A ribbon-cutting ceremony for a newly rebuilt – but still sinking – portion of the Friant-Kern Canal is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday, June 21.
The public is invited to attend.
The event, to be held at the Avenue 136 bridge in Porterville, marks the completion of Phase I of a massive construction project known as the Middle Reach Capacity Correction Project. Four years in the making, the ten-mile segment runs parallel to the canal and aims to restore the canal’s ability to carry water downstream to cities and farmland all the way to its terminus in Kern County.
Subsidence, or land sinking, from groundwater overpumping is the main culprit behind the damage. Friant Water Authority, which operates the canal, says the canal has lost more than 60 percent of its original carrying capacity.
It has sued the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency for not doing enough to stem pumping and slow subsidence, blaming a complicated groundwater accounting system instituted by Eastern Tule.
The canal’s capacity reduction has been especially hard on Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, which sits at the end of the Friant-Kern Canal’s 152-mile run and contracts for 350,000 acre feet annually.
A total of 33 miles of canal from Pixley to the Kern County line will need to be rebuilt in phases, with an expected price tag of $500 million. Funding is coming from a combination of Friant water contractors and state and federal funds. Eastern Tule is also paying a share, though Friant says it has paid far less than expected so far.
Ironically, the canal was built in the 1940s to bring in surface water to slow a dropping water table which was causing land to sink, damaging infrastructure such as levees, bridges and roads.
