Eric Woomer and David Castellon

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. -- Dive crews are in the tower salvaging parts in what will likely be multi-million dollar fix to Terminus Dam tower, which is flooded after a pipe busted.

The flood caused massive system failures to the hydraulic machines inside that control the bulk head gates, which keep the dam from flooding.

More than 500 feet of water filled the tower and continues to run from the pipe.

The crews are assessing the damage and hoping to determine a fix.

ORIGINAL STORY

Lake Kaweah is broken. But don’t worry, yet.

A busted two-foot section of pipe caused the main tower at Terminus Dam to flood on April 24 and the dam gates have been closed ever since. A fix could take several months and water continues to flow freely from the ruptured pipe. The tower remains full of water, and divers are preparing to go inside Friday to explore the damage to electrical components, motors and the multi-million dollar hydraulic system that lifts the main gates.

Nancy Allen, a spokeswoman for US Army Corp of Engineers, said people shouldn’t worry about flooding on the Valley floor and farmers shouldn’t be too concerned about water deliveries, yet. The Army Corp is releasing a minimal amount of water from a secondary system, but that system only has about a month of water left before it’s useless.

Lake Kaweah to fill by June

With the lake rising a foot per day, the Army Corp is working hard to ensure a temporary fix comes soon and a permanent fix happens later this year. Allen said the Army Corp has lobbied to Congressional leaders to reappropriate money to the project, which has no defined price tag until divers assess the damage and the water is pumped out.

“We don’t anticipate any flooding concerns. We are working through the process. We just don’t know enough right now, we need to get down there,” Allen said. “There’s no danger of flooding, no impact to recreation and right now, no impact to water deliveries.”

Phil Deffenbaugh, manager at Lake Kaweah for the Army Corps, said the pipe broke on a Sunday and when crews went to check levels and gauges in the tower Monday morning, it was flooded. He said he’s hoping that a temporary fix to the hydraulic system can accommodate water deliveries this summer.

The secondary output system is releasing 40 cubic-feet a second. The lake can hold 185,000 acre-feet and it currently has 112,000. Projections last month were that the lake would be full by June, around the time Deffenbaugh says he hopes to have the temporary fix in place.

“This has not affected the safety of the dam. It is safe,” he said. “There’s electrical motors down there. They don’t take well to being under water.”

As a result, the slide gates can’t be lifted.

Mark Larsen, general manager for Farmersville-based Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, said he was informed by members of the Army Corps last week that water was filling the rooms housing controls and engines that open and close the three large outlet gates.

Though the Terminus Dam was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a primary purpose of flood control, Larsen said he’s not concerned that will be an issue any time soon, while the outlet gates are inoperable.

That’s because snowfall and rainfall this past winter were only at about 72 percent of average for the recent rain year, which ended April 1.

And even though May is expected to offer above-average precipitation in the Valley, it’s not likely to rain enough to fill the lake enough to top the dam any time soon, he noted.

But there are concerns about what the situation will mean for thousands of farming operations that depend on water releases from Lake Kaweah, particularly in the summer.

The problem is that secondary gate can release only about 1,400 cubic-feet of water per second — less than the three outlet gates, which can release about 2,000 to 2,200 feet per second each, said Paul Hendrix, general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District. TID is one of more than 20 irrigation districts and ditch companies contracted to receive water from Lake Kaweah.

At this time of year, not much water is needed for irrigation, but demand among farmers will amp up considerably in the late spring and early summer and likely will peak for about a month-and-a-half, from mid June through July.

When that happens, water released through the hydroelectric turbine tunnel will “effectively dribble water at a slower rate than what [farmers] want,” Hendrix said.

So it will take longer for farmers to get their full water allocations from Lake Kaweah.

How this may affect farming operations will depend on whether each farm has an additional water source, said Hendrix, adding that farms in his irrigation district also get water from Millerton Lake through the Friant-Kern Canal.

And, thanks to decent rainfall and snowfall in the Valley, Friant-Kern clients have been promised 50 percent of their normal Class-1 water allocations.

Farm that don’t get Friant-Kern water will depend more heavily on their wells and the water they get from Lake Kaweah, Hendrix said.

“We don’t have all the answers yet,” but the affected irrigation districts and ditch companies have begun informing farmers this week of the problems at Terminus Dam, Hendrix said.

And once they get more information on what is happening, he said, “We will educate farmers on what the irrigation runs will be like this summer, and they may have to depend more on wells.”