A Synopsis of Kings River History

Reproduced from the 2001-02 Kings River Water Association Annual Watermaster Report

The Kings River’s service area of nearly 1.1 million acres is among the world’s most fer-tile and productive agricultural regions. It is also among the most incredible transforma-tions of land that the planet has ever seen. The Kings River and the region it waters is a living lesson on the value of water in a land of little rain. The Kings River is not only its service area’s most precious resource but it is a stream that is rich in history. The past’s mighty struggles have ordained how the river is beneficially used today. With patience and a spirit of cooperation, the Kings River’s users fashioned voluntary agreements on water rights, entitlements and operations that benefited everyone and made possible the development of Pine Flat Dam. More re-cently, that same spirit and approach resulted in a major environmental advancement with establishment of a fisheries management program.

Native Conditions and the Early Kings River

The native valley floor, unlike the splendid coastal valleys which encompassed nearly all settlement in Spanish and Mexican California, was largely monotonous, dreary and unpleasant. It appealed to few explorers and fewer would-be settlers. Among its earliest visitors were Captain Gabriel Moraga and his straggling band of Spanish soldiers. On January 6, 1805, Moraga’s party discovered a previously-unknown stream flowing from the foothills onto the valley floor. The river was christened in praise of that holy day, the Feast of the Epiphany.

It was named El Rio de los Santos Reyes – River of the Holy Kings.

The river’s divine designation did nothing to enhance first impressions of much of what would become the Kings River service area. Those who first saw the country considered it to be desert and of little or no value except for naturally watered areas along the Kings and other rivers. On the Kings’ lower reaches were the wetlands of the Fresno Slough- Summit Lake country and Tulare Lake. Otherwise the plains were devoid of vegeta-tion, except for seasonal grasses

Lieutenant George H. Derby, a U.S. Army topographical engineer, in 1850 surveyed portions of the Kings River country and other portions of the southern San Joaquin Valley. For the most part, Derby wrote, the land was “barren, decomposed, (with) no trace of vegetation but a few straggling artemisias…, scorpions, centipedes and a small but extremely poisonous rattlesnake about 18 inches long. . .which, with the gophers and ground rats, are the only denizens of this unpleasant and uninhabited spot.”

It was a land without water.

The Kings River’s Fluctuating Water Supply:

The Kings River is burdened with a reality shared by all southern Sierra Nevada streams. The Kings is prone to extreme annual swings in runoff which directly relate to mountain precipitation. That reality, from the beginning of the Kings River country’s settlement in the 1860s until the present, has been occasionally good and just as frequently bad, depending upon how much winter and spring rain and Sierra snow happen to fall.

Annual Kings River runoff averages 1,707,000 acre feet. The river’s all-time minimum runoff, however, was only 391,700 acre feet (in 1923-24), just 23.1% of average. On the other extreme, the 1982-83 water year produced record runoff of 4,476,400 acre feet, 264.5% of average, only to be followed by an 11-year span which included eight below-average years, including a critical six-year drought which began in 1986-87.

In dry years, then as now, water supplies were insufficient to fully irrigate the nearly 1.1 million acres of highly productive farmland which is watered from the Kings. Since reservoir capacity is generally insuf-ficient to accommodate all runoff in wet years, losses to the water-deficient service area through Kings River flood releases equate to 200,000 acre feet per year.

Tapping the Kings River

Initial Kings River service area settlement began in the 1850s in what is now known as the Centerville Bottoms of Fresno County. A few very small ditches may have been dug near the river in the late 1850s. Others are known to have tapped into the Kings River between 1863-66 to bring water into the Centerville area. Those primitive ditches were all destroyed (although some were rebuilt) in the flood of 1867, the biggest ever observed on the Kings River.

Despite the 1867 setback, other canals soon followed. The first of substance was a project commissioned in 1871 by A.Y. Easterby and carried out by Moses J. Church to bring Kings River water to Easterby’s property (east of where Fresno was established in 1872) via Mud and Fancher creeks. Between 1872- 74, the Fresno Canal was developed to its larger, present size, conveying water onto an im-mense, previously uncultivated prairie.

