Tulare Producers Still Feeling the Damages from Spring Floods
This is part two of our four-part series where we are going to dive into some of the issues facing Tulare county producers this spring.We are joined again by Tulare County Farm Bureau Executive Director Tricia Stever-Blattler.
Tricia, let’s start with a big issue for producers, which is the flooding that happened this spring.
“Well, it's an ongoing disaster. We are not through the other side of it yet. There were some very extraordinary rain events in January and again in March that have propelled us into a pretty crazy spring with a lot of rainfall that came down our river systems really fast. And while we have safe dams that have held back a good part of that water, there just was extraordinary amounts of water that our spillways still had to make releases. And unfortunately, downstream from our two large reservoirs here in Tulare County, a lot of the smaller creeks and tributaries off of the two main rivers just were not ready for that kind of volume and speed of the water.”
Join us next time for the specifics of what that damage looked like, who stepped up to help, and how it’s still impacting the community.