Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Corcoran, CA

CORCORAN, Calif. (KMPH) — During the first week of school, most people would expect teachers to be extra vigilant, but some parents in California say they experienced the opposite.

Bret Harte Elementary School allowed a 3-year-old child to be picked up by a stranger on Friday.

"The school district is totally at fault, totally at fault for this," said 3-year-old Natalia's Father, Juan Alcantar. "Three days into the school year... something like this shouldn't happen."

Alcantar said their daughter Natalia was missing when his wife arrived for pick up.

School just started. This is when security should be at its highest," he said. "Who's picking up who from school, and it just failed.

Their daughter's teachers aide told Alcantar the 3-year-old toddler was "picked up by her grandpa."

"Wait a minute, she doesn't have a grandpa, so where's our daughter?" said Alcantar.

Their daughter was taken by a man picking up his granddaughter.

When he brought her back, he told the school he got the two girls mixed up.

"I think it's just unacceptable that the school either wasn't aware or responsible to see who they were releasing the kids to," said Alcantar.

He said he was lucky his daughter was okay.

Leaving with an older man, her being a little girl, I mean, that was my first thought," said Alcantar. "What's happening to my daughter? What's happening to my daughter? Second, am I going to see her again?

He filed a complaint with the superintendent of the Corcoran School District and had a face-to-face meeting on Monday.

"We're sorry, but it doesn't fix it; the scare we went through? It doesn't fix it," said Alcantar. "A lot of circumstances these days, kids don't come back or worse, so it was scary."

Alcantar said this is Natalia's first year attending school, and they're not going to bring their daughter back to class until the school district makes changes to its policy.

KMPH reached out to the Corcoran School District for comment about the issue.

Superintendent Eduardo Ochoa sent the following statement:

“Student safety is very important to CJUSD. The District is aware of this situation and has reviewed and updated its safety protocols to ensure all students remain safe and under the proper care and supervision of school staff including during the transfer of care to a parent/guardian.”

"Shark Tank" star Barbara Corcoran is well known for her lavish New York City apartment — after all, the Queen of Real Estate knows a thing or two about picking a prime spot.

But fans have been reeling over her West Coast home — a double-wide trailer in California that's going viral on TikTok after she gave viewers a tour inside.

Related: 'How Lucky Am I?': Tour Barbara Corcoran's $13 Million New York Apartment

In a clip that's been viewed over 9.5 million times, TikTok influencer Caleb Simpson shows viewers inside Corcoran's Pacific Palisades "Taj Mahal."

34008187Watch more exciting videos on TikTokWatch more exciting videos on TikTok@calebwsimpson@Barbara Corcoran Location: Pacific Palisades, LA Occupation: Shar ...See moreoriginal sound - CALEB SIMPSON @Barbara Corcoran Location: Pacific Palisades, LA Occupation: Shar ...See more

"Everything's little," she says.

Corcoran told Simpson that she bought the home for $800,000 and put $150,000 worth of work into it, getting crafty where she needed — the tile in the kitchen, for example, is leftover from her New York City apartment.

Corcoran then showed off her bathrooms, bedrooms, terrace, and stunning oceanfront views.

"I saw this trailer park, and I liked this one the best because I'd have the best view, I thought," she told viewers about purchasing the home. "I knocked on her door, and [the owner was] like, 'No, I'm not selling, but I'll sell in a year,' and I said, 'No, I really want it now … what if you can use it whenever you want for your life?' She said, 'Yeah, that would be good.' And she sold it to me."

Related: Why Barbara Corcoran Chose Her Business Partner After Looking Inside Her Purse: 'Best Hire I Ever Made'

It's not the first time Corcoran and Simpson have teamed up for a tour of her home. Last year, Simpson showed viewers inside the real estate mogul's $13 million New York City penthouse.

Corcoran's net worth is currently an estimated $100 million.

The Corcoran levee is being raised – again.

The fear is it won’t be high enough as runoff from record breaking snowpack above several rivers that feed into the old Tulare Lake gets underway.

Before work got underway the levee stood at 188 feet.

That’s four feet shorter than when it was last raised in 2017, after sinking several feet from its prior height.

The problem is subsidence, the land is sinking. And it’s taking the levee with it.

When California dries out and farmers can’t get enough water from river and state supplies, they turn to groundwater.

Around Corcoran, farmers have pumped the ground so hard it is collapsing – subsiding – over a large area.

The massive area of subsidence has been documented in satellite photos. It even has a name: “the Corcoran bowl.”

Because the subsidence covers such a large area, it’s hard to see the damage. Bridges, homes and roads haven’t crumbled into sinkholes. Buildings aren’t tilting sideways. Nothing so dramatic.

