By Nicole Foy
Floodwaters from an overflowing Lake Success reached the Tule River next to Joseph Goni's Tulare family dairy on March 15, in the middle of the night, much faster than he had expected.
When Goni and his fiancee woke up, the water was at their front door. By the time his sister and brother-in-law, who also lived on the farm, pulled their children out of their home in pajamas, 2 to 3 feet of water was rushing everywhere, impossible to stop.
Goni choked up recently as he and Roberto Martinez, a 30-year employee, recounted how floodwaters nearly washed away the dairy three generations of his family had built.
"It started with us," Goni said of the gushing water. "Then we started hearing about it moving toward Corcoran. And it was just one dairy after the other, after the other."
Over 72 hours, Goni, Martinez and dozens of neighbors and livestock haulers who arrived with trucks and trailers frantically herded some 2,400 cows and heifers into trailers in the dark. Even with weeks of planning, moving a few hundred head would have been difficult; moving this many in flood waters was a nightmare, the men said.
The cows went to six area dairies that were on safer ground, and Goni said he was overwhelmed by his community's support. Goni remembers joking he would understand if workers left.
"We have to fight," Martinez said, adding that Goni's father, who died last year, would have wanted them to. "We can't lose everything because of this week."
Thousands of San Joaquin Valley farmers, workers and residents are coping with acres of floodwaters and muck, tallying the damage. One industry official estimated $20 billion in losses for dairy, California's number one agricultural industry, generating $7 billion in revenue statewide.
Some who lost homes also fear losing weeks or months of income. After months of atmospheric rivers, storms and record floods, the long-dry Tulare Lake is rising again from the San Joaquin Valley floor. It will be fed, experts said, by an historic snowpack melting in the Sierra Nevada.
Will California be ready?
So far, the track record for state and local emergency response has been mixed, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, where local agencies have struggled to mediate conflicts between landowners and flooded communities, and where state officials have yet to clarify their oversight role.
Farmers, workers and residents in several flooded communities complained that it took weeks for the state to gain federal help through a disaster designation. Even with that, many farmworkers won't qualify for federal cash assistance because they are undocumented.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom's office said some people could receive help through local partnerships using the state's Rapid Response Fund. The state has not announced which local partners it was funding.
State officials said they are bolstering infrastructure, such as levees and canals, and raising some roads while coordinating with agencies to help people cope with floods and prepare for possible evacuations.
Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said state officials have been meeting with emergency managers for each affected region, coordinating area-specific evacuation plans and flood prevention measures, trying to get everyone on the same page.
"We're paying particular attention to the Tulare basin because there's already so much water in the system and that's where the snowpack is really concentrated," he said. "Humans, in many cases, are the hardest part of any disaster to control."
Some of the country's biggest farms operate in this region. Tulare, Kern and Kings counties are top-producing dairy counties in the state.
The Tulare Lake basin's vast farmland had suffered a severe drought, like most of California. Now floodwaters envelope it, looking like an inland sea when winds whip waves over swallowed houses, farms and rural Highway 43.
Nearly all of the four rivers, countless creeks and thousands of miles of canals linked to Tulare Lake are swollen and at capacity. The valley ground has soaked up so much water that every passing rainstorm floods yards and asphalt roads, even in urban centers like Bakersfield and Fresno.
"It's a very important reminder that California is not well-equipped to handle these extreme wet-weather events," said Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau. "The message that we would like our California Legislature to hear is it's never too soon to make better investments in infrastructure."
The Biden administration declared California's second major disaster of the year on April 3, deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency and allowing several counties, including Tulare and Kern, to apply for additional federal assistance. Because of the declaration, families and residents in seven counties can apply for Disaster CalFresh food benefits, the state announced Friday.
Though Kings County had 47,000 acres of farmland flooded, according to the California Farm Bureau's online publication, that county was not included in the latest emergency declaration. State officials said it could be added later. Kings County officials told the Fresno Bee flooding will ruin 41% of the county's $2.43 billion crop value and cause another $1 billion in damages.
In California's request for the declaration, Newsom's office estimated $60 million in agricultural losses in Tulare County and $70 million in Kern Counties alone.
California dairy industry leaders say their losses are going to be much larger. Western United Dairies CEO Anja Raudabaugh said their network is bracing for $20 billion in losses and long-term supply chain disruptions.
In addition to evacuation costs and property damage, dairy farmers are estimating millions of dollars in losses from silage they had stored and crops they were growing to feed their cows.
If there is not enough feed, she said, farmers might have to start culling cows and shrinking their dairy operations.
Already 75,000 cows and 15 large dairies have moved due to flooding. With major dairy processing centers like Tulare County impacted, the economic loss could be staggering, Raudabaugh said.
"There's not a single dairy that could have envisioned this type of catastrophe," she said. "This was an unmitigated disaster. I don't know how to plan for a river. It's a nightmare."
Add to that the brief closure of the Lactalis Heritage Dairy Kraft Foods plant, which processes some of the Tulare region's dairy products. Its damage and flood waters were visible from Highway 99.
More than half of California's farmworkers, about 200,000, live in the Central Valley. Thousands are losing work and wages. Several towns and rural communities of color also are struggling.
"The reality is the Central Valley has a lot of frontline communities that have borne the impacts of climate and weather extremes, whether it's drought, smoke, flood," said John Abatzoglou, climatology professor at the University of California, Merced. "Unfortunately, they have not had the resources to prepare for these extreme events, and that's why they're vulnerable."
Preparing for snowmelt and 'water jiu jitsu'
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