Right? Because without all that extra food your parents wouldn’t have been born, meaning you redundant muppets wouldn’t be here, and the freeways would be clear.
It was the rich farmers decades ago that drained it. I'm sure they didn't learn because they're dead now but maybe we can change it. Having a lake this size would help the climate of the southern valley and the water resources up north wouldn't be so stretched.
More like: Rich man: *hand wringing* "Heh, lets drain this lake, divert the rivers, destroy the forests, drive away the natives, and use the remaining water to grow cotton in our new desert."
The central valley is a thirsty place, Lake Tulare should simply be an overflow lake and have special zoning, in the long run, the water will always be welcome.
Not only that, in the summer the evaporation would bring rain back to the Sierras and in the winter more snow. It would balance the region to not be so dependent on these monsoon seasons that occur every 20-30 years.
YES! We need to replenish the tons of ground water that the farmers AND the residents have been pumping out of the ground for years now. We're FAR from topping off our underground storage capacities. Percolating the water through the soil is a slow process when we've had so many years of dry weather. This will do GREAT THINGS for the long term underground wells and water supplies :D
Yep. But you can't replenish ground that has subsided its a shame that farmers didn't do this earlier before the aquifers lost the area it used to have
They are always going to bias the story on what folks with money want. They want to farm this floodplain and government will bend the rules to accommodate money.
Centennial floods aren't literally once a century, they just have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year, thus probability says it will happen every hundred years. It's really not that complex, this is a middle school earth science vocab term. I can't wait for you people to discover millennial floods.
Imagine taking a lake larger than Lake Tahoe and completely wiping it off the map! Obviously not as deep, but I'm sure parts of Tulare Lake could be restored into a great recreation and wildlife hotspot.
To be fair, it was drained over a hundred years ago from irrigation. People didn't think of or consider the consequences of altering the land like that. It's a bit like how Burmese pythons, tilapia, and nutria got into the US, or rabbits and cane toads in Australia. Heck, that one community, Corcoran, would be underwater. Hind sight is 50/50.
@@MisterLumpkin I don't know this area and can't speak for anyone that, say, just moved there in the last ten years or have been there for three or four generations, but people have been building there for a long time now. One whole community was built on the lake bed itself. It could be said for any situation that doesn't make sense, 'why would they do that? why would anyone?' People make decisions on all sorts of factors. In this instance of time for the people living there, things didn't work out in their favour.
you cant build on the lake bed. its not allowed. the ONLY thing allowed on the lake bed is farming, and even then the farmers know that their fields might get flooded if we have a really wet year and high snowpack.
For 40 years the central valley water table has been pumped to low levels and there has been ground subsidence. The record snow melt runoff season should produce notable results
Gavin will pump it all to the ocean to cover up the fact he didn't patch SF's broken sewer system when he was mayor. It's his Painting of Dorian Grey lol.
It is honestly despicable the way local farmers are blaming their water shortages on the reservoir managers and politicians. It is the farmers pumping our reservoirs and wells dry, so they can pour it out onto the ground during the heat of the day. Then they act surprised when they run out of water. How much water did they store during the record rains? Where are their irrigation ponds? It is like punching a cement wall then cursing it for being hard. You would think they would get smart and use drip irrigation, or even just water at night. Climate change is real, the climate extremes are only going to get more extreme.
Maybe. Depends on the structure of the aquifers that have been pumped dry. If it is sandy than they can refill quickly. If it has a lot of clay, then it will take a long time because of tight structure that was collapsed and compressed by pumping.
It’s a start, plenty of scientists/ geologists/ hydrologists saying this needs to happen every year for at least 10 years to make a difference to the depleted grown water. Unfortunately most of this water will just sit in the surface and evaporate over summer
Yup, but salt will go down with the fresh water. What with salt build up, reoccurring drought, and now flooding, maybe nature is shutting down that non-sustainable farming.
@@Batlord_Carcas This! Lake Tulare being there made the climate a lot more livable in the southern part of the Valley. Unfortunately, some idiats decided that they want to grow cotton instead and killed the lake! Now everybody suffers.
Fun fact. The whole valley used to be a great lake, but it suffered a massive breach near SF about 175,000 years ago and drained leaving this lake as it's last vestige.
These are flood plains and the reason they make such good farmlands is because the floods recharge the soil and become fertile. Similar to the fertile crescent in Africa . The Mississippi flood plain is another and allowing it to flood is helpful for agriculture . It also recharges aquifers .
It's not a flood plain, it's a basin. Read Cadillac Desert. It just dries up every summer and floods every spring. Or it would do this if the Army Corps of Engineers didn't divert all of the inflows so four big landowners could farm at the bottom of a lake.
@@MattBakken10 it's all the same . A basin a plain it's one in the same . They flood then dry up then flood again . That's what happens in low lying areas . The problem here is the land has dropped 10 feet or more turning the area into a bowl
@@grahamfloyd3451 Unprecedented means never having occurred before. They stated 4 separate incidents over the last 100 years where it happened before. The same number of times they used the term "unprecedented". Google is not a dictionary. Use a dictionary.
