Growers and water managers in the Tulare Lake area have been moving mountains of dirt to beef up levees and build entirely new ones as they brace for snowmelt this summer. 

A string of storms in March battered the region, blowing out levees and overwhelming infrastructure as flood water plowed through homes, dairies and crops. The mad scramble to move dirt is in part to repair that damage but also to fend off future damage in the face of an historic snowpack that’s already swelling valley rivers.

“It’s turning into ‘Whoever has the biggest berm wins,’” said Craig Andrew, manager for Sandridge Partners, one of the largest landowners in Kings County. 

Sandridge built a large berm around its raisin facility about a mile southeast of the tiny community of Stratford on Highway 41, he said. Other farmers are taking dirt from Sandridge to build berms around their farms and dairies. 

Berms are going up all around the Stratford area as locals fret about the South Fork of the Kings River potentially going above its current flow of 2,500 cubic feet per second. In fact, water is already standing against the levees that protect Stratford.

Growers are spending, “millions of dollars,” building berms to protect themselves, confirmed Mark Grewal, a water manager in Kings County. 

“These levees are gigantic,” said Grewal. “They’re million dollar plus levees.”

It’s mostly private companies and landowners doing the levee building, he said. 

Vahid Salehi has been building up levees to try and hold off increasing flows from the Kings River. Salehi is the president of Pistacia Global, which manages about 8,500 acres of almonds and pistachios throughout Kings, Tulare and Fresno counties. 

The problem areas have mostly been on properties next to the North Fork Kings River, said Salehi. There, multiple sections of crops have been inundated with water. Salehi and his workers have been excavating and moving dirt so they can bring in pumps to redirect the water. 

While it hasn’t cost the company millions, it’s still expensive, said Salehi. He estimates costs from roughly the last month of labor and equipment at about $50,000. 

“There’s a lot of issues and maybe budget-wise infrastructure problems,” said Salehi. “There’s just all sorts of problems.” 

Pistacia Global’s Kings River properties are within the jurisdiction of the Kings River Conservation District, which oversees river infrastructure and flood operations, among other things. 

For the most part, Salehi is able to do what he wants when it comes to moving dirt. But there have been some instances where KRCD has stopped construction, he said. 

Salehi was moving dirt on the river trying to build up some of the lower parts of the banks when KRCD told him to stop. The construction would put pressure on other parts of the river, KRCD staff told him. 

“We have a good relationship with them, we try to be friends with everybody. So we haven’t tried to challenge it so much,” said Salehi. “The river has its own rules and they try to enforce those rules.”

KRCD staff have also been moving dirt building up levees. The district manages 140 miles of levees on the Kings River that start upstream of Highway 43 and run through the main river channel, the North Fork and the South Fork down to the town of Stratford. 

Landowners are allowed to do what they want on their own property, said Charlotte Gallock, director of water resources and chief engineer for KRCD. But the district has jurisdiction on anything within 15 feet of the river levee, she said. Any work in those areas needs to be coordinated with the district and permitted by the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, she said. 

There are three locations where levees have been sloughing dirt and have had to be rebuilt, said Gallock. Two were on the main river channel near Lemoore and the third was on the South Fork, she said. 

The biggest area of concern is the South Fork, said Gallock. The district has already raised some sections of levees, in one area by about three feet and another by a foot. There will probably be more levee raising to follow. 

“We’re moving forward with those projects in those areas of concern and we anticipate those will be done pretty swiftly,” said Gallock. 

Kings County and the Office of Emergency Services have helped to get levee building materials down to the district, she said. 

KRCD has seven workers patrolling the levee system during the day and eight patrolling at night. It’s a 24 hour surveillance system, said Gallock. 

“They’ll look to see if there’s water somewhere where it shouldn’t be,” said Gallock. 

The berm building frenzy has sometimes run afoul of Kings County rules.

“Some berms have been placed in the public right of way, we are either removing the berms if they create a safety issue or if acceptable, we work with the property owner to secure an encroachment permit,” wrote a Kings County spokesperson in an email.

Meanwhile, the Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until it was drained more than 150 years ago for agriculture, continues to refill. Flood water is creeping close to Stratford and Corcoran where it’s being held back by the Corcoran levee. 

The state is paying $17 million to raise that levee. 

But managers at Westlake Farms five miles south of Stratford are taking matters into their own hands. The company hasn’t taken any water yet but workers are building a levee around its headquarters, said Ceil Howe III, COO of Westlake Farms. 

The company owns about 2,000 acres of pistachios, olives and field crops. 

The levee building is, “just a precautionary practice,” said Howe III. 

“We just have to take care of ourselves,” said Howe III. “It’s just tough times for everybody. It’s just unfortunate. Mother Nature wins and it’s just a tough deal.”

The post Battle of the berms: Farmers build maze of levees to protect land as ‘Big Melt’ heads for Tulare Lake appeared first on Fresnoland.

Listen to this story on The California Report

Allensworth, a farmworker town of about 500 people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, sits at the edge of an area called the Tulare Lake Basin, a patchwork of scrub brush and irrigated farmland that’s part of the most productive agricultural region in the nation. Last March, California’s barrage of atmospheric rivers overwhelmed the area, flooding pistachio orchards and swamping communities, and Allensworth found itself all but surrounded by a shallow sea. Residents were told to evacuate. They were also told that this flood was just the beginning.

California is fighting a slow-motion disaster, one that could become its largest flood in recent history. As the near-record snowpack in the Sierra mountains melts, the water making its way through the foothills is pooling in the basin, reviving a lake that had long disappeared. This process is expected to accelerate over the coming weeks and months, and it could take up to two years to subside. And while the return of Tulare Lake could devastate everyone in the region, historically disenfranchised communities like Allensworth are uniquely vulnerable. 

