Tulare Lake Resurfaces After 130 Years Reviving California’s Heart, but Not Everyone Is Happy

For California, the Central Valley used to be the biggest freshwater lake until, by the mid-20th century, it was turned into farms. However, the recent reappearance of Tulare Lake after 130 years perplexed the residents . The Indigenous Tachi Yokut called the lake 'Pa'ashi,' which got its water from melting snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Vivian Underhill, a feminist scholar studying environmental justice who had researched the lake, told The Guardian , "You were driving along and the road just ended – it just ducked under the water." She added, "You saw these nut trees just filled with water, ducks swimming under the shade of almond trees. You could also see blackbirds, hawks, and geese. You could hear fish splashing out of the water."

However, Underhill further mentioned that this was not the first time the lake had come back. Knewz.com noted that it had made several appearances in the '80s, once in the '60s, and a few times in the '30s. The humid area of 30 square miles transformed back into the old serene lake due to powerful storms. However, the residents were not excited about it, as farmers and residents in Kings County had established a $2 billion agriculture industry on the land. People's survival depended on their production of cotton, tomatoes, safflower, pistachios, and milk, and the lake had ruined it all.

Phil Hansen, 56, a farmer whose family had farmed for five generations, lost over a third of his 18,000 acres because a levee broke. He told the New York Times , "This could be the mother of all floods. This could be the biggest flood we’d ever seen." Several other communities in the area had been evacuated, with many homes and farm buildings damaged. Additionally, dairy cows had been moved to higher ground, while poultry facilities faced the dilemma of whether to slaughter or relocate their millions of chickens.

The lake bed spread across a 790-square-mile area; however, even with the protections in place, experts believed the lake could spread to 200 square miles or more. Its size was equivalent to about four Lake Tahoe from the Ice Age, where mammoths once wandered . Greg Gatzka, the city manager of Corcoran, raised concerns about the levees' height, explaining, "We had no control over nature, and we had no control over the water flows that were coming around us."

In 1983, about 130 square miles of the lake bed had flooded due to prolonged snowmelt, causing damage of nearly $300 million in the Kings County region. The water took two years to settle and clear. During that time, two men kayaked through the floodwaters from the Kern River near downtown Bakersfield to San Francisco Bay, traveling 450 miles. Since then, the population of Kings County has increased to about three million people, considering the nearby San Joaquin Valley population.

However, some people felt ecstatic about the lake's comeback. Leo Sisco, the chairman of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe, told The Los Angeles Times , "I was very happy the lake was back. It made me swell with pride to know that, in this lifetime, I got to experience it. My daughters and my grandson got to experience the lake, and the stories that we heard when we were kids came to fruition for us."