When the lake is full of water it becomes navigable waters. The State holds all of its navigable waterways and lands lying beneath them as trustee of the public trust for the benefit of the people. Naturally I hope it remains a lake.
@@tommurphy4307 Tell that to the Department of the Interior which has asserted control over man made ponds because migratory birds are using them as a place to rest during migration.
Ironic that all the farmers that complain about not enough dam storage are now doing everything in their power to try and prevent the biggest lake in California from returning. Don’t drain it. Let it come back.
@@grahamfloyd3451 Yeah, the lake Tulare lakebed floods every 20-25 years. The last time was in 1997, I think. Before that in 1983, before that in the 60s and 50s. What did you expect? This used to be a lake for 500k years before they desiccated it for farming water. It's not like it will stay dry forever. That's not how nature works.
Not only can this go on into September but an El Nino is developing. There could also be another decent winter next season . . . and the reservoirs might STILL be nearly full.
The mega-flood of 1605 submerged large portions of present-day California (Wikipedia). Geology indicates other "mega-floods" occurred in years: 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1300, 1418, 1750, 1810 & 1861-62; most of the Central Valley was submerged In the Great Flood of 1862.
This reporter is incorrect in the intro. Heul howser has video of water flooding that farmland. The footage is more current than the early 80s mentioned.
@@johnmorgan7947Maybe actually read the Bible and understand 'Mother Earth' is a metaphor for the fertility of the land instead of being perpetually outraged. "The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish with the earth. The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left." Isaiah 24:4-6 “Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?" Job 37:14-16 “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." Job 12:7-10 "In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land." Psalms 95:4-5 "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalms 19:1 "The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen." Isaiah 43:20
Why the heck have we been diverting water to the Ocean through the San Juaqine River when we have a natural reservoir. Kick the farmers off that land and dig it deeper.
Endorheic lakes can very quickly become too salty to be useful for irrigation. I think its foolish to try and contest this lake’s existence, but it wouldn’t be useful for very long as an irrigation reservoir. The lakebed is mostly clay, so percolation isn’t really a practical option either. It should just be a lake for the birds.
@@astrosoup A final solution will be very expensive. Either the land is allowed to salt up, which will end farming, or the Fresno Slough is channelized to allow some of the water to get to the San Joaquin river. This will ameliorate the salting problem but we are talking Los Angeles River size public works. I think it will depend on how much damage is done this year. Flood the prison at Corcoran perhaps?
The lake itself is private property…or the land at the bottom of the lake ? What are the state laws regarding navigable waters and public access to the water ways ? (Kayaking and rafting on state rivers and such?)
This is fascinating. In England, the biggest freshwater lake after Windermere was Wittlesea Mere which was drained around 1851 to form Holm Fen and is now all farmland. This is all part of The Fenlands in the Wash which hovers just on or below sea level. Many people emigrated from here on the first ships to settle in the US. It's no coincidence that you also have places called Boston, New York(*) and Denver, and so do we. *New York is not to be confused with York. It's between Tattershall Castle and Boston in Lincolnshire. York is in Yorkshire.
This is what happens when “private owners “ don’t Learn from they’re mistakes during the dust bowl that made them immigrate to California in the fist place
@@TohaBgood2 i grew up in Tulare county. All the complaining that ca needs more water storage. The largest one possible is kept drained for cotton. Which requires millions of acer feet of water.
The destruction of this lake by the farmers needs to be stopped. Having the lake there will restore the biggest ‘water battery’ California has. Buffering water for dryer periods, replenishing the aquifers and helping to restore farming productivity around the lake.
@@luisgutierrez8047 Nope. Look up J.G. Boswell. This is purely a private corporations gradually desiccating the lake and buying up the newly dried up land for cotton farming.
Everyone is saying this is destroying farmland...it's the best thing for it IMHO. There has been a huge problem with selenium building up over the years, this will (possibly?) dissipate that and bring in new nutrients. So we have an idle year, and the California economy takes a hit. Next year crops will be a lot better.
Considering the salt build up in soils around there it should probably be made as full as plausible and kept high, occationally rising high enough to overflow into some ocean-bound river.
That's actually how Lake Tulare is supposed to work. It used to be connected to the San Joaquins river. It was basically a big overflow water storage tank. Like a natural safety valve. But some genius decided to desiccate the lake and grow cotton there instead. And every time it floods (cause it's darn lake!) they ask for money from the government to help pump it out. It's a pretty crazy situation actually.
I was told by a member of the Yokut tribe that they used to control Tulare Lake. It’s was their major food source. If anyone tried to take it away they fought them. Eventually, in time someone got the idea to drain the lake for the fertile soil. Who knows this might help replenish the aquifers, replenish the soil. I remember the refuge had elk and was a huge part of the lake. With a lot of farmers being part of the 240,000+ that left and now the production of USA’s food supply from Cali has gone from 90% to 40% be prepared for food shortages. If brought back the real size of the lake the whole valley would be under water. On high flood years you could take a boat from Bakersfield to the Bay Area. Do your own research.
Woah, when could you take a boat from Bakersfield to the Bay Area? Geographically it makes sense, I’m just wondering if you said that because it was possible in your lifetime specifically.
