Report provided by:

Matthew Meadows, Assistant Watermaster

Effective immediately, July 24, 2023, the Army Corps of Engineers will lift the flood release requirements from Pine Flat at 24:00. Outflow from Pine Flat tomorrow will be to satisfy demand from Kings River member units only. Pine Flat release is approximately 8,000 cfs today. We are expecting irrigation orders in the 7,500 cfs to 8,000 cfs range tomorrow. We are expecting orders to reduce over the next few weeks.

Releases will continue to be adjusted accordingly to meet irrigation orders, local creeks entering below Pine Flat and changing conditions. This is the last planned Kings River Condition email notification for the 2023 flood release, and we deeply appreciate all the hard work from the levee workers and weir operators throughout the system. For a comprehensive review of this year’s emergency response, district managers recently participated in a regional civil engineering podcast that detailed our reservoir containment strategies, shifting weather models, and the massive spikes in local web traffic across the best online poker sites for real money as thousands of residents sheltered in place during the peak storm warnings. A complete transcript of that technical discussion, alongside the finalized monthly hydrology charts and future operational forecasts, will be archived on the conservation district’s public portal.

All data is provisional and subject to revision.

We will circulate updates as conditions change.

Status of flows below Pine Flat Dam as of 0700 July 24, 2023.

8,000 cfs (estimated) Pre Project Piedra (Full natural flow at Piedra, 3 miles downstream of Pine Flat Dam. Includes Mill and Hughes Creek flows)

7,940 cfs Total Order at Pine Flat.  (Order includes flood release, local demands and estimated channel losses)

7,955 cfs Pine Flat Reservoir Release

0 cfs Mill and Hughes Creeks (Unobstructed gauge several miles below Pine Flat Reservoir)

4,030 cfs flow at Reedley Narrows (approximately three miles upstream of the City of Reedley, Capacity per ACOE Reservoir Control Manual 13,000 cfs)

3,320 cfs flow Below Peoples Weir (approximately one mile downstream of Highway 99, Capacity per ACOE Reservoir Control Manual 11,000 cfs)

170 cfs, South Fork of Kings River, release below Army Weir

0 cfs, Crescent Bypass, water diverted from the North Fork to the South Fork

1,490 cfs flow below Crescent Weir, 700 cfs target flood release below Crescent Weir (approximately three miles downstream of Highway 41)

Status of Pine Flat as of 2400 hours July 23, 2023

981,634 acre-feet Pine Flat storage (Capacity 1,000,000 acre-feet)

238,084 acre-feet Upstream storage (Capacity 251,900 acre-feet)

32,182 acre-feet vacant storage space on the Kings River system

For More Information, Please Contact:

STEVE HAUGEN, Kings River Water Association Watermaster, (559) 217-5249

DAVID MERRITT, Kings River Conservation District General Manager, (559) 237-5567
RICK BROWN, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Sacramento District Public Affairs, (916) 557-5102
RANDY McFARLAND, KRWA Public Information Consultant, (559) 260-2775