The newly-watered soils, rather than being agriculturally inferior, turned out to be extraordinarily fertile. They burst into lush plantings under the hot, dry valley climate. Immense crops were produced. The worth of irrigated land was swiftly established.

Over the next 15 years, dozens of canals were constructed downstream, ultimately serving more than one million acres and making possible intense cultivation. Thus, the Kings River service area’s agricultural abun-dance and economic worth have as their basis the diversion and employment of surface water delivered economically by gravity.

Water Rights and Riparian Disputes

Chaos, controversy and court fights ruled the Kings River for decades. Organization and cooperation were minimal at best and non-existent at worst. It added up to confusion which made it practically impossible for most individual irrigators to know when they would receive water or when they might be shut off by upstream users.

More serious were challenges over water rights. Practically from the beginning, pioneer users were plagued by a lack of agreement on water use and entitlements, a situation that soon deteriorated into a massive conflict caused by contradictory laws. Those who pioneered the building of the river’s dozens of canal systems simply posted their water claims under the appropriative doctrine of prescriptive right. The rule, dating from the water-use custom of Mexican California, was simple: First in time; first in right.

Those earliest irrigationists soon found them-selves challenged by lower river riparian landowners. California’s first Legislature, recognizing that much remained to be legislated, had adopted British common law to embrace situations not covered by federal or state laws or constitutions. The riparian doctrine of common law provided that no one could cause a stream to flow with diminished quality or quantity past a given point, a stipulation which stood in clear conflict with the appropriative doctrine of prescriptive rights. In dry years, riparian owners began demanding that the river’s flow remain undiminished along their lands. In an 1888 Kern River case before the State Supreme Court, they won their case. In subsequent litigation, lower courts ordered many Kings River canals closed. It was not unusual for desperate, water-short farmers to arm themselves and seize canal head gates to keep water flowing to their land. Such water-supply uncertainty diminished land prices, demonstrating the critical significance of a secure water supply in a land of little rain.

Such conditions inevitably spawned long, complex legal battles. Litigation lasted more than 40 years and included more than 130 lawsuits. Confusion resulted and reigned.

There were a few signs of progressive change. One was the first Kings River water schedule, negotiated in 1897 by L.A. Nares. He managed the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company and Rancho Laguna de Tache. The 1897 accord included only the Fresno company and three lower river companies in Kings County, People’s Ditch Company, Last Chance Water Ditch Company and Lower Kings River Ditch (now the Lemoore Canal and Irrigation) Company. A small entitlement was provided for the Laguna ranch, a 48,800-acre Mexican land grant (below modern Kingsburg) acquired along with other lower river riparian properties by the Fresno company in 1892 to secure riparian rights then claimed by the Laguna Grant. The 1897 agreement governed only the river’s lower flows, below 1,900 second feet. It was, however, a start. Dozens of lawsuits were dismissed. The agreement was also generally recognized by all of the river’s other users.

Riparian appropriation issues were settled in a 1928 state election. Added was a state constitutional provision, based on the realities of existing uses, which made beneficial use the measure of all water rights, whether appropriative or riparian. It provided that riparian owners would be entitled to no more water than they actually need to serve a beneficial purpose. The Agreement of 1921 and Watermaster Kaupke Efforts to resolve remaining differences began a long, slow process in 1913. Users realized that the Kings River’s historic contentiousness simply could not be permitted to continue into the future. More importantly, it was understood that a dam at Pine Flat, needed to harness the river, would never be possible until agreements were reached on water rights and entitlements. By then, nearly all Kings River flows were being put to beneficial use within the service area.

Extensive discussions on the Pine Flat question led to early recognition that an umbrella Kings River agency would ulti-mately be necessary. In 1916, a group of irrigation leaders known as the Committee of Thirty took as its name the Kings River Water Control and Conservation District. Its objective was implementation of state legisla-tion - a Kings River Conservation District and Pine Flat Dam act that had been passed in 1915. The law was twice amended but an operating conservation district did not become reality.