“It’s a horrific situation,” said Denise Kadara, an Allensworth community leader and the vice chair of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. “We’re here like sitting ducks, waiting for the water to come and flood us out.”

Part of Allensworth’s problem stems from the politics of water: For over a hundred years, water in the Tulare Lake Basin has been controlled and hoarded by a handful of powerful landowners, usually at the expense of everyone else. The Basin’s water management system still favors those powerful landowners, leaving the town with little recourse when floodwaters approach. 

‘I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law’

That was evident one windy night in March, when Allensworth residents Takoa Kadara and his father, Kayode, called an emergency town meeting. The goal was simple: to keep the water massing in the basin from pouring into people’s homes.

At the time, water was flowing toward town through culverts that run under railroad tracks to the east. The culverts are on private property, and the tracks that run on top of them are owned by BNSF Railway, one of the top freight transportation companies in the nation. The last time community members tried to block the culverts with rocks, gravel and plywood, a BNSF employee called the police, then removed the makeshift dam they had built. 

Now the group wanted to protect the community, but knew they might be at risk of breaking the law. Residents only saw two options: act illegally, or not at all, and they couldn’t come to an agreement.

“If you guys disagree with this solution, then let’s go home,” Kayode Kadara said.

“No, it’s not, ‘let’s go home!” his son, Takoa Kadara, said, “let’s come up with another solution.”

“I’ll just say it like it is,” said one resident, who declined to give his name. “If I’m gonna break the law, I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law [with me]. Ten minutes? We’re gone.”

Allensworth residents have tried to block the culverts legally—many, many times. But BNSF wouldn’t give them permission to do it, and so far, the town hasn’t been able to find a government agency with the power to override the corporation’s decision, or persuade it to reconsider. Their local stormwater district doesn’t have jurisdiction over the railroad’s property, and representatives from several state agencies, including Caltrans, CalFire and the Department of Water Resources, said they couldn’t do anything either, even though community members said those agencies agreed that the water spilling through the culverts is a problem. 

BNSF did not respond to requests for comment, but in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, a company spokesperson claimed that blocking the culverts could damage their tracks.

When Allensworth was put under a mandatory evacuation order back in March, the Kadaras and most of their neighbors refused to leave. Who would defend their town if they did?

“The water flowing is natural,” said Denise Kadara. But added it’s also determined by men who say “‘This is where they want the water to go.’”

The history behind today’s water politics

To understand the power dynamics in the Tulare Lake Basin—and how Allensworth ended up on the losing side of it—we have to go back to when the town was founded and Tulare Lake was still alive. In 1908, Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth was a formerly enslaved person who had become the highest ranking Black military officer of his time. As Jim Crow tightened its grip throughout the South, he moved to California to create what he hoped would become the “Tuskegee of the West,” a thriving Black community and college town. Founded by a dream team of Black doctors, professors and farmers, the community of Allensworth became the first town in California to be founded, financed and governed by Black Americans.

Allensworth picked a spot near Tulare Lake, which used to be the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Accounts from the late 1800s describe it as shallow, thick with tule reeds, and ringed by marshland. Herds of elk waded through the shallows, and millions of migratory birds flocked to its shores every year.

But by the time Lt. Col. Allensworth got there, the lake was rapidly disappearing—it had been for years.

“Geologists call that end of the San Joaquin Valley one of the most engineered landscapes in human history,” said Mark Arax, a journalist and expert in the Central Valley’s history and water politics. “[The] human hand has altered that land in a way that few places have been altered.”

Allensworth’s residents weren’t the only people who’d settled along Tulare Lake. A group of white landowners had settled there, too—some of them descending from slave-owning families.

“Many of them were Southerners who’d come from the Confederate states,” said Arax. “They arrived here and they started grabbing the snow melt out of those rivers, and then diverting that onto their farmland.”

In the 1920s, two particularly bold landowner families, the Boswells and the Salyers, made a move on the lakebed itself. The soil at the bottom was dark and unusually rich; it’d be the perfect place for a farm, if the lake wasn’t in the way. So they drained it and diverted the water for irrigation. According to Arax, those diversions ended up drying up the lake completely.

Meanwhile, Allensworth couldn’t get enough water to sustain itself, no matter how hard the community tried. White farmers diverted a river they relied on. A white-owned company refused to dig the community’s wells, but it was more than happy to dig wells for a white town nearby. By the 1920s, a lot of Allensworth’s original settlers had moved away. And by the 1940s, the white landowners in the Tulare Lake Basin had become some of the most powerful farmers in the country, and had successfully seized control of the water for themselves.

Those long-established power dynamics are still at work in the region. Today, Allensworth is a farmworker town where the tap water isn’t safe to drink. Many of its neighbors are large corporations and wealthy farmers, and they control many local agencies—like water and reclamation districts—which make decisions about who gets water in dry years and what to do when the floods come.

“You have these quasi-government agencies, but they’re controlled by the biggest landowners,” says Arax. “It’s a no man’s land in a lot of ways, and that’s the way it’s operated. It resorts to its own devices all the time.”

The Tulare Lake Basin also has a long history of levee sabotage. Historically, when the basin has flooded, some farmers cut levees and blocked canals to protect their land, but it also threatened the town with flooding. This is still happening today. Denise Kadara remembers getting the news from their local stormwater manager in March that a levy on the west side of town had been intentionally breached, prompting calls to evacuate.

