Floodwaters from an overflowing Lake Success reached the Tule River next to Joseph Goni’s Tulare family dairy on March 15, in the middle of the night, much faster than he had expected.
The water was at their front door when Goni and his fiancee woke up. When his sister and brother-in-law, who also lived on the farm, pulled their children out of their home in pajamas, 2 to 3 feet of water was rushing everywhere, impossible to stop.
Goni choked up recently as he and Roberto Martinez, a 30-year employee, recounted how floodwaters nearly washed away the dairy three generations of his family had built.
“It started with us,” Goni said of the gushing water. “Then we started hearing about it moving toward Corcoran. And it was just one dairy after the other, after the other.”
Over 72 hours, Goni, Martinez, and dozens of neighbors and livestock haulers who arrived with trucks and trailers frantically herded 2,400 cows and heifers into trailers in the dark. Even with weeks of planning, moving a few hundred head would have been difficult; moving this many in flood waters was a nightmare, the men said.
The cows went to six area dairies on safer ground, and Goni said he was overwhelmed by his community’s support. Goni remembers joking he would understand if workers left.
“We have to fight,” Martinez said, adding that Goni’s father, who died last year, would have wanted them to. “We can’t lose everything because of this week.”
Thousands of San Joaquin Valley farmers, workers, and residents are coping with acres of floodwaters and muck, tallying the damage. One industry official estimated $20 billion in losses for dairy, California’s number one agricultural industry, generating $7 billion in revenue statewide.
Some who lost homes also fear losing weeks or months of income. After months of atmospheric rivers, storms, and record floods, the long-dry Tulare Lake is rising again from the San Joaquin Valley floor. It will be fed, experts said, by a historic snowpack melting in the Sierra Nevada.
Will California be ready?
So far, the track record for state and local emergency response has been mixed, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, where local agencies have struggled to mediate conflicts between landowners and flooded communities, and state officials have yet to clarify their oversight role.
Farmers, workers, and residents in several flooded communities complained that it took weeks for the state to gain federal help through a disaster designation. Even with that, many farmworkers won’t qualify for federal cash assistance because they are undocumented.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said some people could receive help through local partnerships using the state’s Rapid Response Fund. The state has not announced which local partners it was funding.
State officials said they are bolstering infrastructure, such as levees and canals, and raising some roads while coordinating with agencies to help people cope with floods and prepare for possible evacuations.
Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said state officials have been meeting with emergency managers for each affected region, coordinating area-specific evacuation plans and flood prevention measures, trying to get everyone on the same page.
“We’re paying particular attention to the Tulare basin because there’s already so much water in the system, and that’s where the snowpack is concentrated,” he said. “Humans, in many cases, are the hardest part of any disaster to control.”
Some of the country’s most giant farms operate in this region. Tulare, Kern, and Kings counties are top-producing dairy counties in the state.
Like most of California, the Tulare Lake basin’s vast farmland had suffered a severe drought. Now floodwaters envelope it, looking like an inland sea when winds whip waves over swallowed houses, farms, and rural Highway 43.
Nearly all four rivers, countless creeks, and thousands of miles of canals linked to Tulare Lake are swollen and at capacity. The valley ground has soaked up so much water that every passing rainstorm floods yards and asphalt roads, even in urban centers like Bakersfield and Fresno.
“It’s very important reminder that California is not well-equipped to handle these extreme wet-weather events,” said Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau. “The message that we would like our California Legislature to hear is it’s never too soon to make better investments in infrastructure.”
The Biden administration declared California’s second major disaster of the year on April 3, deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency and allowing several counties, including Tulare and Kern, to apply for additional…
Read More: Flooding wreaks havoc on Tulare County dairy industry