Kings River (California) - River Modifications

River Modifications

The Kings River system is extensively dammed for flood control, irrigation, and power generation. The Pine Flat Dam, built in 1954, impounds the river near Piedra as it flows out of the foothills into the Central Valley. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the dam is 440 feet (130 m) high and stores 1,000,000 acre feet (1.2 km3) of water, and primarily serves to regulate the river's highly seasonal discharge. Other dams on tributaries form lakes such as Black Rock Reservoir, Wishon Reservoir and Courtright Reservoir. Wishon and Courtright form impoundments for the Helms Pumped Storage Plant, one of the largest pumped-storage stations in California with a capacity of 1,212 megawatts.

A second large dam on the Kings River, the Rogers Crossing Dam, was proposed for construction in the late 1980s, upstream from Pine Flat. At a planned 600 feet (180 m) high, it would have backed water up through the foothills for 12 miles (19 km). Environmental and recreational concerns have halted the project thus far.

Further downstream, the Friant-Kern Canal crosses the Kings River approximately 10 miles west of Pine Flat Dam, where water can be turned out into the Kings River through the Kings River wasteway. The canal then continues southwards towards Bakersfield. The purpose of the 152-mile (245 km) channel, which starts on the San Joaquin River and ends at the Kern River, is to provide irrigation water to farms on the east side of the southern San Joaquin Valley. Construction work on the canal lasted from 1945 to 1951.

On the lower river west of Highway 99, since 1959 Kings River Conservation District (KRCD) has worked to protect the flood carrying capacity of Kings River channels and levees. Maintenance efforts have focused on approximately 140 miles (230 km) of levees along the river from below Kingsburg near 8½ Avenue in Kings County to Highway 41 near Stratford on the South Fork of the river, and to McMullin Grade (Highway 145) on the North Fork. During flood releases, KRCD maintains 24-hour patrols monitoring the levee banks for sloughing, erosion and boils.