As communities like Allensworth brace for the snowmelt this spring—and the floods they know are coming—this history of water theft, sabotage, and discrimination is always in the backs of their minds. 

Although residents at that March meeting decided against blocking the railroad culverts, they haven’t stayed quiet. Allensworth’s community leaders have been calling every government official they can think of, trying to find someone who can help them. And in the past few weeks, Takoa and his family say some politicians and government agencies have started to respond.

CalFire’s emergency response team blocked the levee that was allegedly sabotaged, as well as other breaches, and saved the town from flooding. California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the community in April and promised to send more resources. Allensworth residents are used to the system in this basin working against them, but they hope that’s finally changing. How state agencies act may be the only thing standing between Allensworth and catastrophic flooding.

“We need all the help we can get, from every agency, and every person that wants to help and believes in communities like ours,” Denise Kadara said.

After receiving a presentation May 9 from Graham Kraus, CEO of the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), the San Benito County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to endorse CSAC’s Accountability, Transparency, Housing, Outreach, Mitigation & Economic Opportunity (AT HOME) plan.

Graham described the creation of AT HOME as the “first comprehensive program to address homelessness in the state of California.”

“The most basic thing about government is to clarify who’s supposed to be doing what,” he said, “and in homelessness that doesn’t exist in California, and it doesn’t exist in any other state in the country. Given the crisis level that this issue is at in California, that needs to change.”

Graham said California’s inability to define who does what is “leading to confusion on the part of the public, and there is no real accountability within the state government.”

“Money is flowing in one direction to counties and cities and the work that is being done is completely disconnected from that flow of dollars,” he said. 

Graham added that in coming up with the program, CSAC analyzed years’ worth of investments, policy changes and work done at the local and the statewide levels. In addition, he said CSAC got input from counties on what works, what doesn’t and the challenges to making progress.

Graham said the AT HOME plan aims to streamline the process to focus on homelessness with local accountability, which he said is the uniqueness of the plan because no one with the state is held accountable.  

The plan includes a single, locally developed, countywide plan with one “fiscal agent where the dollars flow through” that aligns responsibilities for who is doing what with the dollars to address local homelessness issues. The county would have the unique authority to address the overall approach to homelessness, he said.

He said the county’s and cities’ responsibilities would have to be clearly defined.

“We’re recommending a framework that would include cities being responsible for citing, standing up, and funding homeless shelters and transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and doing encampment cleanup and sanitation where there are encampments in incorporated areas,” he said. “If these issues exist in the unincorporated area, then the county would be responsible.”

If the county were to adopt that framework, it would significantly change the process in San Benito County as the county is the lead in operating the homeless shelter on San Felipe Road, providing transitional housing and offering other programs aimed at addressing homelessness. 

BenitoLink reached out to Enrique Arreola, Deputy Director at the county’s Community Services and Workforce Development agency to ask how this framework could change services within the county but at the time of publication he had not returned the call. 

Graham added another change CSAC is advocating for is ongoing funding from the state rather than the current one-time grants process.

He said rural counties “need to have maximum flexibility because your infrastructure is different” and “there needs to be flexibility so you can put something in place that makes sense for your community.”

Graham said CSAC has been working with the governor and state legislature, and has held meetings with the White House and other federal entities to advocate for the program.

A bill was drafted and released May 9, and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom in an effort to replace the language in the governor’s current homelessness accountability bill (AB 799).

By endorsing AT HOME, he said the county would add its voice to the coalition, giving it the strength and unity to address homelessness statewide.

“This is certainly not perfect, but it is the only comprehensive plan that is on the table to address homelessness in California,” he said.

Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki said it is important that CSAC take the lead to bring about a “consistency from county to county.” He said, however, the problem is more than a shelter issue.

“The biggest issue here is a drug addiction issue,” he said. “This is a mental health issue. And yes, it’s an economic issue to a certain extent, but it’s largely a drug addiction and a mental health issue and that’s where the focus of any plan on homelessness should be.”

Supervisor Bea Gonzales said the CSAC plan would give the county “teeth to address more in terms of public services, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, mental illness, we’ll be able to allocate how and where the funds need to be put so we can address our own individual problems.”

While Supervisor Angela Curro agreed that drug addiction factors into the homelessness problem, she pointed out that many homeless individuals are not willing to seek help or go into homeless shelters or obey the laws of the community.

“The only way we’re going to address homelessness is with nonprofits, with individuals that have the ability to connect with people and transition them out,” she said. “But how do we help fund that? That would be through the AT HOME program, in my opinion.”

Resident Elia Salinas said that while the government has been unsuccessful in dealing with homelessness and has only assured job security for those in charge of programs, there is a local organization that is delivering results.

“We have a nonprofit here in town with Linda Lampe and Our Father’s House who actually takes people off the streets and helps them.”

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Madera residents from Punjabi Sikh and Indigenous migrant farmworker communities have been heavily impacted by the Madera hospital closure, according to results from surveys conducted by two community-based organizations. 

The surveys had about 300 respondents and came out of a partnership between Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO) — which serves Indigenous migrant farmworkers — and the Jakara Movement — which serves the Punjabi Sikh community. 

“All of the surveys were conducted in a language other than English,” said CBDIO’s Executive Director Sarait Martinez. “I think that is the importance of our survey, because it is beyond the political conversations and many times our voices are not included in those conversations.”

The survey results reveal the following:

• 91% of survey respondents indicating the Madera hospital closure had a direct impact on them. 
• About 80% of all respondents said they were “highly concerned” about the closure’s impact on their health and family. 
• More than three quarters of all survey respondents said other hospitals are too far, they’ve experienced longer wait times if they do get to a hospital in a neighboring county and they’ve experienced limited access to preventative and diagnostic health exams locally in Madera. 

