Kern River weir construction finally underway

Construction on a key weir in the Kern River at Coffee Road got underway Feb. 20, more than two years after the Bakersfield Water Resources Department was first awarded grant funding to replace the aging structure.

The city received $1.3 million from the state Integrated Regional Water Management Program in late 2022 to tear out the existing structure, which only reached half way across the riverbed, and build a fully functional weir in its place. Total cost of construction is $5.3 million.

The previous structure, built in the 1980s, reached halfway into the riverbed and city crews had to build, and occasionally rebuild, a sand “plug,” or giant berm, to reach the northern riverbank.

After the city announced the grant in early 2023, Mother Nature delayed the project with a whopping water year that brought the river back to life through town from February 2023 through September 2024.

During the 2023 floods, the city, with help from the Buena Vista Water Storage District, installed a collection of giant siphon tubes over the sand plug in order to control the massive river flows. The goal was to direct flows into the River Canal, which runs parallel to the river along its southern bank west to various agricultural water districts.

Without the siphons, water managers feared flows would bust through the sand plug, barrel west and then head north into the already inundated Tulare Lake. The siphons did their job and kept nearly all of that year’s 2.2 million acre feet of Kern River water from leaving the county, according to water managers.

But the water also left the Coffee Road weir essentially non operational, according to the Water Resources Department.

After letting that section of the riverbed dry out, crews from Nicholas Construction began tearing out the weir starting Thursday, according to Water Resources. There was no estimated date of completion.

When finished, the new weir will include a multi-use path for cyclists and walkers to cross from the existing river path over the river and, eventually, to a northern extension along the Friant-Kern Canal all the way to Shafter.

This is one of three weir projects Water Resources has undertaken recently. It conducted maintenance on the McClung weir, three miles west of Allen road, and the Bellevue Weir, near Stockdale Highway.