The key here is that the Yokut tube had the right and ability to self defense, in order to protect their property. Only when that was taken away did they loose their property. In order for people to be controlled, their ability to fight back must be taken away.
This is awesome news. That winter of 1982-83, which was so massive, that was the one and only time the water in Lake Mead topped the spillways. Being a native Las Vegan, I would love to see Lake Mead rise massively. Reaching out on a limb here, but maybe California will not take its usual allotment of water from Lake Mead since the entire state has received so much rain and snow this season from northern to Southern California. But I am probably just dreaming.
I don't know how much of this moisture is getting to Lake Mead's sources in Colorado. But if California does not take its allotments, which the biggest, that would leave more for other states.
no, my tangerines and cannabis plants are still thirsty and my water gods are trying to raise the prices- as usual. time to invest in some more rain barrels.
Wow. Very similar to the flooding of the Fraser Valley in BC🇨🇦in 2021. The levy broke during a historic rain event, and Sumas Lake refilled, causing a billion in damages to farm land. It took over a month for the massive headgates pumps to drain it.
the salton sea was formed by a broken levy,not by climate change or any other nonsense and is drying up...oh well--the great salt lake used to be hundreds of miles in all direction--salt lake city was under hundreds of feet of water---climate change(garbage)
Even though the land is flooding you're going to benefit by letting the water recharge the aquifers that have been stressed out over the last several years of the statewide drought. Its going to be an inconvenience but the ground is thristy
Huh…we pay taxes to the middle of the Kaweah River, but we don’t own it. According to the State, any Navigable waterway may be traveled as long as you don’t go above the high water mark. So that whole trespassing thing has questionable validity. What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander…or Resnick….or Boswell. I think I recall a couple Kayakers went from near Bakersfield to the Bay in 1983.
Well if it's private property, let them DEAL with it NO help from ANY STATE or Federal Agency. The property owners drained it and now mother nature has filled it. SO YOU SHOULD DEAL with it. Had it not been for the greed of said property owners it would still be a lake, They profited off it's water now spend some of that profit and FIX it.
Mind you, last time the farmers did get the state to pay to pump the water into SoCal storage. So this conversation is actually coming up in 3...2...1...
This guy said Tulare Lake filling caused a lot of grief though I don't think the pelicans shared his assessment of the situation. It's amazing how differently animals react to change. If you asked me the pelicans get a thumbs up.
Private property or navigable waterway? Maybe it's a bad idea to buy land that's normally at the bottom of a lake... There's always the potential for the water to come back.
I was just reading that 1000 years ago this was always a lake where native people used to live. Divine reclamation, I would say. Human activity later is what drained the lake in the first place. Just the facts please😅 This is the way it is supposed to be. The Creator decided before time began. It isn't a controversy.
That would be a legal Quagmire, considering those are accessible and navigable waterways. They'll call it private land, but it's no longer land. Good luck enforcing it
That's what they did last time. The farmers begged the state until they used taxpayer money to pump the water into SoCal storage. But the farmers in the Valley seem to be very much against "socialism" these days so they're probably SOL this time. We might get a our lake back!
By this logic you should be able to move your houseboat onto any large puddle that extends from public property to private property. It sounds silly because it is.
@@burmy1552 except that's exactly what california law says -- waterways that are big enough to move a houseboat on are public property as navigable waterways.
Let mother nature do her thing and restore the lake. Get rid of all the water intensive farms! No need to grow cotton or alfalfa, crops that require a whole lot of water and that degrade the soil, in a dry climate. Which by the way can be improved by bringing the lake back
How is that private property if you are in a boat and not physically touching the land? Besides, waterways aren’t private. You could walk down the beach along the waterline and still not be trespassing.
You know for an area of the country that has worried about water shortages now for the past several years, Who drained this lake years ago for farmland that they cannot support with water shortages now... I mean maybe it's just not a good thing to play with mother nature. If someone from my farming community here in midwest I understand the hardship here going on but it's kind of a self created one. If we knew better over a 100 years ago or better we would never have drained the lake. There are so many reasons for this...
And more often than they are talking about I know from experience in my life there ! show the old map of the fresh water river from Stockton to Bakersfield areas !
Yall omitted the fact that these farmers that lay claim to the private land under water at the moment reap the privilege from most of their settler ancestors genocide of the Yokut people, whose land was taken without mercy.
We need to stop letting rain water that goes out to sea like large rivers instead of being diverting the water into a huge underground facilities that will let the water slowly get back into the water tables
Or, you know, just let this natural lake that was there for 500k year stay where nature intended. I mean instead of spending trillions digging holes in the ground.
Caused extinction of fish that evolved in that lake for millions of years. Farming in California was driven by pure greed at the expense of the environment.
It's the way the natural world works. A lake will be a lake. It's maddening to think old farmers would dry a beautiful thing like Turare Lake. I hope the locals if they can, understand that
should probably let a lake bed be a lake bed tbh
Right? Just like beaches lol. People never learn
Right? Because without all that extra food your parents wouldn’t have been born, meaning you redundant muppets wouldn’t be here, and the freeways would be clear.
No common sense here, please.
Oh, maybe folks will figure that out, but yeah, probably not.