Of the 151 Indigenous migrant farmworkers surveyed, more than 60% said they did not even know about the Madera hospital closure, and just over half said they do not have reliable transportation to access medical care in a neighboring county — demonstrating the compounding impacts of shrinking health infrastructure, language barriers and lack of affordable transportation options. 

Of all survey respondents, about 17% said they didn’t know where to go in the case of a medical emergency. For those who said they have accessed care at a hospital outside the county, a majority of respondents said they received emergency services, specialty care, primary care and even got diagnosed for illnesses. 

Naindeep Singh, the Jakara Movement’s executive director, said both community-based organizations are hoping Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign AB/SB 112, a bill that would create a loan program for distressed nonprofit and public hospitals — and potentially help with reviving the Madera hospital. 

He added that community voices, including those from Punjabi Sikh and Indigenous migrant farmworker communities, need to be included in ongoing conversations about health care in Madera and the future of the hospital. 

“What we have is actually an opportunity to bring communities that have been traditionally shut out to actually come together and make sure that we’re raising our voices as a united Madera,” Singh said. 

He also called for a task force to be convened, to study the deeper issues impacting health access in rural communities and hospitals across the state — an effort that he said should go beyond the popular discussion around Medi-Cal reimbursements.

Mohammad Ashraf, a cardiologist whose office sits across from the dormant Madera Community Hospital, also spoke at the press conference, emphasizing the need for Madera residents to sound the alarm on health infrastructure needs in the county. That also extends to making sure Gov. Gavin Newsom signs AB/SB 112.

“This is really bad and we can do something about it if we work together,” Ashraf said. “The government will help, but government is slow. They take their time, but it’s our problem, it’s our issue.”

The post Madera hospital closure has greatly impacted migrant farmworker and Punjabi Sikh communities, survey shows appeared first on Fresnoland.

MENDOCINO Co., 5/9/23 — The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday morning to repeal Ordinance 4507, which authorized county officials to violate state law as a cost-savings measure related to answering public records requests, less than a year after the controversial legislation was first proposed last June. But now they’re looking to reduce the costs associated with releasing public records through a new “email retention policy” authorizing staff to delete public records within six months of receipt. (Watch the full meeting here.)

“All email will be retained in the County email system for a period of six (6) months. After this time, emails will be disposed of unless they are specifically archived in accordance with the retention periods outlined in the subfolders described below,” Section 5.1 states.

The subsequent text indicates that some records may need to be retained for up to 10 years, or on a permanent basis. It does not, however, provide guidance on what kinds of records will need to be retained for longer than six months. Rather, the new policy gives individual staff significant discretion in determining which public records get destroyed: “It is the responsibility of each employee to determine whether an email constitutes a record to retain, and to save any such record as necessary.”

Aside from cases in which County Counsel Christian Curtis orders the postponement of document destruction related to litigation, determining which emails get deleted and on what time frame will have to be done one department at a time. Curtis himself described that as a “heavy lift” — but the policy passed unanimously and without comment from the public.

Supervisor Ted Williams (5th District) verbally acknowledged that the new email deletion guidelines are related to the repeal of Ord. 4507, which he referred to as a “public records tax.”

“This kind of gets at that,” Williams said. “If we store millions of records on a continual basis without additional capability to be able to parse and search, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.”

Later on in open session, the board voted unanimously to repeal the public records fees passed unanimously by the same board in July 2022. The supervisors did not disclose their rationale in open session, but Supervisor John Haschak (District 3) said in February that Ord. 4507 was not on “solid legal ground.” He made those statements after attending a workshop on public records presented by the Orange County Office of the County Counsel.

Local discourse around the legality of the ordinance has revolved primarily around a 2020 decision by the California Supreme Court in National Lawyers Guild vs. City of Hayward where the court ruled that the California Public Records Act does not authorize California governments to assess fees for finding or redacting public records. In the Mendocino County Counsel’s defense of such fees, Curtis argued the law allowing counties to set and adjust a master fee schedule for government services (Government Code Section 54985) could be used as a work-around.

The supervisors initially found that argument persuasive, but opted not to test it out in court after the First Amendment Coalition threatened litigation. It remains unclear whether county counsel’s argument could successfully challenge a California Supreme Court precedent set just three years earlier. The county’s plan for resolving public records requests left pending since Ord. 4507 went into effect last year also remains a mystery.

Three people spoke in favor of repealing Ord. 4507 during public comment, including Carrie Shattuck, who encouraged the board to improve transparency by posting previously released public records on the county’s records portal. (Mendocino County currently requires an additional PRA to be filed in order to access previously published documents under most circumstances.)

4th District Supervisor Dan Gjerde strenuously objected, however, stating many of the public records requests are for county emails and publishing those might make Mendocino County the “laughingstock of the state.” During a contentious exchange with The Mendocino Voice publisher Kate Maxwell, Gjerde asked Maxwell to avoid encouraging any additional requests from the public.

“If that’s the problem that you’re pointing to, it does make people think you’re not interested in transparency,” Maxwell said. “That’s the right of people to file public records requests.”

Maxwell added that public records requests for correspondence like text and email have uncovered corruption scandals throughout the region.

The First Amendment Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California issued a statement acknowledging the repeal of the ordinance Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s good to see that Mendocino finally did the right thing after starting off in the wrong direction,” wrote Chessie Thatcher, a senior staff attorney with ACLU Northern California. “This ordinance should never have been enacted, and the ACLU and FAC — joined by others in the community — were poised to challenge it.”

