County seeks solution to chronic flooding in Lamont

Jan. 31--Lamont floods even in a moderate rain.

Why?

Because of berms and channels built by farmers in the area to divert storm waters flowing from Caliente Creek away from their property, Kern County supervisors were told Tuesday.

They have, effectively, squeezed the mile-wide channel of the creek into a small, 10- to 20-foot-wide canal that ends in a county road -- which turns county routes into a web of canals, county staff said.

Now, Kern County Public Works officials are hoping to build a relationship with those property owners and -- using data from a study that should be complete in two months -- craft a solution that would protect Lamont in all but the most dramatic of storms.

Recent storms have generated flows in Caliente Creek that were "a drop in the bucket" compared to historic high flows out of the 470-square-mile watershed, said Kern County Engineering Director Greg Fenton.

But water still flooded Lamont, tore up a web of county roads near the town and played a part in the death of Vivian Mary Robinson, 81, of Bakersfield, who drowned in floodwaters after she exited her stranded vehicle on Edison Road.

The county Public Works Department delivered an update to supervisors on projects designed to alleviate Caliente Creek flooding, the causes of which are decades-old, complicated and can't be addressed without considerable community cooperation.

The financial stability of the area's farming community, the cost of flood insurance and even the county's eligibility for federal funding after a disaster could all be affected if a solution isn't found, Public Works staff said.

Anyone who has lived here for any length of time knows how even moderate storms generate significant runoff into Caliente Creek and uncontrolled flooding downstream. Fenton said the creek can produce higher flows than those that come down the Kern River from tributaries below Isabella Lake Dam.

A lot of that water -- clogged with heavy mud -- ends up in the Lamont area, in large part due to man-made changes to the floodplain. County efforts to build ponding basins and berms to ease the impacts have helped.

But not enough.

Caliente Creek, Fenton said, is still a problem because landowners have created berms to protect their properties, not only to keep water out but to comply with laws against irrigation water leaving farming sites. These berms prevent floodwater from spreading out onto the floodplain as they naturally would.

"The water is channelized more and is affecting more property downstream," Fenton said. "The county understands the value of the farming community. (But) it's creating some impacts and jeopardizing people's safety and property down the stream."

Public Works Director Craig Pope said the county is meeting on Thursday with property owners in the area where Caliente Creek crosses Highway 58.

The hope, Fenton said, is that they can craft an agreement to rework some of the channels in the area to slow down the water, spread it out, and let the heavy mud settle out. That could make the storm water an attractive product for water districts that, currently, won't take the dirty flows into their recharge canals.

Clark Farr, a former county employee who drafted an ambitious plan to fix the problem in 2000, was less conciliatory in his comments about farmers to supervisors Tuesday.

"They still caused the problem. They caused (Robinson's) death," Farr said. "The floodwater doesn't get to Lamont in these events without the berms. Three days to a week out of every seven years they are damaging their employees' homes."

Beatris Sanders of the Kern County Farm Bureau said farmers are in a bind because of state regulations that prevent them -- once irrigation water is on their property -- from letting the water leave.

Supervisor Leticia Perez, who represents Lamont, said the past solution proposed in 2000 was too expensive to attract state grant support.

"Part of the problem in trying to get funds from Sacramento -- in the past -- was that the solution proposed to the problem would cost $50 million," she said.

Perez said there is a lot of frustration and accusation over the issue and bad history of finger-pointing and recrimination.

What the county wants to do now, she said, is develop a collaborative solution with the property owners and farmers in the area. She thanked Sanders for helping to bring the county and farmers together.

Ultimately none of the solutions will stop a 100-year flood from putting Arvin and Lamont under water. But Fenton said the water from smaller rain events could be kept out of Lamont.

Underway now, according to Public Works, are feasibility studies for two "conceptual projects": the Caliente Creek Habitat Mitigation and Groundwater Recharge projects that would implement the changes in the Highway 58 area that Fenton believes would help.

"We know it will work," he said.

During the January storms, he said, silt in the water from Caliente Creek blocked up the culvert that takes water under Highway 58 at Neumarkel Road -- the typical route water takes from the mountains to the flood plains.

Pope said they were sure flooding in Lamont was going to be far worse as water that had fallen in the Caliente Creek watershed made it down into the system of berms that usually pushes the flows into town.

But when the Neumarkel Road culvert was closed by silt, the water moved west along Highway 58 and into the creek's historical channel closer to Bena Road.

The water had room to spread out and slow down. What had been 200 cubic feet per second of water flowing north of Highway 58 turned into 15 cfs south of Highway 58. It never made it to Lamont, Fenton said.

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