It was the rich farmers decades ago that drained it. I'm sure they didn't learn because they're dead now but maybe we can change it. Having a lake this size would help the climate of the southern valley and the water resources up north wouldn't be so stretched.
“Hey, let’s build in this here lake bed.”
“Woah, there’s a lake in it!”
yeah only in california SMH
WHODA THUNK?!!
More like: Rich man: *hand wringing* "Heh, lets drain this lake, divert the rivers, destroy the forests, drive away the natives, and use the remaining water to grow cotton in our new desert."
@@hotdogsarepropaganda Mexico city is built on the ormer pluvial lake in endhorrheic basin. It was stupid idea drying such lake.
Maybe you should let Tulare lake return every year. That would help the aquifers more than occasional flooding.
let?
The central valley is a thirsty place, Lake Tulare should simply be an overflow lake and have special zoning, in the long run, the water will always be welcome.
Well you cant let it return every year because it isnt something that happens every year.
If we even get this amount of water again.
Not only that, in the summer the evaporation would bring rain back to the Sierras and in the winter more snow. It would balance the region to not be so dependent on these monsoon seasons that occur every 20-30 years.
This is nature's way of replenishing underground water storage that have been pumped dry.
YES! We need to replenish the tons of ground water that the farmers AND the residents have been pumping out of the ground for years now. We're FAR from topping off our underground storage capacities. Percolating the water through the soil is a slow process when we've had so many years of dry weather. This will do GREAT THINGS for the long term underground wells and water supplies :D
It is excellent news.
Sometimes nature balances annually, sometimes by decades and sometimes by centuries. Our planet is alive and the climate is always changing.
Yep. But you can't replenish ground that has subsided its a shame that farmers didn't do this earlier before the aquifers lost the area it used to have
@@Jessyjames60 👍
Nothing like a '100 year event' in 1942, 1968,1982 and 2023. History is magic.
Bad at math
Humans egos love drama
Dr Nat! I've been watching her in Texas and she said that about Galveston too! 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
You forgot 1997. But Hey…not a lot of Mathematicians coming out of Central Valley Schools.
They are always going to bias the story on what folks with money want. They want to farm this floodplain and government will bend the rules to accommodate money.
Centennial floods aren't literally once a century, they just have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year, thus probability says it will happen every hundred years. It's really not that complex, this is a middle school earth science vocab term. I can't wait for you people to discover millennial floods.
Tulare lake's borders should be a state park, stabilizing the climate and reservoir of the central valley.
Bring the lake back!
Maybe the folks that own the land don't want the lake back.
@@johnbaskett2309 You think? Maybe it never should have become private land in the first place.
@@mkaberli Give it back to the Indians?
Yes!
@@johnbaskett2309 Half of people's food go in the trash can anyway. We could get by with less food.
Imagine taking a lake larger than Lake Tahoe and completely wiping it off the map! Obviously not as deep, but I'm sure parts of Tulare Lake could be restored into a great recreation and wildlife hotspot.
We need to fight for it!! They build over our farmland with sprawl but they can't give back at least some of the lake to nature!!!
No it can't. The lake will turn into the second salton sea. The lake will be polluted with farm poison.
Plant rice this year.
It was wiped out by irrigation and diversion. It would be there if people weren't using it all up. Its natural
The many beautiful migratory bird species that relied on it deserve to have it back.
OK, I can see farming a dry lake bed, but why would you build your house there?
Should be houseboats instead.
To be fair, it was drained over a hundred years ago from irrigation. People didn't think of or consider the consequences of altering the land like that. It's a bit like how Burmese pythons, tilapia, and nutria got into the US, or rabbits and cane toads in Australia. Heck, that one community, Corcoran, would be underwater. Hind sight is 50/50.
Win/Win for developers.
@@Mondoblasto0 - yeah, but it last flooded in 1983. A long time ago, but not out of living memory.
@@MisterLumpkin I don't know this area and can't speak for anyone that, say, just moved there in the last ten years or have been there for three or four generations, but people have been building there for a long time now. One whole community was built on the lake bed itself. It could be said for any situation that doesn't make sense, 'why would they do that? why would anyone?' People make decisions on all sorts of factors. In this instance of time for the people living there, things didn't work out in their favour.
It has happened in the past and will happen again in the future but let's build our houses on what is the bottom of a periodical lake.
i would 3D-print them in some good silicone material so they will be move-in ready when the water level comes back down.
you cant build on the lake bed. its not allowed. the ONLY thing allowed on the lake bed is farming, and even then the farmers know that their fields might get flooded if we have a really wet year and high snowpack.
@@orion7741 that's crazy because I see a building in that lake. Guess they didn't know about that rule.
For 40 years the central valley water table has been pumped to low levels and there has been ground subsidence. The record snow melt runoff season should produce notable results
Gavin will pump it all to the ocean to cover up the fact he didn't patch SF's broken sewer system when he was mayor. It's his Painting of Dorian Grey lol.