You can read the rest of their statement and our previous coverage below:

San Rafael, Calif. – Today the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to repeal Ordinance No. 4507, which authorized the county to charge as much as $150/hour for staff time to locate, review, or redact documents people asked for under the California Public Records Act. The law, passed last July, received widespread condemnation from the public, journalists, and open government advocates. One local media organization, the Mendocino Voice, has been assessed fees in excess of $76,000 since the law was passed.

Mendocino was not the only county in California with an ordinance allowing illegal fees to be charged for public information. According to research by the  First Amendment Coalition and the ACLU of Northern California, seven other counties — Los Angeles, Shasta, Siskiyou, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Santa Cruz, and Ventura — have passed similar laws.

The following can be attributed to David Loy, Legal Director, First Amendment Coalition:

“We’re glad the board of supervisors repealed this law. Public records belong to everyone no matter how wealthy. Democracy depends on freedom of information, but information is not public when only the rich can afford it. We hope other counties with similar laws will listen to the public and abolish these undemocratic laws.”

The following can be attributed to Chessie Thacher, Senior Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California:

“It’s good to see that Mendocino finally did the right thing after starting off in the wrong direction. This ordinance should never have been enacted, and the ACLU and FAC–joined by others in the community–were poised to challenge it. The government must provide public information to everyone with as few barriers as possible. When the government doesn’t do that, we have problems with access and equity.”

Previous coverage:

• Editorial: Tell Mendocino County to rescind their unlawful public records fees
• Letter: We’re calling for Mendocino County to overturn the unlawful public records ordinance
• Letter from the publisher: Mendocino County wins “worst” for government transparency (opinion)
• Sunshine Week: national award names Mendocino County one of America’s “worst in government transparency”
• Mendocino County to charge fees for public records
• Free press advocates caution Mendocino County on new public records fee ordinance
• Open letter to Mendocino County supervisors: new public records fees will cost more than they save

Central Valley legislators are asking for millions of dollars from the state of California to fund outstanding disaster response needs in Planada, a Merced County unincorporated town that flooded during January’s atmospheric river.

State Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat from Merced, supported by Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, a Democrat from Fresno, have submitted a request for $20 million to fund repairs for flood-damaged households, rental assistance, infrastructure needs, vehicle needs and more. The funding is critical, Planada residents and community members said, because federal relief funds didn’t cover the entire scope of the damage and some residents were ineligible for aid.

Caballero “is currently making a budget request specific to the needs of residents in Planada and will continue to work to ensure that they are able to recover,” Elisa Rivera, communications director for Caballero, said in a statement to The Bee/Fresnoland. Soria also confirmed in an email statement that she supports the request.

During the Jan. 9 storm, large swaths of the majority Latino, unincorporated town of 4,000 residents was submerged under water, forcing residents to evacuate their water-logged homes. Since then, Planada residents, many of whom are agricultural workers, have been grappling with job and economic loss and mold-infested living conditions, as they try to rebuild their homes, community and elementary school.

In late January, the Biden administration approved Merced County for a Major Disaster Declaration, which made the county eligible for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And while eligible residents did receive some federal relief, residents and Central Valley legislators say many community members were left out.

New research from the UC Merced Community and Labor Center backs that up. A report released last week finds that 83% of Planada households experienced at least one form of economic loss following the flood. The survey of 236 households found that 57% of Planada households with one or more workers who experienced job loss were ineligible for unemployment insurance, and 64% of households with flood-damaged property were ineligible for federal disaster aid.

The funding request “is a drop in the bucket” of what the community still needs, Sol Rivas, executive director of Valley Onward, said in an interview with The Bee/Fresnoland.

Community advocates, Rivas said, are trying to ensure the county, state and federal governments don’t forget about Planada.

“There’s a long-term recovery process,” Rivas said, “Our hope is that legislators see that and advocate for Planada, and move this ask forward.”

Lawmakers request $11 million for home remediation in Planada

The lawmakers’ request aims to fill huge gaps in funding for home repair, infrastructure and transportation needs.

The bulk of the budget request, or $11.7 million, would be for home remediation costs for flood-affected households.

Researchers found that of the 461 households that experienced flooding, 74% lost property inside their home such as furniture and beds. Meanwhile, 56% of the homes have issues with mold, most of which is a result of the flood.

Federal funds didn’t cover the total costs of damage to Planada households. Of the 164 Planada homeowners that received inspections, the average estimated remediation cost was $34,518 per home, according to the report. Yet the average amount of aid was only $11,628 for the 133 aid-qualifying households.

Another big chunk of the funding request, or $5 million, would be for Planada’s infrastructure needs.

Olivia Gomez, a Planada resident and community liaison for Planada Elementary School District, said the biggest need is fixing the canal infrastructure and other mitigation efforts in order to prevent a future flood, and pointed out that the region experienced similar flood damage five years ago.

“How do we really invest the money where it needs to be invested in order for this not to happen again?” she said.

Madeline Harris, a regional policy manager for Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, agreed. She said state help is crucial given the additional hurdles that rural, unincorporated farmworker communities face.

“Not only are disadvantaged communities and frontline communities more vulnerable to climate change and disasters,” Harris said, “but they also are behind on investments to infrastructure to prevent this from happening, and to recover.”

Another chunk of funding, or $1.1 million, would be for vehicles. For a rural agricultural workforce with few public transportation options, cars are essential to drive to work.

UC Merced researchers found that 46% of flood-affected households lost at least one vehicle that was used to drive to work. Meanwhile, 30 households lost more than one car.

