Dairyman and Farmers Among the First to Repair Flood Damage

This is part four of our four-part series on the flood impacts in Tulare county. We are joined again by Tulare County Farm Bureau Executive Director Tricia Stever-Blattler.

After debris from recent forest fires helped devastate culverts and bridges during the floods, the very first to jump into action could potentially face backlash from the state.

Dairymen and farmers were kind of our very, very first set of eyes on a lot of that destruction. And being that they're farmers, they were the first to want to jump in and fix it. So that's good and bad. Certainly we appreciate their resiliency and their desire to jump in and clean up and repair things, but we also want to be careful that they do it in a manner that doesn't bring any unjust enforcement against them, if they're dealing with fish and wildlife service on stream alterations or water board actions. So we really want our local government and state and federal officials to understand that there needs to be some flexibility and additional cooperation offered right now because we want dairies and farms to get back to business.”

There was a lot more to this interview, and I will be including it in more stories as I dive deeper into this topic.