It is honestly despicable the way local farmers are blaming their water shortages on the reservoir managers and politicians. It is the farmers pumping our reservoirs and wells dry, so they can pour it out onto the ground during the heat of the day. Then they act surprised when they run out of water. How much water did they store during the record rains? Where are their irrigation ponds? It is like punching a cement wall then cursing it for being hard. You would think they would get smart and use drip irrigation, or even just water at night. Climate change is real, the climate extremes are only going to get more extreme.
This lake is a good first step.
Maybe. Depends on the structure of the aquifers that have been pumped dry. If it is sandy than they can refill quickly. If it has a lot of clay, then it will take a long time because of tight structure that was collapsed and compressed by pumping.
when does it get 'notable'?
Wouldn’t this be a huge charge to the groundwater ?
It’s a start, plenty of scientists/ geologists/ hydrologists saying this needs to happen every year for at least 10 years to make a difference to the depleted grown water. Unfortunately most of this water will just sit in the surface and evaporate over summer
@@craiggillett5985 Thanks 👌
Yup, but salt will go down with the fresh water. What with salt build up, reoccurring drought, and now flooding, maybe nature is shutting down that non-sustainable farming.
The evaporation helps also bring precipitation to keep replenishing so as long as the lake bed does not get drained
@@Batlord_Carcas This! Lake Tulare being there made the climate a lot more livable in the southern part of the Valley. Unfortunately, some idiats decided that they want to grow cotton instead and killed the lake! Now everybody suffers.
Fun fact. The whole valley used to be a great lake, but it suffered a massive breach near SF about 175,000 years ago and drained leaving this lake as it's last vestige.
Yeah. You can find shells in the ground if you dig a bit.
Yeah I live in Bakersfield and always find so many seashells here too
@@airamx same in porterville
Lake Corcoran.Waters shores went to Shasta City up north. Thats 1000ft
Noooo! The lake of recent times was drained for agriculture!!!!
These are flood plains and the reason they make such good farmlands is because the floods recharge the soil and become fertile. Similar to the fertile crescent in Africa . The Mississippi flood plain is another and allowing it to flood is helpful for agriculture . It also recharges aquifers .
It's not a flood plain, it's a basin. Read Cadillac Desert. It just dries up every summer and floods every spring. Or it would do this if the Army Corps of Engineers didn't divert all of the inflows so four big landowners could farm at the bottom of a lake.
@@MattBakken10 it's all the same . A basin a plain it's one in the same . They flood then dry up then flood again . That's what happens in low lying areas . The problem here is the land has dropped 10 feet or more turning the area into a bowl
2:56. This is not an unprecedented event.
Don't be foolish. Use a dictionary.
@@grahamfloyd3451 lol. ok.
@@grahamfloyd3451 Unprecedented means never having occurred before. They stated 4 separate incidents over the last 100 years where it happened before. The same number of times they used the term "unprecedented".
Google is not a dictionary. Use a dictionary.
The lake can help to resupply the aquafer but as far as being a reservoir it's useless. As for being private property: you're under water.
The Kern river ends in a lake also . It never flows to the ocean.
This is how the under ground water levels replenish themselves.
COME ON RAIN!
When the lake is full of water it becomes navigable waters. The State holds all of its navigable waterways and lands lying beneath them as trustee of the public trust for the benefit of the people. Naturally I hope it remains a lake.
go save the salton sea then(low iq)
thats bs
@@tommurphy4307 It's not. It's settled federal case law.
@@tommurphy4307 Tell that to the Department of the Interior which has asserted control over man made ponds because migratory birds are using them as a place to rest during migration.
@@garygemmell3488 Lake Tulare is not a man made lake it is a natural lake for thousands of years.
Ironic that all the farmers that complain about not enough dam storage are now doing everything in their power to try and prevent the biggest lake in California from returning. Don’t drain it. Let it come back.
She obviously didn't listen to her own story - she called the event 'unprecedented.'
In her lifetime.
It is unprecedented. I image you can find your way to a dictionary if you're online.
@@grahamfloyd3451 Yeah, the lake Tulare lakebed floods every 20-25 years. The last time was in 1997, I think. Before that in 1983, before that in the 60s and 50s.
What did you expect? This used to be a lake for 500k years before they desiccated it for farming water. It's not like it will stay dry forever. That's not how nature works.
Ppl don't even know what that means. I think most ppl just think it means important
@@grahamfloyd3451 OMG...you didn't watch it, either?
Let Tulare Lake Grow
Stop fighting nature for only a few to profit
Work with nature for everyone to benefit
? Water was diverted for other cities. It wasn't those farmers that did this...
@@luisgutierrez8047 look it up and you will find out you are incorrect
This reminds me of what is happening down south, where they filled in a lot of the swampland, and now it's leading to an influx of sinkholes.
Not only can this go on into September but an El Nino is developing. There could also be another decent winter next season . . . and the reservoirs might STILL be nearly full.
Count on it.
you can bet the govt will NOT let that happen.
The mega-flood of 1605 submerged large portions of present-day California (Wikipedia). Geology indicates other "mega-floods" occurred in years: 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1300, 1418, 1750, 1810 & 1861-62; most of the Central Valley was submerged In the Great Flood of 1862.
It must have been the ravishes of 'Global Warming' brought about by fossil fuel utilization that caused those mega-floods.
unusual atmospheric rivers.. again!
