As San Joaquin River flows increase, flood conditions near Fresno are ‘right at the edge’ | Opinion

Whenever the San Joaquin River rises in Firebaugh, Ymelda Ramos can feel her anxiety levels rise.

But recently Ramos saw something that both gave her calm and made her nervous simultaneously: A crew of three dozen (from Cal Fire, California Conservation Corps, National Guard and Department of Corrections) filling and erecting a wall of sandbags — 6,000 of them — between the river and the small nine-room motel she manages.

Ramos felt happiness and relief in knowing people cared enough to protect the motel and nearby homes from flooding. And concern in knowing only a sizable threat would warrant all that effort.

“This is excitement for Firebaugh — and worrying,” she said.

The Riverfront Inn sits on the outside bend of the San Joaquin River following a straight section. At high flows, all that fast-moving water suddenly must veer right. Some of that momentum can’t help but continue straight ahead into the grounds of the motel.

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In a state Department of Water Resources survey, the riverbank behind the motel was identified as a community low spot. Which explains why the crew labored nine hours to place the sandbag wall in that location. (An even larger wall, 12,000 sandbags worth, was erected across town to protect the city’s wastewater treatment plant.)

Water released into the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam takes about a day to reach Firebaugh. A 2015 report prepared by city officials for a state funding presentation for levee improvements identified river flows above 4,000 cubic feet per second as enough to require sandbagging and flood-fighting efforts. By Tuesday, measured flow rates about 8 miles upstream near Mendota Pool exceeded that number.

Ramos has managed the Riverfront Inn for nearly a decade. Only once during that time, in 2017, has she seen the water this close to the motel’s back lawn. She worried then too, but levels receded after a week or so. This year, she’s bracing for months of high flows.

“There’s a lot of snow in the mountains,” Ramos said. “Everybody’s scrambling to transfer water.”

From not enough water to too much

Michael Jackson is one of those people. As manager of the Bureau of Reclamation’s South Central California Area Office, Jackson’s responsibilities include the operations of Friant Dam.

With California in a continuous drought cycle since 2006, Jackson’s primary concern has been surface deliveries to Valley irrigation districts via the Friant-Kern and Mendota canals while meeting federally mandated minimum flows for the San Joaquin River Restoration Program.

This year, there’s too much water. Jackson bears the tricky and weighty responsibility of managing the level of Millerton Lake so as not to cause flooding in places like Firebaugh while also being mindful of the enormous southern Sierra Nevada snowpack that has yet to melt and make its way down the watershed.