‘Stay out of the water’: what lurks below California’s zombie lake?
There are portions of California’s Tulare Lake, with its blue water that stretches for miles and birds bobbing around the shoreline, where it can be easy to forget that a few months ago, none of this was here at all.
But then an irrigation hose or a fence post or a power line pokes through the surface, reminding passersby and authorities tasked with patrolling the lake what lies under the water.
The vast lake, once the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi before it was drained by agricultural canals, reappeared this year amid a barrage of intense storms and flooding that swallowed up farmland in rural Kings county. Hundreds of acres of cotton, tomato and pistachio fields, workers’ homes, roads and power infrastructure are submerged within the lake, much of it beyond the sight of the visitors who have flocked to the shoreline. They have stopped by new viewing points and trudged to road closure signs with drones in hopes of seeing the historic lake first-hand.
“On the lake, you wouldn’t know where you were if you [hadn’t heard it] was going on,” said Nate Ferrier with the county sheriff’s office. “It’s water as far as the eye can see.”
The Central Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, had endured a grueling drought for years before the winter brought a spate of storms that transformed the area, causing the lake to re-emerge and threatening nearby communities with flooding. In the immediate aftermath, the sheriff’s office was working overtime to respond to the disaster, including rescuing people who drove into the body of water. Small animals could be seen dead around the shore.
The storms are gone, but the lake remains. Fish have made their home in the water. Birds can be seen flying all around the lake, or settling in marshlike areas.
“It was truly a sight to behold,” Ferrier said of his tour of the water.
But the destruction of the storms can be seen within the lake, which is considered private property and closed to the public. The water is not safe to swim in or recreate in any capacity, Ferrier added. “It’s farmland, underwater. You’ve got diesel fuel, oil, manure, chemicals used to kill bugs and stuff. You’ve got a whole lot of things floating around.”
Also underwater are miles of power lines and electrical equipment crucial to powering the area. The area’s power utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), has undertaken a massive effort to retrieve its equipment from the lake, said Denny Boyles, a company spokesperson. That has included testing the lake water and bringing in airboats and helicopters.
“We had to bring in dive teams because some of our equipment was already so deep,” he said.
To remove 50 of its electrical transformers, which use a mineral oil coolant and can weigh up to 13,000lbs, the company had to have divers disconnect the equipment and then bring in heavy-lift Chinook helicopters to bring it to shore. Anything that couldn’t withstand being inundated for the foreseeable future had to be retrieved, Boyles said.
The lake is roughly the size of Lake Tahoe at about 178 sq miles of water, but just 5- to 7-ft deep, Ferrier said.
While the lake has begun to recede, officials say it will stay at its current size for at least another year. Experts warn it could continue to grow and called for officials to take more action, including a coordinated flood response plan.
“We’re out of the woods for this year,” Deirdre Des Jardins, an independent water researcher, told the Los Angeles Times, warning that next year could bring “extreme precipitation”.
Meanwhile, officials around the lake are preparing for the long haul – the sheriff’s office recently obtained an airboat to patrol the waters. It had previously been utilizing one from PG&E.
“We’ve never needed an airboat, said Ferrier. “It really is the only way to travel on the lake because of all the debris,” he said.
Despite the destruction, Ferrier, a sergeant with the Kings county sheriff’s office, said the lake was special to see particularly for residents who grew up hearing about the body of water.
“It’s been actually a pretty neat experience honestly. We’ve all heard about the lake,” he said. “We’re good with folks who want to drive out there and take pictures – I took my own family out there. But stay out of the water.”