If we can string €50-€100 together California can be a rainforest
GOOD JOB you get an A for that report
Global warming was that bad last time🤣?
Headline should read: lake impacted by farmland returns to natural state.
Love this. Lake should of never been dried out in the first place
I like my tomatoes ok?
@@harrybaulz666 You're more than likely getting them from Mexico in the first place.
I love to come here for fishing 🎣.
@@harrybaulz666they grow cotton there not vegetables
@@mkaberli Most likely from Mexico? Most produce is grown in California, from avocados to tomatoes to pomegranates. Do you even live in the US?
This reporter is incorrect in the intro. Heul howser has video of water flooding that farmland. The footage is more current than the early 80s mentioned.
1980 is not unprecedented. It’s a fourty year event. And going to get more often. It only make sense to leave the lake area as watershed.
"And going to get more often." No evidence.
@@billhosko7723 Actually this happened again in 1997 and in the 50s and 60s. This is a natural lake. Let the lake be a lake.
This is the best reporting I've seen on this.
Taxpayers fund keeping the lakebed dry so agribusiness can make a fortune growing there. Return Tulare Lake to its rightful owners now.
the natives?
@Leonardo Oregon we got no problem taking care of what we always have been a part of in a good way 🙏🙏🙏🙏 many blessings 🌕☀️
Mother Nature always wins.
Amen
No!!!! Father God always WINS🎉
@@TheJounir123 amen My foot..
@@johnmorgan7947 Don't get your foot wet.🤣😂
@@johnmorgan7947Maybe actually read the Bible and understand 'Mother Earth' is a metaphor for the fertility of the land instead of being perpetually outraged.
"The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish with the earth. The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left." Isaiah 24:4-6
“Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?" Job 37:14-16
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." Job 12:7-10
"In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land." Psalms 95:4-5
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalms 19:1
"The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen." Isaiah 43:20
How is it unprecedented if it happens in ‘82-‘83 and previously?????
And in 1997!
Why the heck have we been diverting water to the Ocean through the San Juaqine River when we have a natural reservoir. Kick the farmers off that land and dig it deeper.
Yeah..who Needs food.
Endorheic lakes can very quickly become too salty to be useful for irrigation. I think its foolish to try and contest this lake’s existence, but it wouldn’t be useful for very long as an irrigation reservoir. The lakebed is mostly clay, so percolation isn’t really a practical option either. It should just be a lake for the birds.
@@astrosoup A final solution will be very expensive. Either the land is allowed to salt up, which will end farming, or the Fresno Slough is channelized to allow some of the water to get to the San Joaquin river. This will ameliorate the salting problem but we are talking Los Angeles River size public works. I think it will depend on how much damage is done this year. Flood the prison at Corcoran perhaps?
@@johnmorgan7947 There's far more land to farm in the valley than reservoirs to store the water to farm it. Even a child can see this.
@@johnmorgan7947 Cotton?
the lake was there before us it's just coming back home
The lake itself is private property…or the land at the bottom of the lake ?
What are the state laws regarding navigable waters and public access to the water ways ? (Kayaking and rafting on state rivers and such?)
How in the heck is a dry lake bed *"private"* land?
Let me introduce you to capitalism and private property as it’s fundamental precept
This is fascinating. In England, the biggest freshwater lake after Windermere was Wittlesea Mere which was drained around 1851 to form Holm Fen and is now all farmland. This is all part of The Fenlands in the Wash which hovers just on or below sea level. Many people emigrated from here on the first ships to settle in the US. It's no coincidence that you also have places called Boston, New York(*) and Denver, and so do we.
*New York is not to be confused with York. It's between Tattershall Castle and Boston in Lincolnshire. York is in Yorkshire.
This is what happens when “private owners “ don’t Learn from they’re mistakes during the dust bowl that made them immigrate to California in the fist place
Do your homework my friend. You'll discover a whole lot of government involvement And the dust bowl happened After the lake was drained.
For over 100 years, big money and political connections enabled growers to grab water rights and farm the deserts of the Central Valley.
If only California had a say 1000sq mile spot to hold all that water.
Ummmm, we do. It's called Tulare Lake. Some idiats decided to desiccate that lake, but it keeps coming back.
Hopefully this time it stays for good.
@@TohaBgood2 i grew up in Tulare county. All the complaining that ca needs more water storage. The largest one possible is kept drained for cotton. Which requires millions of acer feet of water.
So, how many garages and barns are flooded and how many chemicals are being introduced to the aquifer?
wow it’s almost like there used to be a lake there and people decided to drain it
😆😆😂🤣😂🤣🤘🤘🤘🤘🇺🇲
Yep. Mess with nature again. I dare you!
lol 😁
Let's play baseball.
I Question the lake as "private property", wouldent it fall under the naviagable waters act ?
The destruction of this lake by the farmers needs to be stopped. Having the lake there will restore the biggest ‘water battery’ California has. Buffering water for dryer periods, replenishing the aquifers and helping to restore farming productivity around the lake.
? It wasn't farmers that destroyed this lake it was CA as a whole who redirected the water out of it...