Edward Flores, faculty director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, said in an interview with The Bee/Fresnoland on Friday that it was a privilege to work on this research on “one of the biggest climate disasters that happened in our state right here in our backyard.” He said this type of effort — that engages public officials, community organizations on the ground, and research to inform policy decisions — “could be a model” for other communities in flood-impacted areas.

Will the governor fund Planada’s outstanding needs?

It’s not immediately clear if the state will fund Planada’s outstanding disaster needs, especially as California is expected to have an ongoing budget deficit and lower than expected revenues into the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Less than a year ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted the state had a $97 billion dollar budget surplus.

Central Valley legislators and community groups are hopeful and say the state needs to step up.

“We do know that we’re in a deficit year,” Harris of Leadership Counsel said. “We know that the governor is essentially asking legislators not to make budget requests.”

But “when there’s an emergency,” Harris said, “you have to respond to it.”

Planada isn’t the only community asking for state assistance.

Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo said in a tweet Thursday that it has been over a month since he met with state emergency response officials to seek rapid response assistance for undocumented residents who don’t qualify for federal assistance, but there is still “no such assistance on the ground.”

“California must do better for its flood victims,” Alejo said, “especially in disadvantaged communities.”

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MENDOCINO Co, CA, 5/8/23 — Linda MacElwee, watershed coordinator for the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District (MCRCD), still receives numerous calls every fall as a bar of sediment builds up at the mouth of the Navarro River. She explained that the state used to open up this bar, which is created by low flows and big waves and blocks fish passage into the river. 

“What we have kind of come to understand is, we don’t want to open up that bar,” she said. “It means that we would be inviting fish into the system when there isn’t really sufficient flow to support them, even once they got in.”

The Navarro estuary has been a “black box” of research on salmon habitat, MacElwee explained. But this year, it was included in an $8.3 million grant proposal by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) pursuing floodplain reconnection and habitat restoration for Central California Coast (CCC) coho salmon and threatened California Coastal Chinook at three different rivers and seven different sites in Mendocino County. 

The proposal came out of successful restoration work in the Ten Mile and Garcia watersheds, explained TNC North Coast Restoration Project Manager Peter Van De Burgt. 

“We’ve had a pretty robust restoration program going in the Ten Mile watershed, where we have done comprehensive planning and had three rounds of construction so far,” he told The Voice. “We’ve built three separate projects there since 2018. Then last year, we built a large estuary project in the Garcia River, near the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands. We’re at this point where we’ve established a blueprint that we’ve seen is pretty successful.” 

With this new project, TNC will expand its program in the Ten Mile and Garcia watersheds while beginning work in the Navarro, over what Van de Burgt estimates will be four years from the time of project approval. The Department of Commerce has currently recommended funding approval for the project, in addition to another $52 million for Northern California climate resiliency efforts.

These and other restoration projects revolve around hitting NOAA Fisheries’ goals for Central California Coast coho spawners returning to the rivers each year. According to recent recovery plans from NOAA, “all populations remain depressed and well below recovery targets.”

“We’re a long way off from that,” Van de Burgt said. “But we’ve seen some indicators of progress. To me, that means we just need to keep doing these active restoration projects, trying to create habitat for salmon and create the physical conditions that they need to survive and thrive. Hopefully we’ll start getting the numbers in our favor over time.” 

Van de Burgt also emphasized that what’s good for fish can be good for humans. That’s part of why floodplain reconnection is a critical component of TNC’s proposal. 

“One of the reasons why flooding is such a big problem in many of our communities right now is because we have systematically disconnected our entire river systems from their adjacent floodplain,” he explained. “So when we get these peak flow events, when we get storms, we end up with really high velocities and we can end up with really acute flooding. But under more natural conditions, where floodplains are connected to the channel, water will get up onto the floodplain during storms [and] we won’t have these really sudden spikes or as dramatic peaks. The general notion is that the more that we’re able to connect floodplains, the more it’s going to slow water down, retain water on the landscape for a longer period of time, and attenuate downstream flood impacts.” 

He’s especially excited about the potential to aid downstream communities in the Navarro and Garcia watersheds. 

For MacElwee, a greater exploration of the lower Navarro estuary in service of bolstering fish habitat is an exciting prospect. MCRCD will partner with TNC for this investigation, assessing three different gulches for the opportunity to build large wood structures to foster salmon habitat. 

“There’ll be a technical advisory group that will review all of the data and the science and what the findings of those three preliminary designs look like, and make recommendations,” she explained. “Then one of those projects will get designed.” 

She added, “They just give an opportunity for the fish to get off of that major highway, to get into some more protected areas and get out of the high flows. It’s important for food resources, for putting on size and weight. If they are getting what they need, especially if they have some off-channel habitat where they can rest, that actually is super helpful.” 

With these projects, Van de Burgt also hopes to expand community outreach and involvement with adjacent tribes and landowners.

“For the Garcia restoration plan that we’re planning to do with this grant, a huge part of that is going to be reaching out to the local Manchester-Point Arena Band of Pomo and trying to meaningfully engage them on the project,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll forge a good relationship and a close collaboration on whatever we plan to do in that watershed in terms of restoration.” 

Read more about Northern California climate resiliency funding recommended for approval.

Note: Kate Fishman covers the environment & natural resources for The Mendocino Voice in partnership with a Report For America. Her position is funded by the Community Foundation of Mendocino, Report for America, & our readers. You can support Fishman’s work with a tax-deductible donation here or by emailing publisher@mendovoice.com. Contact her at KFishman@mendovoice.com or at (707) 234-7735. The Voice maintains editorial control and independence.

