lake isabella Archives

Energy storage project above Isabella Lake is back on the table, along with two other similar proposals

July 12, 2024

• by Lois Henry

A roundly castigated proposal to build a holding reservoir above Isabella Lake in order to pump water up from the lake and run it back down through turbines for power – known as pumped energy storage – is back. And it brought friends. There are now three pumped energy storage proposals in Kern County, including…

Uncategorized

Date is set for hearing prompted by dead fish in the long meandering Kern River case

April 30, 2024

• by Lois Henry

Kern River combatants are headed back to court where a local advocacy group hopes to force the City of Bakersfield to goose up flows, which were cut to a trickle leaving piles of dead fish west of Bakersfield. The hearing is set for May 9 at 8:30 a.m. in Division J before Kern County Superior…

dams • Uncategorized

Army Corps installs pump to handle unexpected seepage from Isabella Dam

October 9, 2023

• by Lois Henry

For the first time in six months, Gerald Wenstrand doesn’t have a river flowing through the pasture at his ranch situated just below the Auxiliary Dam at Lake Isabella. The Army Corps of Engineers, which owns and operates Isabella Dam, finally installed an extra pump to move seepage coming through the base of the dam…

Rivers • Uncategorized

Tübatulabal tribe celebrates homecoming with return of a slice of its ancestral lands

September 16, 2023

• by Lois Henry

Tribal members celebrated the return of more than 1,200 acres of their ancestral lands in the jagged hills above Weldon on Saturday in a ceremony marked with gratitude, emotion and prayer. Chairman Robert Gomez opened the event by thanking a large number of people who helped find, purchase and deed the land back to the…

Floods

Irrigators want to slow the flow of Kern River to bring Lake Isabella to its brim

July 12, 2023

• by Lois Henry

The question of whether Lake Isabella might “spill” has now turned to whether it will fill. The lake is achingly close to being full. It stood at 528,663 acre feet as of Wednesday afternoon – just 39,337 acre feet shy of its full capacity. But it needs to hit that max fill mark for the…

Floods

Kern River headed to intertie Saturday after brief delay

May 18, 2023

• by Lois Henry

Kern River water is expected to go into the intertie, which connects the river to the California Aqueduct, starting Saturday morning. The goal is to keep more flood water from reaching the already flooded Tulare Lake bed in Kings County. The plan had been to begin dumping Kern River water at 500 cubic feet per…

Floods

Officials identify local infrastructure at risk of flooding in Bakersfield

May 9, 2023

• by Lois Henry, SJV Water and John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian

Senior Kern County officials assessing flood risks to critical local infrastructure have identified Bakersfield Heart Hospital as potentially vulnerable to inundation in the weeks ahead, followed to a lesser degree by Mercy Southwest and the former Big West refinery on Rosedale Highway. In case either medical center does flood, a plan has been put in place…

Drought • Uncategorized

Kern River watershed “Lookin’ good!”

March 1, 2023

• by SJV Water

Water watcher Scott Williams, who issues a Kern River Snow and Water Report every month, was practically giddy in his March 1 email stating: “Lookin’ good!” for this month’s report. The report compiles water and snow statistics from a variety of public sources. The upshot is the Kern River is forecast at 190% of average….

Drought • Rivers

A river appears in the Kern River bed

January 14, 2023

• by Lois Henry

There was water snaking through the Kern River bed through Bakersfield on Friday. The City of Bakersfield was moving water it was obligated to release down the river for power plants through the riverbed and into Truxtun Lakes, the lake at the Park at Riverwalk and Aera Park, according to Daniel Maldonado, a city water…

Drought • Rivers

Late summer rains brought little – but not much – drought relief to San Joaquin Valley watersheds

August 24, 2022

• by Jesse Vad, SJV Water reporting trainee

Monsoonal rains in early August offered a brief moment of relief to some San Joaquin Valley watersheds. But the dousing of rain did not make a dent in the ongoing drought, according to water managers. “It helped a couple of the Kern River interests with flow that they weren’t anticipating,” said Mark Mulkay, Kern River…

NEWS

Energy storage project above Isabella Lake is back on the table, along with two other similar proposals

Date is set for hearing prompted by dead fish in the long meandering Kern River case

Army Corps installs pump to handle unexpected seepage from Isabella Dam

Tübatulabal tribe celebrates homecoming with return of a slice of its ancestral lands

Irrigators want to slow the flow of Kern River to bring Lake Isabella to its brim

Kern River headed to intertie Saturday after brief delay

Officials identify local infrastructure at risk of flooding in Bakersfield

Kern River watershed “Lookin’ good!”

A river appears in the Kern River bed

Late summer rains brought little – but not much – drought relief to San Joaquin Valley watersheds

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