Progress continued, however. In 1917, state irrigation district formation legislation was enacted to supplant the old Wright Act of 1887. The Alta Irrigation District, organized in 1888, was the second district formed under the Wright Act and that law’s then con-troversial provisions for publicly-administered deliveries of irrigation water. Alta was California’s first irrigation district to actually provide water service.

A public approach to administering water rights, management and operations gained increasing appeal on the Kings River. Various water diversion schedules were proposed. In that spirit and buoyed by headway which had been made, Kings River users asked the California Water Commission to provide an impartial engineer to determine the river’s flows, diversions, canal capacities and historical uses. All were needed before a comprehensive entitlement schedule could be prepared.

Late in 1917, Charles L. Kaupke, a state water engineer, arrived in Fresno and went to work gathering data. His efforts earned considerable respect among the river’s diverse diverters. When the 1919 season turned up dry, users unanimously requested that Kaupke be assigned to act as watermaster and arbitrate diversion issues for the balance of 1919. So satisfied were users that Kaupke was again appointed watermaster in 1920.

Other engineers began assisting Kaupke in developing a trial water diversion schedule, based upon the river’s mean daily flow. Mean daily natural flow at Piedra has always been at the heart of Kings River uses, regulation, stream control and storage. Kaupke’s task was to resolve problems, disputes and conflicting claims by finding solutions which complemented that most basic of measurements.

Resolution became a more critical need when some lower river lawsuits were set for trial on October 1, 1921. Most Kings River diverters believed that the litigation would not only be long and costly, but would negate much of the progress on entitlements that had already been accomplished. Acting with dispatch, a committee consisting of Kaupke, water engi-neer J.B. Lippincott and L.A. Nares (who had negotiated the first limited water schedule in 1897) drafted an interim agreement.

On September 27, 1921, representatives of 35 agencies accounting for more than 95% of the total diversions and a gross area of 1 million acres signed the pact. It requested the state Division of Water Rights “to prepare a temporary schedule for the division and administration of the waters of Kings River for the calendar year 1922.”

As a result, all pending water rights litigation was postponed. A watermaster (Kaupke) was appointed, his work to be funded by $15,000 assessed on a prorated basis on the participating agencies. The first in a series of trial water entitlement schedules was ready for use in 1923. It was refined each year through 1926 and eased much of the river’s turmoil. The Agreement of 1927 and KRWA’s Establishment Year by year, the need for a permanent settlement of the water rights was becoming more apparent,” Watermaster Kaupke later wrote. Between 1923-26, a vigorous second effort was mounted to establish a conservation district legally capable of selling bonds and building a dam at Pine Flat. A Kings River Water Storage District board began meeting in 1925. As was the case in 1915-16, however, the hoped-for public agency was never per-manently organized. District board delibera-tions did directly lead to a lasting Kings River solution.

On May 3, 1927, a voluntary agreement was reached among 19 diverters (providing water to 958,000 acres). The agreement’s schedule was considerably improved from the trial schedules, reflecting hydrologic data which had been developed and detailed over the previous several years. The greatest change was development of separate schedules for each month, acknowledging significant variations in runoff and actual diversions from month to month.

May (when daily mean flows generally peaked) encompassed the maximum 1927 schedule, covering 9,450 second feet; it represented practical diversion capabilities and capacities of the units. Schedules of other months closely corresponded to records of actual diversions. The December table made allocations only on the first 1,000 second feet.

The accord established an alliance known as the Kings River Water Association. KRWA assumed all duties which had been performed from 1918-27 by the State Water Commission and the State Division of Water Rights. It was to be administered by a Watermaster, a role filled by Charles Kaupke until his retirement in 1956.