@@luisgutierrez8047 Nope. Look up J.G. Boswell. This is purely a private corporations gradually desiccating the lake and buying up the newly dried up land for cotton farming.
@@luisgutierrez8047 On behest of farmers lol.
Nah. Go hug a tree.
@@yekutielbenheshel354 Why? We are the people of California. If we decide that there needs to be a lake there then there _will_ be a lake!
I'll watch her new stories any day of the week
Everyone is saying this is destroying farmland...it's the best thing for it IMHO. There has been a huge problem with selenium building up over the years, this will (possibly?) dissipate that and bring in new nutrients. So we have an idle year, and the California economy takes a hit. Next year crops will be a lot better.
@Just Looking 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Considering the salt build up in soils around there it should probably be made as full as plausible and kept high, occationally rising high enough to overflow into some ocean-bound river.
That's actually how Lake Tulare is supposed to work. It used to be connected to the San Joaquins river. It was basically a big overflow water storage tank. Like a natural safety valve.
But some genius decided to desiccate the lake and grow cotton there instead. And every time it floods (cause it's darn lake!) they ask for money from the government to help pump it out. It's a pretty crazy situation actually.
So glad I got outta the valley. Used to live right on the St. John’s river
I was told by a member of the Yokut tribe that they used to control Tulare Lake. It’s was their major food source. If anyone tried to take it away they fought them. Eventually, in time someone got the idea to drain the lake for the fertile soil. Who knows this might help replenish the aquifers, replenish the soil. I remember the refuge had elk and was a huge part of the lake. With a lot of farmers being part of the 240,000+ that left and now the production of USA’s food supply from Cali has gone from 90% to 40% be prepared for food shortages. If brought back the real size of the lake the whole valley would be under water. On high flood years you could take a boat from Bakersfield to the Bay Area. Do your own research.
Woah, when could you take a boat from Bakersfield to the Bay Area? Geographically it makes sense, I’m just wondering if you said that because it was possible in your lifetime specifically.
The key here is that the Yokut tube had the right and ability to self defense, in order to protect their property. Only when that was taken away did they loose their property. In order for people to be controlled, their ability to fight back must be taken away.
I got feed a vid here about the lake. It was really interesting.
I've seen maps from hundreds of years ago showing coastal California as an island
@@andrewwibel819 ok, not in our lifetime then. I was just curious about that. Thank you!
This is awesome news. That winter of 1982-83, which was so massive, that was the one and only time the water in Lake Mead topped the spillways. Being a native Las Vegan, I would love to see Lake Mead rise massively. Reaching out on a limb here, but maybe California will not take its usual allotment of water from Lake Mead since the entire state has received so much rain and snow this season from northern to Southern California. But I am probably just dreaming.
Maybe , but there would be out-flow anyways to produce electricity , ppssibly??
I don't know how much of this moisture is getting to Lake Mead's sources in Colorado. But if California does not take its allotments, which the biggest, that would leave more for other states.
no, my tangerines and cannabis plants are still thirsty and my water gods are trying to raise the prices- as usual. time to invest in some more rain barrels.
Beautiful
Wow. Very similar to the flooding of the Fraser Valley in BC🇨🇦in 2021. The levy broke during a historic rain event, and Sumas Lake refilled, causing a billion in damages to farm land. It took over a month for the massive headgates pumps to drain it.
Except no levy broke
the salton sea was formed by a broken levy,not by climate change or any other nonsense and is drying up...oh well--the great salt lake used to be hundreds of miles in all direction--salt lake city was under hundreds of feet of water---climate change(garbage)
Good way to store the groundwater
Will help along with other large flooded areas. Globally some 80% of liquid fresh water (ice excluded) is ground water, let that sink in.
@@Mrbfgray literally let that sink in
@@milserpentine See what I did there? ;-)
Even though the land is flooding you're going to benefit by letting the water recharge the aquifers that have been stressed out over the last several years of the statewide drought. Its going to be an inconvenience but the ground is thristy
It won't on these time scales, you actually are suggesting we flood the fields forever.
@@afoose The lake was there first
@@Jamer767 how do you feel about the communities in New Orleans that live right next to the levees holding back the ocean? should they move too?
@@afoose absolutely. They can't complain knowing the ocean is right behind the wall right down the street
@@kurt477 such sympathy you have for people below you, from farmers to underprivileged communities in NOLO
Huh…we pay taxes to the middle of the Kaweah River, but we don’t own it. According to the State, any Navigable waterway may be traveled as long as you don’t go above the high water mark. So that whole trespassing thing has questionable validity. What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander…or Resnick….or Boswell.
I think I recall a couple Kayakers went from near Bakersfield to the Bay in 1983.
Whoa! That would be something I would love to do at least once in my lifetime! Bring the lake back!
This will help to recharge the ground water.
How amazing is nature, replenishing all that farmland. Lucky famers, how much new topsoil will they get?
What was going on
In 1857 and whose
Land was it then..🤔
Probably shouldn’t have built anything inside a lake knowing some day it could flood.
Man we rightfully complain about drought and fires and simultaneously remove lakes like tenants getting evicted. Lake ain't paying rent 😩
The unprecedented 100 year event that happens every twenty years. Great reporting.
hopefully the aquifers will get some of that water while it is sitting there.
