If Tulare Lake is back to stay, what will it mean for those indigenous to the area? Plus other stories from the aftermath of California's historic winter rainfall

Tulare Lake has been much in the news in recent months.  The lake is that massive body of water in California's Central Valley that historically existed but then disappeared at the hands of land management and "progress" only to appear again this winter and spring in the wake of record rainfall and subsequent snowmelt from the Sierras.  Much of the most recent coverage (such as here and here) focuses on the Tachi-Yokut Tribe's historic links to the lake.  Here is an excerpt from an NPR story that gives a sense of the extraordinary place and its history, with Soreath Hok reporting:

HOK:  On a recent afternoon, about two dozen members of the Tachi Yokut tribe gather at the shore of Tulare Lake. Water stretches as far as the eye can see.

ROBERT JEFF: And what you see behind us now is Pa'ashi has reawakened.

HOK: Robert Jeff is the vice chairman of the tribe. Pa'ashi means big water, the Tachi Yokut name for the lake.

(SOUNDBITE OF RATTLES SHAKING)

HOK: Tribal members play rattles, clapsticks and sing as part of a ceremony to welcome it back.

KENNY BARRIOS: (Singing in Tachi).

HOK: Kenny Barrios is the tribe's cultural liaison. He wrote the song.

BARRIOS: That song said, we need our water. Thank you for bringing our water back.

HOK: The Tachi Yokut tribe once lived on these shores. The lake provided food, plants to build shelter and was the center of a trade route for tribes in the region. But today, the 1,200 members of the Tachi Yokut live a few miles away on a reservation called the Santa Rosa Rancheria. Now the community relies on a resort and casino as their main source of revenue. One paved road leads into the reservation, surrounded by flat, dry land. At the reservation's cultural center...

SHANA POWERS: These are baskets that have been repatriated to the tribe.

HOK: Cultural director Shana Powers shows off handmade baskets the tribe used to cook and fish when they still lived by the lake. They're made out of native plants and woven with intricate designs.

POWERS: This design right here - that is the goose design.

HOK: The geese that used to flock to the lake have special significance.

POWERS: They would come down in the winter. And that was, you know, the Yokut way of looking at prosperity. You know it's going to be a fat winter - you know, everybody's going to be doing good - based upon how the geese look.

HOK: By the mid-1800s, the Tachi Yokut tribe had been severely impacted by settlers. They killed many tribe members and introduced diseases that decimated the Tachi Yokut. Eventually, they were forced from their land, and the lake ultimately disappeared after water was diverted to clear space for crops and irrigate them.

This July 6, 2023 Los Angeles Times feature by Ian James is headlined, "Tulare Lake’s ghostly rebirth brings wonder — and hardship. Inside a community’s resilience."  An excerpt follows, also focusing on the history of indigenous people's use of the lake, which they were ultimately deprived of: 

Tens of thousands of Indigenous people lived and thrived around it. The Yokut tribes made their homes along the lakeshore and the rivers, and moved to higher ground when the lake swelled with runoff.

They built tule rafts and fished with spears and basket traps.

The arrival of Spanish colonizers, followed by fur trappers, gold miners and settlers, devastated the Yokuts. Many died from diseases, and the state government promoted the extermination of Native people with militia campaigns and bounties.

Driven from their lands, the surviving Yokuts ended up living on reservations or marginal lands that had little value to white farmers.

Several families were the first residents of the Santa Rosa Rancheria when the reservation was established in 1934 on 40 acres of farmland.

By that time, the rivers that fed Tulare Lake had been heavily diverted for agriculture. The lake dried up completely during a drought in 1898. And although the lake continued to return in wetter years, it was systematically drained in the early 20th century by a handful of farmers, among them cotton magnate J.G. Boswell.

When dams were built on the Kings, Kaweah, Tule and Kern rivers, the reduced flows enabled the lakebed to be farmed during all but the wettest years.

And here's a more recent Los Angeles Times story, this one from yesterday, "What’s in the mysterious waters of Tulare Lake? Contaminants, egrets and many unknowns."  This excerpt features a law enforcement dimension, though the story's focus is mostly ecological: 

As Tulare Lake reclaims its historic footprint in the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, long-forgotten ecosystems have been revived.

The Times took a tour with the Kings County Sheriff’s Office, which purchased an airboat this summer for the purpose of patrolling the reborn lake.

“When this lake obviously appeared, it just added a whole new dimension to what we needed to be able to accomplish,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Nate Ferrier, standing on the lake’s southeast shore near Corcoran. Even months after Tulare Lake’s reemergence, he remains in awe of its size and presence. “I’ve driven up and down all these roads and dirt roads and levees, and to see this much water covering all this farmland, it’s … kind of like a biblical moment.”

While the sheriff’s office has boats deputies use to cut across the nearby Kings River, they needed something with a flat bottom because of all the junk floating in the lake, Ferrier said. A normal boat with propellers would likely get stuck, he said, so they purchased the airboat for about $95,000 and trained five deputies how to operate it.

Here and Now, from WBUR Boston, did this feature on the relationship between the Tachi-Yokut and Tulare Lake.  They also produced this piece on two journalists who kayaked from Tulare Lake to the San Francisco Bay.  One somewhat humorous part of the latter is when a Kings County Sheriff Deputy told the journalists they were trespassing (much of the lake covers private property, some of it previously cultivated).  The journalists responded by taking their kayak out and putting in again once they'd crossed into the neighboring county on their journey.   

A post about Tulare Lake from earlier this spring is here.

Also related to the storms this past winter and spring, California announced several weeks ago that it was sending $20 million in relief to Planada, a census-designated place in Merced County that suffered record flooding this past winter.  The story's subhead explains why state aid was necessary: "The undocumented status of many residents of Planada, east of Merced, meant they were ineligible for federal aid after winter storms ravaged their town."  Here's some further context: 

For the undocumented low-income workers whom California’s economy relies on, “there’s been just so many different major public emergencies, from Covid to catastrophic wildfires to smoke and drought, and now floods,” said Edward Flores, an associate professor of sociology at U.C. Merced who co-wrote the report. “It’s clear that this is a huge gap in the economic safety net for residents of California.”