Considering the river’s history of conflict, the 1927 agreement was a pivotal and remarkable accomplishment, even though it did not then include detailed schedules for either Tulare Lake bed units or the Centerville Bottoms. However, rights of those areas were recognized by the 19 original KRWA units. Pine Flat Dam, the Corps, the Bureau and KRCD The agreement of 1927 was a turning point in Kings River history. More than any other circumstance, the settlement cleared the way for eventual construction of Pine Flat Dam. The dam’s need and actual site had been obvious as early as the 1880s. At first, water storage and conservation benefits were the appeal for dam development. That changed following disastrous 1906 flooding which focused attention on the need for flood control. Despite that concern, reinforced by nearly annual flooding, the project eluded two generations, largely as a result of politics and the practical problem of who would shoulder the cost. When farm prices and property values began to plunge between 1921-23, momentum on the dam project slowed.

On the Kings River, progress has never come easily or quickly. With the Pine Flat project, many false starts followed.

So did a bureaucratic tug of war between two federal agencies. It started in 1938. The Army Corps of Engineers proposed to build Pine Flat as a flood control project, dedicated to benefits on the Kings River. The Bureau of Reclamation viewed the dam and reservoir as an extension of its Central Valley Project, then in its initial development stages. President Roosevelt complicated the situation by assigning the project’s development to both agencies. The two agencies each agreed Pine Flat should be built. They differed on basic issues - flood control and conservation values, storage and operations, and, perhaps most importantly, construction costs and local cost contributions. Arguments raged through four years of hearings.

Kings River water users and the KRWA sided with the Corps of Engineers. KRWA’s member units, holders of the Kings’ water rights, wanted no part of Reclamation law restrictions or the CVP. State water engineers who conceived the CVP (before it was taken over by the federal government in 1935) eliminated the Kings from their early planning. They recognized that the river’s entire flow was lawfully and efficiently appropriated by the river’s users, except for infrequent flood flows.

In December 1944, Congress approved the Flood Control Act authorizing Pine Flat Dam to be developed by the Corps of Engineers with KRWA units to pay for the irrigation storage benefit once that amount was de-termined. For that task, President Truman in 1946 assigned the Bureau of Reclamation to negotiate the necessary contracts. Kings River users again fumed that attempts were being made to classify Pine Flat as a Reclamation project. Talks went nowhere. Even after ground was broken for Pine Flat Dam’s construction by the Corps of Engineers in 1947, the Reclamation issue raged. In 1949, newly-elected Representative Cecil F. White made an unsuccessful and highly contro-versial legislative attempt to fully integrate the Kings River and its valuable hydroelectric sites into the Central Valley Project.

A basic operational decision, one which governs Pine Flat Project operations to this day, was made by the Corps of Engineers in January 1952:

• Flood control. The Corps would have complete authority.
• Conservation storage and releases. The Kings River Watermaster would be in control.
  

Pine Flat Dam was completed in 1954 at a cost of $42.33 million but the often-rancorous storage and repayment contract negotiating process with the Bureau of Reclamation dragged on. KRWA and its units joined the Corps of Engineers in contending that all of the new reservoir’s space should be available for storage, limited only by Pine Flat’s flood control purposes and priorities.

Even though the Corps’ 1952 administrative decision appeared to imply that the Bureau of Reclamation’s role was strictly that of a negotiating agent, KRWA’s units knew that Pine Flat Reservoir could not be used for irrigation storage without a Bureau agreement. In 1951, the contract situation and other water rights matters helped prompt the third and ultimately successful effort to create the Kings River Conservation District as a public agency that could act for the entire Kings River service area on a variety of river related issues and potential projects. KRCD played a key role in the Pine Flat contract negotiations. The district acted for the river’s users in contracting with the Bureau of Reclamation for a series of interim annual Pine Flat water storage contracts. Each acre-foot of stored water cost local units $1.50. Over a period of nine years, $7.8 million was raised.

The Agreements of 1949 and 1963

A 1949 agreement extended the Kings River’s entitlement schedule to specify details for diversion by South Fork and Tulare Lake bed units.

The new agreement increased the maximum flow allocation on the monthly schedules and provided that half of any flows in excess of the new maximum were to be divided, half to the main Kings River and North Fork units and half to the South Fork units. (Only the Centerville Bottoms area, lacking an ad-ministrative structure, was omitted but its water rights were again recognized; that territory’s Kings River Water District was organized in 1952.) The 1949 agreement resulted in dismissal of the last three Kings River water rights lawsuits.

