Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the day when the first water began to flow into Brite Lake. It was a cold Nov. 14, 1973 when State Water Project water began pouring from a steel pipe into the reservoir in Brite Valley. This water has been transformative for the Tehachapi area, in many different ways.
You might be wondering “Why is that water so important? Tehachapi didn’t have that imported water before 1973, and things seemed just fine.”
Well, there are some things you should know. To begin with, the July 21, 1952 Tehachapi earthquake, which registered 7.3 on the Richter scale, had a huge effect on the availability of surface water in the Tehachapi Mountains.
The day before the quake, Caliente Creek was dry, which is typical in a normal to dry year. The day after the quake, however, approximately 25 cubic feet per second of water was coursing down the streambed.
That translates into about 15 million gallons, or about 45 acre-feet of water per day, that was flowing out of the Tehachapi Mountains and down toward the San Joaquin Valley. The water was draining out of natural underground reservoirs due to the earthquake-induced shifting of subsurface rock and soil.
The water did not stop flowing in a few days, or even a few weeks. It ran for months and months. There was so much water, in fact, that the California Department of Fish and Game (now Fish and Wildlife) stocked Caliente Creek with rainbow trout for two successive years.
And as a result of all that water flowing away, surface water in the Tehachapi area was diminished. For example, there’s a park in Golden Hills called Meadowbrook Park, named after the Meadow Brook Dairy that was once located there.
When Evard Dickerson began his dairy there in 1913, he would have to dig ditches in his meadows to drain off water, to allow access for his cattle. Otherwise, the pastures stayed too wet. By the time Dickerson stopped dairying after 1952, those drainage ditches had been replaced with sprinkler pipe — he now had to pump water to irrigate the same land he used to have to drain.
In another example, a man named Ed Swanson, who was the father of a well-known resident named Helen Tompkins, had property alongside Highway 202 which is now owned by Hod Welden of the Tehachapi Hay Company. Prior to the earthquake, there was a spring on the property that flowed 30 to 40 gallons per minute year-round. After the earthquake, it dried up completely and hasn’t run again.
In addition to the effects of the earthquake, longtime pumping out of the local aquifers or basins had depleted the water table. Potato farmers and other growers and the railroad, which pumped huge amounts of water to supply steam engines, had created an overdraft situation — more water was being taken from underground each year than was being replenished by snow and rain.
So by the mid-1960s, things actually weren’t “just fine.” Tehachapi was in trouble, and the problem was growing worse. A young graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo named Bob Jasper, who had been hired by the Tehachapi Soil Conservation District (now Resource Conservation District) to look into the hydrology of the area, broke the bad news to local growers, and to the community in general.
As a result, a lot happened. A water district was formed, the annual safe yield of local basins was determined and court cases were won to enforce limits on the amount of water that was extracted. The Tehachapi-Cummings Country Water District asked for and received a share of the SWP water, which falls as rain and snow about 400 miles north of our area.
An extensive and complicated system of pipelines and four pumping stations was created to bring the SWP water up the hill. The pumping system itself was recently named after the late Bob Jasper, in recognition and appreciation of his pivotal 42 years of service in essentially creating the TCCWD. Brite Lake, also known as J.C. Jacobsen Reservoir, after a visionary early farmer in the area, started to fill 50 years ago with some of the approximately 10,000 acre-feet of water that the TCCWD can pump up annually into Brite Valley. The lake itself can hold up to about 1,865 acre-feet at any given time.
During the past five decades, that State Water Project water has been used repair and boost local aquifers, to keep agriculture thriving, and to allow more residents and commercial activity.
More than half of the water supply used annually within the 266,000 acres of the TCCWD is imported SWP water. The imported water in the lake isn’t directly potable, it would require an extremely expensive water treatment plant for that, but the Brite Lake water can be used for recharge, to percolate into the ground. This recharge process boosts aquifers, allowing clean drinking water to then be pumped up from underground wells.
And for a half century, the small lake itself has provided habitat for more than 80 species of birds, from Great Blue Herons and Bald Eagles, and an assortment of shorebirds, waders and waterfowl. As well as providing some fishing and recreational opportunities in an area without many bodies of water.
If you live in the Tehachapi area, that SWP water has an impact on your life. Brite Lake, and the transformative water project it represents, is an achievement well worth celebrating. Here’s to the next 50 years. . .
Have a good week.
Jon Hammond has written for Tehachapi News for more than 40 years. Send email to [email protected].