"Unprecedented"? I don't think that word means what you think it means!!
Well if it's private property, let them DEAL with it NO help from ANY STATE or Federal Agency. The property owners drained it and now mother nature has filled it. SO YOU SHOULD DEAL with it. Had it not been for the greed of said property owners it would still be a lake, They profited off it's water now spend some of that profit and FIX it.
Mind you, last time the farmers did get the state to pay to pump the water into SoCal storage. So this conversation is actually coming up in 3...2...1...
I hope it completely refills.
This guy said Tulare Lake filling caused a lot of grief though I don't think the pelicans shared his assessment of the situation. It's amazing how differently animals react to change. If you asked me the pelicans get a thumbs up.
Private property or navigable waterway? Maybe it's a bad idea to buy land that's normally at the bottom of a lake... There's always the potential for the water to come back.
That’s what I said! Getting to a waterway by public road, and floating above the land isn’t trespassing.
Finally. Some good informative news without political bias
The private property is underneath the water. Can't be trespassing if the water is keeping you off the land and you accessed the water legally.
I don't think the reporter knows the definition of unprecedented. It's almost funny.
Yeah! Bring back the lake🎉
bless that we have water. tire saw sign on freeway I-5. is water to growth food is wasteful?
I was just reading that 1000 years ago this was always a lake where native people used to live. Divine reclamation, I would say. Human activity later is what drained the lake in the first place. Just the facts please😅 This is the way it is supposed to be. The Creator decided before time began. It isn't a controversy.
That would be a legal Quagmire, considering those are accessible and navigable waterways. They'll call it private land, but it's no longer land. Good luck enforcing it
This is not an unprecedented event as the news caster states.
What about the Salton Sea ? Will it get any of this water ?
What a beautiful Lake ! 😘 Enjoy it before it disappears again
If the waters are a problem , why not vacuum them up and put them into storage containers for drier times ?
That's what they did last time. The farmers begged the state until they used taxpayer money to pump the water into SoCal storage.
But the farmers in the Valley seem to be very much against "socialism" these days so they're probably SOL this time. We might get a our lake back!
history likes to repeat itself
Anyone know what the chances of flooding in Corcoran are when the snow melts?
It's not private if it's a lake
Get your boat ready lets go😂
lol "get off my properta ducks"
Lol. That lake was sold to private farmers decades ago.
By this logic you should be able to move your houseboat onto any large puddle that extends from public property to private property. It sounds silly because it is.
@@burmy1552 except that's exactly what california law says -- waterways that are big enough to move a houseboat on are public property as navigable waterways.
Let mother nature do her thing and restore the lake. Get rid of all the water intensive farms! No need to grow cotton or alfalfa, crops that require a whole lot of water and that degrade the soil, in a dry climate. Which by the way can be improved by bringing the lake back
How is that private property if you are in a boat and not physically touching the land? Besides, waterways aren’t private. You could walk down the beach along the waterline and still not be trespassing.
Whatever man creates, mother nature can destroy & reclaim
Any Largemouth Bass?
You know for an area of the country that has worried about water shortages now for the past several years, Who drained this lake years ago for farmland that they cannot support with water shortages now... I mean maybe it's just not a good thing to play with mother nature. If someone from my farming community here in midwest I understand the hardship here going on but it's kind of a self created one. If we knew better over a 100 years ago or better we would never have drained the lake. There are so many reasons for this...
why would they enforce the private property boundaries? the owners didnt put out "no trespassing" bouys. navigable water is navigable water.
Beautiful,farms can be moved more rain is coming!!!
How do you move a farm??
@jaycweingardt11 before they drained the 9th largest lake the farms were around the lake..
If private property is covered by lake water that belongs to the state, is it really trespassing to float a boat there?
Been in central for 20 years, didn’t know this history!
And more often than they are talking about I know from experience in my life there ! show the old map of the fresh water river from Stockton to Bakersfield areas !
Yall omitted the fact that these farmers that lay claim to the private land under water at the moment reap the privilege from most of their settler ancestors genocide of the Yokut people, whose land was taken without mercy.
I wonder what kind of chemicals you will find in that water?
The resurrection of Tulare Lake!!!🎉
Unprecedented? You listed/showed several precedents...
Unprecedented? Sounds like it happens on a regular basis every few decades. People have the memory of a goldfish.
We need to stop letting rain water that goes out to sea like large rivers instead of being diverting the water into a huge underground facilities that will let the water slowly get back into the water tables
Or, you know, just let this natural lake that was there for 500k year stay where nature intended. I mean instead of spending trillions digging holes in the ground.
Caused extinction of fish that evolved in that lake for millions of years. Farming in California was driven by pure greed at the expense of the environment.
You're probably eating California farm products as you type
Brigadoon. It'll be private property when there's no water. But . . . now? . . . It's a place where life has returned.
It's the way the natural world works. A lake will be a lake. It's maddening to think old farmers would dry a beautiful thing like Turare Lake.
I hope the locals if they can, understand that
I love this... the miracle rains of 2023
Nature's taking back what we took from her I say let the lake turn back into a wildlife refuge