Charles L. Kaupke, the first Watermaster, later wrote that the conclusion of litigation meant that “there was peace on the river for the first time in more than 80 years. It was the largest peaceful settlement of water rights on a major river to be recorded in the history of Western irrigation.” That proved to not be entirely accurate because Kings River users still faced many more years of controversial dealings with the Bureau of Reclamation. Also remaining were difficult entitlement questions related to allocation of Pine Flat Reservoir storage space, as well as issues in-volving downstream channel losses which resulted from storage behind the new Pine Flat Dam.

Agreements with the Bureau of Reclamation on permanent contracts were not finalized until December 23, 1963, when all 28 Kings River Water Association member units individually signed separate contracts for shares of project repayment and storage space. Users accepted responsibility for repaying $14.25 million, a third of Pine Flat’s construction cost, and $775,000 to acquire Kings River water rights claimed by the Bureau of Reclamation on the Fresno Slough. The units agreed to pay for 37.4% of Pine Flat’s ongoing operation and maintenance. Extensive efforts by the KRCD resulted in users receiving full credit for $7.2 million in interim contract payments toward their repayment obligation. KRWA assumed the duty of handling repayment accountability, as well as overseeing water entitlements and deliveries and administering storage rights for member u its.

At the same time, a new master Kings River agreement was approved. The units agreed among themselves on how the river should be operated under storage conditions, including channel losses. Maximum- flow limits on the monthly water schedules were eliminated, thus resolving difficulties that had been encountered in appropriating over-schedule water.

While each Kings River water rights accord represented important progress, the 1963 agreements were most meaningful for finally putting to rest vexing entitlement issues. The Pine Flat storage and repayment contracts gave the people of the Kings River service area exclusive and perpetual rights to all one million acre-feet of Pine Flat Reservoir’s storage space (except for the project’s flood control requirements). Because of the 1963 Kings River agreement and the issues it resolved, peace finally came to the Kings, a century after the river’s beneficial water use development began.

Full Appropriation of Kings River Water

Formalizing the Kings’ water rights, like so many other parts of the river’s puzzle, required many years to accomplish. Acting independently of one another, Kings River water users began filing a total of nine applications to appropriate Kings River water not long after what was then known as the State Water Rights Board (now the Water Resources Control Board) was established in 1914. In time, more than 100 protests were filed against these applications.

As a result of the 1963 intra-association agreement, the Kings River applications were consolidated by a trust agreement on September 16, 1964. The Fresno Irrigation District acted as trustee on behalf of all KRWA members.

The application was considered by the State Water Rights Board during 15 days of hear-ings between April 4 and July 20, 1967. The result, on November 30, 1967, was Decision No. 1290. It issued six water rights permits, which included storage in Pine Flat Reservoir, Lake Wishon, Courtright Lake and Tulare Lake along with virtually all Kings River water. The Water Resources Control Board declared on November 16, 1969, that the Kings River’s waters were fully appropriated.

On May 18, 1984, more than 120 years after Kings River diversions began, water rights licenses were issued. KRWA became the trustee in the spring of 1988.

The Kings River Reclamation Law Dispute

For KRWA and its member units, Pine Flat Dam’s completion and eventual progress on storage agreements did not mean an end to difficulties with the Bureau of Reclamation. KRWA contended that Pine Flat Dam’s primary purpose had always been flood control. From an irrigation standpoint, the dam did little to increase the water supply in most years. Its principal benefit, aside from flood control, was in regulating well-established, privately-held rights, making possible the use of water when it was most needed for spring and summer irrigation. No longer was it necessary for KRWA’s units to rely on the “run of the river” to divert their water entitlements.

Issues arose over whether or not federal Reclamation law should apply to the Pine Flat Project and, if so, whether or not repayment of project costs allocated to irrigation benefits would terminate Reclamation law acreage limitations. A 1961 Interior Department legal opinion reversed the United States’ long standing policy and administrative practice that had relieved Kings River landowners of Reclamation law acreage limitations after their local agency’s Pine Flat Project repayment obligations had been met.

