The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is looking into the mass fish die off in the Kern River after the City of Bakersfield cut flows on Tuesday in order to do weir maintenance.
“CDFW takes all instances of fish mortality seriously and is investigating what has occurred on the Kern and how it may relate to the authorizations that the City has from CDFW for work on the Kern,” wrote Julie Vance, regional manager of the agency’s central region, in an email.
She provided SJV Water with a copy of a permit obtained by Bakersfield in February this year to replace the weir at Coffee Road and noted “…we are unclear at this time if the river drying is related to this project or some other work.”
That project is separate from maintenance and sediment removal projects at Bellevue Weir across from the Park at River Walk on Stockdale Highway.
In a news release issued Sept. 3rd about the river flows being cut off, the city said it was planning to start the Bellevue work in October but did not elaborate on the scope or length of those projects.
The last time Bakersfield cleared that section of riverbed in 2020 it denuded the entire area, including bulldozing several islands and stands of native willow, incurring severe public backlash.
Requests to both the city and state for copies of permits related to the Bellevue Weir maintenance and sediment removal projects were still pending Friday evening.
The news release stated the city is also soliciting bids on the Coffee Road Weir project. Construction on that project is scheduled to begin March 1, 2025, at the earliest and depending on the water year. Replacing that weir, which was damaged in the 2023 floods, could take up to six months.
It’s unclear if river flows will be stopped for the duration of that project.
But the Coffee Road Weir project permit from CDFW states that the city must still comply with Fish and Game Code 5937, which requires dam or weir operators to allow enough water downstream to “keep fish populations in good condition.”
The trove of dead and dying fish discovered downstream of Bellevue Weir August 30 were clearly not in good condition.
The extirpation was discovered by California State University, Bakersfield biology professor Rae McNeish who, with her students, has been monitoring the Kern River’s flows, temperatures, water quality and aquatic life all summer to establish a background profile of the river. Another monitoring trip Sept. 4 that took the team of students further upriver revealed even more dead fish, according to an email from McNeish Friday.
Drying up the river for maintenance projects is unacceptable, said attorney Adam Keats, who represents Bring Back the Kern, the Kern River Parkway Foundation and several other public interest groups, who are suing the city over its river operations.
“People who care about their rivers would never do this,” he said. “Other cities with rivers maintain their infrastructure without killing the entire river.”
Construction teams can use tubes, booms and barriers to redirect water allowing work to be done in sections, he said.
“This is happening because Bakersfield doesn’t consider this a river,” he said. “It thinks of the Kern as a conduit, just another canal where they can do anything they want. No. The laws that protect rivers apply in Bakersfield too.”
Though this year was a strong water year, the river wouldn’t typically have been flowing all summer. The city and agricultural water districts with rights to the river water usually move it out of the river bed for irrigation or to store in recharge ponds to replenish the aquifer.
A preliminary injunction issued by Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp in fall 2023 briefly forced river rights owners to run some water down the riverbed through town. But that order was paused in May this year by the 5th District Court of Appeals.
The city voluntarily ran its share of water in the river for the rest of the summer.
But the city’s rights are just a percentage of the river’s natural flows. And a majority of that right accrues from March through August. That means the city’s water had all but petered out when it announced it was stopping flows for maintenance.
