly within the boundaries of Lower Tule River ID, which is the only area our District has any role in maintaining,” Lower Tule River Irrigation District General Manager Alex Peltzer said.

The amount of water in 2023 was simply “far greater than the channel was capable of containing.”

The Lower Tule River Irrigation District recently approved a project to clear sediment that still remained in the river in several locations from the 2023 flood.

Water districts are also preparing to capture as much flood water as possible for recharge.

The Kings County Water District plans to repair and meter the old river channel to take flood flows off the Kings River, according to General Manager Madalyn Vieira.

The trick will be to coordinate with landowners, the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency and ditch companies on how best to capture and store flood flows once the Army Corps of Engineers announces a flood release from Pine Flat Dam.

Kings County’s Valencia said residents can sign up for emergency alerts on the office of emergency services website. And get sandbag pick-up information and resources on the county’s emergency services Facebook and Instagram.

“I would like everybody to stay grounded, to stay informed, to listen to the warnings, and then you know your community, you know your homes, you know your families,” he said. “Keep those things in mind: prepare and that will make us safer if we do have this emergency come to fruition.”