Imposition of Reclamation law angered Kings River units and users. Essentially all Kings River service area lands were developed and ownership patterns were established long before Pine Flat Dam was developed. Except for the Tulare Lake bed, where the constant threat of severe flooding makes small-scale farming economically infeasible, farming in nearly all of the Kings River service area has always been on small parcels.

The Bureau of Reclamation rejected then-pending contracts with KRWA members but agreed to a test case of issues.
In 1972, a U.S. District Court ruled:

• Reclamation law did not apply to the Pine Flat Project.
• Even had Reclamation law applied, it would have been terminated by repayment of irrigation storage costs.

A federal appeals court reversed the decision, however, and in 1977 the Supreme Court de-clined to hear the case.

The issue was finally decided by Congress in the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982. That measure specifically exempted the Kings River and other Corps of Engineers flood control projects (such as Terminus and Success dams on the Kaweah and Tule rivers) from acreage limitation restrictions and other provisions of Reclamation law.

Kings River Flood Protection and Power Generation

The KRCD in 1959 became the lead agency in downstream channel and levee improvement projects. Those were directed at protecting flood-prone lands in Kings and western Fresno counties as well as improving the river’s capability of carrying flood releases from Pine Flat Dam or uncontrolled flood flows from Mill and Hughes creeks. Work continued for the next 16 years. Improved channel capacity preserved the amount of conservation storage space available in Pine Flat Reservoir.
Additional storage and power generation facilities became Kings River goals at an early date. When Kings Canyon National Park was created in 1940, its boundaries were drawn to exclude two potential reservoir sites, in Cedar Grove on the South Fork and remote Tehipite Valley on the Middle Fork. Those sites were annexed into Kings Canyon National Park in 1965 and removed from development consideration.

A KRCD master plan, adopted in the early 1970s, proposed development of a Pine Flat Dam power plant, a Piedra afterbay reservoir (to re-regulate flows), a Dinkey Creek reservoir (with two power plants), raising Pine Flat Dam and enlarging Pine Flat Reservoir, a dam and power plant at Rodgers Crossing (on the Kings River’s main stem above Pine Flat), and a dam on Mill Creek (upstream from its confluence with the Kings River, below Pine Flat).

Only the Pine Flat power plant has been developed. It was completed in 1984. KRCD sells the electricity generated at Pine Flat to the California Department of Water Resources for powering State Water Project pumping facilities. The plant uses only irri-gation and flood control water releases from Pine Flat Dam to generate electricity.

KRCD’s Dinkey Creek project moved to within two months of the start of construction in 1986 when plans were halted for lack of a purchaser for energy the project would have generated. That failure resulted from delays caused by environmental litigation challenging parts of the Dinkey Creek plan.

The Rodgers Crossing project was studied on several occasions beginning in 1972. Creation by Congress (through passage of the Forest System Act in 1987) of a special upper Kings River federal management area between the elevations of 995 and 1,590 feet put the Rodgers Crossing project into dormancy. An act of Congress would now be required for the dam’s development.

The North Fork’s potential for hydroelectric power development was recognized in the 20th century’s earliest years. San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation in 1927 developed the Balch Powerhouse, a stream-flow generating plant, along with diminutive Black Rock Reservoir. More than 25 years of dispute between Pacific Gas and Electric Company (SJL&P’s successor), the Bureau of Reclamation and Kings River interests (represented by the Fresno Irrigation District) delayed further North Fork power develop-ment. Completion of Pine Flat Reservoir in 1954 created the re-regulating reservoir that was necessary for extensive upstream water storage and power generation development by PG&E.

Work began on PG&E’s Kings River project in 1955. Built were Courtright Lake, Lake Wishon, Haas Powerhouse (first underground power plant in the United States), the Kings River Powerhouse at the upper end of Pine Flat Reservoir and other facilities, including enlargement of Balch Powerhouse. In 1984, the PG&E Helms Pumped Storage Project and its underground generating-pumping facility between Lake Wishon and Courtright Lake were completed. Two small off-stream reservoirs near the General Grant Grove section of Kings Canyon National Park are remnants from the Kings watershed’s logging history.

