High drama, ugly deeds, politics and moments of kindness…

Photo: Crews work on a breach in the banks of Deer Creek about 3 miles north east of Allensworth. The banks were purposely cut by someone in the middle of the night to push flood waters in a different direction. Police are investigating. Lois Henry / SJV WAter

…amid the waters of a re-emerging Tulare Lake.

The drama was high on the Tulare Lake bed Saturday as flood waters pushed some landowners to resort to heavy handed and, in one instance, illegal tactics, to try and keep their farm ground dry — even at the expense of other farmers and some small communities.

Someone illegally cut the banks of Deer Creek in the middle of the night causing water to rush toward the tiny town of Allensworth.

The levee protecting Corcoran had its own protection as an armed guard patrolled the structure to keep it safe.

At the south end of the old lake bed, the J.G. Boswell Company had workers drag a piece of heavy equipment onto the banks of its Homeland Canal to prevent any cuts that would drain Poso Creek water onto Boswell land.

And a tense political battle ended Saturday afternoon with the Kings County Board of Supervisors voting to cut a levee on Boswell’s land to relieve building pressure from the Tule River. A call to a Boswell representative on Saturday wasn’t returned in time for this story.

And this is only the beginning.

Someone illegally cut the banks of Deer Creek in the middle of the night causing water to rush toward the tiny town of Allensworth.

“This is just a baby flood compared to what we’ll see later this spring,” predicted Jack Mitchell, head of the Deer Creek Flood Control District. That’s when the state’s historic snowpack will run off the mountains and barrel into the valley like a freight train.

Rush to the lake bottom

While residents of small towns east of Highway 99 endured damage from ferocious flooding that began March 10 under the region’s first of several atmospheric river storms, flood waters wreak a more slow motions kind of havoc the further west they get.

That’s because of the old Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi and the San Joaquin Valley’s low spot.

It was drained more than 100 years ago by what has become the powerful Boswell farming empire. And rivers that fed the lake were […]

Full article: High drama, ugly deeds, politics and moments of kindness swirl amid the waters of a re-emerging Tulare Lake

Also see: The Science Behind Atmospheric Rivers