What began as a discussion to consider a resolution to adopt an ordinance to increase the number of affordable housing units allowed by the city’s inclusionary housing program from 15% to 20%, quickly went off the rails when Hollister Councilmember Rolan Resendiz accused “the majority of the council” of taking money from developers.

Mayor Mia Casey told BenitoLink, “It is not my wish to waste precious council time on code of conduct hearings but what choice is left when an attempt to informally warn Councilmember Resendiz about the need to follow the rules of order, be respectful and adhere to our code of conduct has fallen on deaf ears?

“Councilmember Resendiz indicated Monday evening he intends to continue his disruptive and disrespectful behavior,” she continued. “I will do whatever is necessary to address the matter in accordance with our code of conduct and restore order to our meetings.”

In response to Casey, Resendiz told BenitoLink “Mia Casey warned me behind closed doors to not bring up any connection to her and the developers that she supported in public again, and if I did, she would have me censured and take me off my committees. This is an attempt from the mayor to silence my voice and not point out that her and Dolores Morales are funded by Anderson Homes.”

Casey told BenitoLink May 5 that if Resendiz “intends to continue his behavior, I warned that I would be forced to take formal disciplinary action for violations of our code of conduct. Our City Attorney was present and witnessed the conversation. Casey did not say what action she intended to take against Resendiz.”

According to the Hollister Elections financial statements website, five members of the Anderson family of Anderson Homes each donated $99 for a total of $495 to Casey’s campaign but she returned the money on Dec. 28. Bill and Michelle Lee, who are proposing a 141-unit subdivision on Fairview Road, also donated $250 each and Casey also returned the money. Casey also returned Andrew Lee’s $250 contribution. 

This is the second consecutive meeting where Resendiz inferred other councilmembers violated the city’s code of conduct. Resendiz has been accused in the past of similar behavior and was ultimately censured. He did say, though, that he was not investigated.

At the April 17 meeting the council voted to give Councilmember Rick Perez a verbal warning for violating the code of conduct. Resendiz, who wanted Perez censured and removed from committees, was the lone no vote to verbally reprimand him. 

During the May 1 meeting, as the council discussed and moved toward tabling the affordable housing resolution in order to hold a public meeting on the issue, Resendiz verbally attacked Casey by direct reference, as well as Perez by innuendo. 

At first, Resendiz spoke calmly about the resolution, saying, “We are way overdue with adopting an inclusionary ordinance for the City of Hollister. Developers have been coming here for years and making a ton of money. This is something that should have been done years ago.”

During the “years” he was speaking of, though, Casey, Morales and Perez were not on the council.

Resendiz continued, “But the fact of the matter is, there are politics at play here. And in a few minutes, she’s gonna bang her gavel because she’s not gonna like what I have to say, but a vast majority of elected officials here are funded by developers. Their campaigns are funded by developers. They have conversations with developers. Therefore—”

Casey did pound her gavel and repeatedly said, “Point of order.”

She appeared stunned at the outburst as he began a tirade of accusations without actually mentioning the names of those seated next to him and who he was looking at.  

Casey asked him to stop but he would not. She called for a five-minute recess and he continued to speak to no one in particular as she left the chambers.

During the recess, Morales called him a liar and he accused her of taking money from local businessman and former mayor Victor Gomez, which she denied. He asked if she took money from developer Bill Lee. She told him he was being ridiculous and said, “Let’s go back to government business.”

Victor and Anietra Gomez gave Morales $250 each in 2021. Bill and Michelle Lee donated $250 each that year. Michelle donated another $250 in 2022. Hollister has a $250 limit on campaign contributions to candidates by individuals or corporations per year. The ordinance does not affect contributions to separate committees in support of a candidate. 

Five members of the Anderson family of Anderson Homes also donated $495 to Morales’ campaign. She reported receiving $12,744. Morales also received a number of $250 contributions from several unions and private individuals. 

The Million More Voters, a separate election committee supporting her, reported a $5,000 contribution from Operating Engineers Local Union 3 of Alameda. In addition, the committee received $1,000 from Bill Lee, who is Martha’s Kitchen executive director. 

Casey reported $21,704.87 in contributions, with the majority mostly coming from professionals and retired individuals. 

Resendiz reported $7,215.95 in 2022 contributions when he ran for San Benito County Board of Supervisors. He received $857.55 from then-Hollister mayor Ignacio Velazquez. He also received two loans from Nelda Escamilla totaling $2,197.30, and a loan of $1,000 from The Vault (also Velazquez). And, though he accused Morales of accepting money from Victor Gomes, Resendiz received a $99 contribution from him.

Rick Perez self-financed his campaign by contributing $4,211.72. 

Resendiz then left the dais for a few minutes to talk to a KSBW reporter who was there to cover the housing element story. Shortly thereafter, Casey returned to the dais to join Morales and Councilman Tim Burns, who had managed to remain clear of the fray but was overheard by this reporter to whisper to Casey, “this should be in closed session.”

After Resendiz returned, a council majority agreed to table the resolution until a public meeting could be arranged and held on an upcoming Saturday at the Veterans Memorial Building.

Resendiz voted against the motion.

Related BenitoLink stories:

Investigation finds Councilman Rick Perez violated code of ethics | BenitoLink

Public speaks out against comments from Hollister Councilman Resendiz | BenitoLink

Hollister council vote to censure members Richman and Spencer fails | BenitoLink

Hollister Council censures member Rolan Resendiz | BenitoLink

Public speaks out against comments from Hollister Councilman Resendiz | BenitoLink

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The Corcoran levee is being raised – again.

The fear is it won’t be high enough as runoff from record breaking snowpack above several rivers that feed into the old Tulare Lake gets underway.

The levee stands at 188 feet. 

