Mojave flood points out bigger issues

Issue Date: March 16, 2005

By Kate Campbell
Assistant Editor

Farm families along the Mojave River are still trying to put things back together after January floods devastated the tiny farming community near Oro Grande. And, the worst part is that the area's farmers and ranchers say the local disaster didn't have to happen.

Their losses aren't covered under the recently declared state and federal disaster relief programs being offered in other Southern California counties. And they know from recent experience that if the river rises up again, they can't count on much help.

The Mojave River, which flows underground when conditions are dry, has its source in the San Bernardino Mountains near Hesperia. The 126-mile-long river flows north and east and in wet years can reach Soda Lake near Baker. There are several thousand acres of agricultural land along its course.

Much of that farmland was inundated by floodwaters when the Mojave River flooded during the weekend of Jan. 8-9. When the waters receded, widespread destruction was left in its wake.

In 1997, farmers in the Oro Grande area sent certified letters to the San Bernardino County Flood Control District to ask that the channel in their reach of the river be cleared.

About a year later, the county responded, saying, "As a result of increasingly stringent environmental regulations" the district is "no longer able to routinely perform clearing operations in the Mojave River as it has done in the past."

County officials said that for more than a decade they hadn't been able to conduct maintenance in the river except under emergency permits. The county also pointed out that the government's policy of "no-net-loss" of habitat meant a costly and time-consuming permitting process to develop acceptable tradeoffs.

Tony Francois, California Farm Bureau Federation director of water resources, said, "It's the permitting that takes a lot of time and I think government agencies are soft-selling the obstacles to proper maintenance and the consequences of not doing this work.

"But, until we can really get into why it now costs $5,000 a linear foot to repair levees, when it used to cost $300, and why it takes seven years to negotiate a 10-year maintenance permit, we're going to be stuck with infrastructure failure and flood situations."

Alfalfa growers Gary and Gay Thrasher recall the nightmare of events that occurred that early January weekend. It had been raining hard when the couple went to bed on Saturday night, Jan. 8, and the Mojave River was flowing fast at the edge of their Oro Grande farm.

The Thrashers have farmed alfalfa along the river for 26 years and they've seen high water in the river before. What they found on Sunday morning, Jan. 9, however, startled them. The river was raging and had taken off part of their field during the night--simply washing it away.

The Thrashers and other farmers living along the river near Oro Grande said the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers improperly released water from Silverwood Lake and the Mojave River Dam, sending huge gushes of water into the river channel in the middle of the night.

While the river channel had previously been cleared of debris for several miles above and below the Oro Grande section to protect new residential housing developments, similar clearing had not been done along the river channel in the farming area. When the high water hit the uncleared section, it spread out a quarter mile from its channel, depositing several feet of silt on fields and spreading debris everywhere.

"No one warned us the river's flow was rapidly increasing," Gary Thrasher said. "The reservoirs were spilling, but we weren't notified. When we woke up, we looked out the back window and got scared. Our neighbor called and said they'd only been able to get off their property by wading out to a fire-rescue truck."

Thrasher, who is a long-time Farm Bureau member, said eventually the flood took everything: land, crops and big pieces of farm equipment. San Bernardino County put preliminary flood damage estimates for farms, ranches and crops at about $4.2 million, much of it in the Oro Grande area. The county reported total storm damage at $80 million, but that number is expected to climb.

Thrasher said, "Our ranch is nearly destroyed. We're OK. The house is OK. The power is back on. But we've lost everything else. The fields are ruined. Ruined!"

The Thrashers also had to be rescued by firefighters who formed a rope line to get close enough to the house for the couple to wade and swim to safety. The couple stayed with a nearby family for three days until the water receded and they could return to assess the flood damage.

"We're just thankful we have our lives and our health," Thrasher said. "Other farmers in this area lost absolutely everything. We want to continue farming here, but right now it looks pretty bleak."

Oro Grande dairy farmer Ken Luth, a past president of the San Bernardino County Farm Bureau, is the Thrashers' neighbor. He operates both a dairy and a nearby dairy cow-calf operation along the river.

The Mojave River's rising waters forced him to quickly move 3,000 head of cows and calves to higher ground and to other dairies in the area to prevent them from being swept away by the river. He gives much of the credit for the rescue of the animals to his three sons.

"I've got three of the greatest kids in the world," Luth said. "My 15-year-old son Matt was in charge of loading all the trucks and we had them lined up for blocks. Josh, who's 17, kept the water truck going so the cattle could get fresh water even while it was flooding. My son Nick, who's 21, worked to secure the dairy and the equipment. My kids worked nonstop for 36 hours to save the cows and the dairy."

Josh Luth, who is a high school senior, said, "When the flooding started, my job was to do what my dad told me to do. I've seen the river run pretty high, but never like it did then. I didn't fear for myself, but seeing my dad stressed out really upset me.

While Luth operated heavy equipment all night to build a water diversion dike, his sons fed, watered and loaded the dairy cattle on to every kind of truck they could find to get the animals to safety. They said the animals were stressed and muddy. Calves, mired in muck, had to be pulled physically from the mess.

"We lost our well, corrals, equipment and fields, but we saved the cows and our own lives," Luth said. "This kind of thing exhausts the cattle and makes them sick. And, it didn't have to happen.

"I want the river channel cleared to control flooding," he said. "I don't want anyone else to have to go through something like this. There are regulations that make it hard to clear channels because of endangered species, but I don't think there are any regulations designed to protect families and businesses.

"It's all about protecting the environment, but look at the mess protecting the environment has created," he said. "Any endangered species that might have been along the river are either dead or flushed miles away from here.

Farm Bureau's Francois pointed to a new report from the state Department of Water Resources, titled "Flood Warnings: Responding to California's Flood Crisis" that says, "Due to funding and environmental issues, both the state and local agencies have found it increasingly difficult to carry out adequate maintenance programs."

The report focuses on problems related to California's Central Valley flood control system and doesn't directly address problems on smaller, more remote river systems like the Mojave, but Francois said it highlights problems similar to the Mojave situation.

For example, the report says DWR used to clear Central Valley flood channels at the rate of 7,000 acres per year in the early 1970s. Today, that rate has fallen to only about 1,000 acres per year. And, the report stresses that the potential impacts on people and communities of a single levee failure, or multiple failures, are catastrophic, which was the case in Oro Grande.

"The issue that's focusing attention in state government is that the state has been found liable in the Linda flood, arising from a levee break in Yuba County in 1986," Francois said. "The state wants to shift cost and liability from the state to landowners who are protected by flood control structure sand upstream landowners as well."

Estimates for erosion repair on state-maintained levees in the Central Valley is $600 million. In addition, the state has deferred roughly $300 million in assistance payments for flood control projects outside the Central Valley.

"What we're trying to communicate to state officials is that we understand the instinct that seeks to shift flood-control liability," Francois said. "Before the state considers such a liability shift, however, we need to fund the backlog of flood control work and we need to reform environmental restrictions.

"Here's the connection with all this to the Mojave: The county says it can't help the situation because of environmental restrictions, the state is saying it needs to off-load flood liability to local landowners, but no one is saying what we're going to do about the environmental restrictions.

"That's a conversation we need to have because what occurred on the Mojave River could certainly happen along streams and rivers all over this state, producing similarly catastrophic effects."

The report "Flood Warnings: Responding to California's Flood Crisis" is available online at www.dwr.water.ca.gov. Click on Flood Management White Paper.

(Kate Campbell is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top