Boyd Carter
By The Fresno Bee Editorial Board: Sending floodwaters into rural towns to spare crops could lead to drowning.
The news harkened back to an earlier time in the San Joaquin Valley, when farmers would carry shotguns atop water canals to defend their supplies from competitors.
Only this time, the problem was too much water coming too fast and threatening to flood. In the pre-dawn hours early Saturday, someone driving a piece of big equipment cut an opening into the bank of Deer Creek at the Road 88 crossing in Tulare County. That sent water rushing out toward the historic town of Allensworth.
More significantly, the breaching diverted water from the Tulare Lake basin, where farming operations have planted acreage. As of Monday, no suspect had been identified and no arrest had been made. It’s unknown if someone associated with farming is the culprit here, but whoever did this had the skill to operate heavy machinery.
In another incident, one well-known company, J.G. Boswell, directed workers to park a big machine known as a “land plane” on a bank of the Homeland Canal to keep water out of Boswell land in the Tulare Lake region.
And in a third instance, the city of Corcoran had an armed patrol watching over its western levee to “keep it from being touched.”
Such are the measures being taken as the spring flooding season gets under way in the Valley.
Quoting from the article:
“Farming, by definition, is a business built on risk. The list seems endless: Drought, frost, heat, insect infestation, bacteria and fungus outbreaks, economic challenges, supply chain breakdowns, shipping headaches, and worker shortages. Add to the list the likelihood of flooding.
But this is what farmers sign up for, so it is up to growers to do the right thing this spring. Whoever is cutting holes into creek banks, levees or canals is simply wrong and, if caught, criminal. Anyone caught doing such a thing must bear the full weight of the law.”