Efforts underway to divert water from growing Tulare Lake in Kings County
On Saturday, the rarely used Kern River Intertie was activated and the gates opened for the first time since 2006.
KINGS COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River.
It started to reemerge in March, as water flowed into the lake bed for the first time in 40 years.
"As of May 8, current inundated acreage was about 103,000 acres within the Tulare Lakebed," said Mehdi Mizani, floodplain manager from the California Department of Water Resources.
That equals roughly 106 square miles of water.
The growing lake has impacted farmland for months now, but state water officials are no longer projecting serious flooding in the communities that surround it.
"We're looking better than we did a week ago, we're looking way better than we did a month ago. This is modeling but the world around us is fluid and can change," said Mizani.
If temperatures increase in the mountains quickly, causing snow to melt faster, that could change the flood risk.
"Our flood operations center works closely with counties to understand what the direct needs are for the communities," said Mizani.
Another effort that appears to be working is diverting water from the large lake to the California Aqueduct.
On Saturday, the rarely used Kern River Intertie was activated and the gates opened for the first time since 2006.
Currently, 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) are flowing into the aqueduct that's about 3,700 gallons of water per second.
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