That’s four feet shorter than when it was last raised in 2017, after sinking several feet from its prior height.

The problem is subsidence, the land is sinking. And it’s taking the levee with it.

When California dries out and farmers can’t get enough water from river and state supplies, they turn to groundwater. 

Around Corcoran, farmers have pumped the ground so hard it is collapsing – subsiding – over a large area.

The massive area of subsidence has been documented in satellite photos. It even has a name: “the Corcoran bowl.”

Because the subsidence covers such a large area, it’s hard to see the damage. Bridges, homes and roads haven’t crumbled into sinkholes. Buildings aren’t tilting sideways. Nothing so dramatic.

But the land is quietly and irrevocably sinking.

In this epic water year, the cost is coming due.

Piling up dirt – and debt

Flood water is already lapping at the west and south sections of the Corcoran levee. At the height of flooding last month, water briefly washed up against the levee’s short eastern arm, which wraps around two state prisons. 

With heavy runoff anticipated to roll down the Sierra Nevadas over the next month, the Cross Creek Flood Control District is scrambling to build up the 14.5 mile levee.

The district only has about $1 million for a job that is estimated will cost $17 million to $21 million. Even so, it is pushing forward with construction.

When asked if Kings County is helping pay for the levee work, Finance Director Erik Gonzalez said it’s still up in the air.

“…funding for the Corcoran levee project has still not been settled,” he wrote in an email. “On our end, the County is hoping to work with CalOES and FEMA to ensure that the project qualifies for reimbursement by these two organizations and have requested that assistance from CalOES.”

So far, no word back.

The Cross Creek district and City of Corcoran sent an urgent plea for funding to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on April 25, noting the importance of the levee to the two state prisons.

“…we are in a more desperate situation seeking funding support for the remaining Corcoran Levee reinforcement work, and hope that you can be of assistance,” wrote Cross Creek General Manager Dustin Fuller and Corcoran City Manager Greg Gatzka. 

“Finding flood protective measure funding is proving to be extremely elusive,” Fuller and Gatzka added.

The prisons gave them dirt, but it’s unclear if any money was forthcoming. 

Fuller directed questions to Gatzka. And Gatzka did not return multiple phone calls. 

Been there, done that

Six years ago, the mountains were also heavy with snow. Flood water wasn’t at the door but the Cross Creek district looked at its elevation maps back in March 2017 and realized it had a problem.

The levee, which had stood at 195 feet in 1983, had sunk. 

It was down to 188 feet, not high enough for a potentially huge flood.

So, Cross Creek scrambled through March and April of 2017 to rebuild the levee to 192 feet. It cost $10 million, which the district didn’t have. 

Contractors were issued IOUs just to get the work done.

In the end, the mostly farmworker residents of Corcoran voted to add an extra $250, on average, to their property taxes for three years to make good on those IOUs. 

The Department of Corrections also paid a share of the tax burden, which was divvied up considering the protective benefit each property received from the levee based on proximity and property value.

Corrections’ share in 2017 was close to $6 million. 

Now, here they all are again. Another epic snow year, a sunken levee and a big bill to pay.

Merging flood zones

No matter how high it’s rebuilt, though, the Corcoran levee may not keep the town dry.

That’s because groundwater pumping has caused the land to sink southeast of Corcoran. 

The extreme topographical changes were documented in a 2017 engineering report commissioned for the High Speed Rail project, which runs along Corcoran’s eastern edge next to Highway 43.

The report noted existing and future anticipated subsidence would cause three flood zones to merge, putting the rail line in the path of potentially catastrophic flooding.

The Tulare Lake, Deer Creek and Tule River flood zones will merge, according to the report by Amec Foster Wheeler Environment and Infrastructure Inc.

“The resulting flood depth along the HSR (High Speed Rail) Alignment could potentially be more than 16 ft, and the length of the HSR Alignment within the modified flood zone could potentially be more than 20 miles.”

Those water depths and distances are based on an Army Corps of Engineers estimate of a 100-year flood volume in the lake of 1.65 million acre feet, according to the report.

The report states that because of rapid subsidence around Corcoran, “…it does not seem prudent to consider this risk to be negligible.”

New lake bottom?

Areas around Tulare Lake that had not flooded before were swamped this year after the March 10 storm drenched the region and washed down an unusually large amount of low-elevation snow.

Some farmers blamed the giant J.G. Boswell Company, which owns most of the Tulare Lake bed and its levees. They alleged the company held water off the lake bottom in order to plant tomatoes and purposely pushed it onto neighbors south and east of Corcoran.

Others say there was just such a rush of water down the Tule River and Cross Creek that breaks were bound to happen.

What’s clear is the “new” southeast area that flooded appears to be following scenarios predicted in the 2017 Amec Foster engineering report.

Under those scenarios, subsidence will cause the old Tulare Lake footprint to morph from mostly egg-shaped to more of a lopsided mushroom, with greater amounts of water at the top of the lake that will spread out to the east and south.

People are already seeing that happen on the ground.

Several years ago, water managers had to install lift stations to pump water from the Angiola water district southeast of Corcoran up and into canals that cross the lake bed. That water used to run by gravity.

And if there hadn’t been pumps moving water from Deer Creek up into the lake bed earlier this spring, it would have flooded farms and towns including Allensworth and Alpaugh, said Jack Mitchell, manager of the Deer Creek Stormwater District.

Elevation maps completed for the district bear out what the Amec Foster report predicted six years ago. The area around Angiola has sunk 24 feet in the eight years since Deer Creek had its previous surveys done, Mitchell said.

“There’s a new lake bottom,” he said.

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