Sequoia Lake on Mill Flat Creek was devel-oped in 1889 and Hume Lake on Tenmile Creek was created in 1909 to supply water for a flume which transported roughly-milled timber to a mill in Sanger. Hume Lake Dam, designed by pioneer engineer John S. Eastwood (who conceived of the Big Creek hydroelectric project on the San Joaquin River), was the world’s first multiple-arch dam. Although still used for recreation, neither reservoir plays any role in modern Kings River operations.

Fish, Wildlife and the Corps of Engineers’ Studies

The KRWA, its member units and the Califor-nia Department of Fish and Game recognized that Pine Flat Dam’s completion in 1954 would affect the river’s fish and wildlife habitat. On September 11, 1964, KRWA and the Department of Fish and Game entered into a comprehensive fish and game agree-ment. It provided for the preservation, protection, maintenance and enhancement of then existing fish and wildlife resources in and adjacent to the Kings River.

In order to provide water for the fishery below Pine Flat Dam, the agreement stipulated that there should be a minimum flow in the river of 50-100 c.f.s. at the head of the Centerville Bottoms, the actual amount depending upon the type of current year water conditions and the amount of runoff in the previous year. This full minimum flow obligation was most often met with releases from Pine Flat Dam. When adequate amounts of water were discharged (below Pine Flat Dam) into the river by Mill and Hughes creeks, releases from Pine Flat Dam were permitted to be reduced to 25 c.f.s. for the reach of the Kings River between the dam and the confluence of Mill Creek a mile downstream.

KRWA and KRCD each recognized that their duties in managing the river’s resources included caring for and possibly enhancing the river’s environment. Many environmental studies and programs were undertaken by KRCD with KRWA’s support along the Kings River and in Pine Flat Reservoir in the 1980s and 1990s.

Along with local efforts, Kings River fishery studies proceeded of a pair of fronts. The Army Corps of Engineers in 1993 began the Pine Flat Dam Fish and Wildlife Restoration Investigation, focusing on the river and reservoir. At the direction of Congress, the reconnaissance-level study examined the feasibility of raising Pine Flat Dam, developing off-stream reservoirs, importing water into the Kings River system, and other projects which might enhance fish and wildlife habitat and the environment. The study was not to propose any action which would interfere with water rights, storage rights or operations, or which would require involuntary acquisition of water rights, storage rights or land.

The reconnaissance study identified some potential projects. One, a turbine bypass facility to be located at the base of Pine Flat Dam, was designated as a “fast track” project. It would help control temperatures of water being released into the river at times when release levels were below the KRCD power plant’s operating minimums. The other pro-jects were all designated to be subjects of feasibility studies for which the KRWA agreed to pay half of the KRCD’s share as local cost-sharing sponsor. Largest of the projects analyzed in the feasibility study would be a multi-level intake structure. This large structure would, if built, be mounted on the upstream face of Pine Flat Dam over the inlets to KRCD’s power plant penstock inlets. It would include portals to draw water for release into the river from different elevations in order to control downstream water temperatures. Other projects being inves-tigated included a water transfer pipeline and habitat restoration. The feasibility study ad-vanced slowly during the year.

The Kings River Fisheries Management Pro-gram Throughout much of the 1990s, KRWA and its member units struggled with issues raised by the 1991 filing of a public trust complaint by a coalition of angler groups. After years of discussions and negotiations, the Kings River Fisheries Management Pro-gram became reality when its Framework Agreement was signed on May 28, 1999. With this major accomplishment, the KRWA, KRCD and California Department of Fish and Game voluntarily agreed to become partners in the model program aimed at enhancing the Kings River’s fishery habitat and envi-ronment through joint effort and willing dedication by water users of some of their assets. The consensus-based program established a flexible, adaptive management approach, utilizing the best science available. It superceded the 1964 agreement between the KRWA and CDFG.