But the land is quietly and irrevocably sinking.

In this epic water year, the cost is coming due.

Piling up dirt – and debt

Flood water is already lapping at the west and south sections of the Corcoran levee. At the height of flooding last month, water briefly washed up against the levee’s short eastern arm, which wraps around two state prisons.

With heavy runoff anticipated to roll down the Sierra Nevadas over the next month, the Cross Creek Flood Control District is scrambling to build up the 14.5 mile levee

The district only has about $1 million for a job that is estimated will cost $17 million to $21 million. Even so, it is pushing forward with construction.

When asked if Kings County is helping pay for the levee work, Finance Director Erik Gonzalez said it’s still up in the air.

“…funding for the Corcoran levee project has still not been settled,” he wrote in an email. “On our end, the County is hoping to work with CalOES and FEMA to ensure that the project qualifies for reimbursement by these two organizations and have requested that assistance from CalOES.”

So far, no word back.

The Cross Creek district and City of Corcoran sent an urgent plea for funding to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on April 25, noting the importance of the levee to the two state prisons.

“…we are in a more desperate situation seeking funding support for the remaining Corcoran Levee reinforcement work, and hope that you can be of assistance,” wrote Cross Creek General Manager Dustin Fuller and Corcoran City Manager Greg Gatzka.

“Finding flood protective measure funding is proving to be extremely elusive,” Fuller and Gatzka added.

The prisons gave them dirt, but it’s unclear if any money was forthcoming.

Fuller directed questions to Gatzka. And Gatzka did not return multiple phone calls.

Been there, done that

Six years ago, the mountains were also heavy with snow. Flood water wasn’t at the door but the Cross Creek district looked at its elevation maps back in March 2017 and realized it had a problem.

The levee, which had stood at 195 feet in 1983, had sunk.

It was down to 188 feet, not high enough for a potentially huge flood.

So, Cross Creek scrambled through March and April of 2017 to rebuild the levee to 192 feet. It cost $10 million, which the district didn’t have.

Contractors were issued IOUs just to get the work done.

In the end, the mostly farmworker residents of Corcoran voted to add an extra $250, on average, to their property taxes for three years to make good on those IOUs.

The Department of Corrections also paid a share of the tax burden, which was divvied up considering the protective benefit each property received from the levee based on proximity and property value.

Corrections’ share in 2017 was close to $6 million.

Now, here they all are again. Another epic snow year, a sunken levee and a big bill to pay.

Merging flood zones

No matter how high it’s rebuilt, though, the Corcoran levee may not keep the town dry.

That’s because groundwater pumping has caused the land to sink southeast of Corcoran.

The extreme topographical changes were documented in a 2017 engineering report commissioned for the High Speed Rail project, which runs along Corcoran’s eastern edge next to Highway 43.

The report noted existing and future anticipated subsidence would cause three flood zones to merge, putting the rail line in the path of potentially catastrophic flooding.

Read more stories on Central Valley floods from KVPR and our partner newsrooms.

The Tulare Lake, Deer Creek and Tule River flood zones will merge, according to the report by Amec Foster Wheeler Environment and Infrastructure Inc.

“The resulting flood depth along the HSR (High Speed Rail) Alignment could potentially be more than 16 ft, and the length of the HSR Alignment within the modified flood zone could potentially be more than 20 miles.”

Those water depths and distances are based on an Army Corps of Engineers estimate of a 100-year flood volume in the lake of 1.65 million acre feet, according to the report.

The report states that because of rapid subsidence around Corcoran, “…it does not seem prudent to consider this risk to be negligible.”

New lake bottom?

Areas around Tulare Lake that had not flooded before were swamped this year after the March 10 storm drenched the region and washed down an unusually large amount of low-elevation snow.

Some farmers blamed the giant J.G. Boswell Company, which owns most of the Tulare Lake bed and its levees. They alleged the company held water off the lake bottom in order to plant tomatoes and purposely pushed it onto neighbors south and east of Corcoran.

Others say there was just such a rush of water down the Tule River and Cross creek that breaks were bound to happen.

What’s clear is the “new” southeast area that flooded appears to be following scenarios predicted in the 2017 Amec Foster engineering report.

Under those scenarios, subsidence will cause the old Tulare Lake footprint to morph from mostly egg-shaped to more of a lopsided mushroom, with greater amounts of water at the top of the lake that will spread out to the east and south.

People are already seeing that happen on the ground.

Several years ago, water managers had to install lift stations to pump water from the Angiola water district southeast of Corcoran up and into canals that cross the lake bed. That water used to run by gravity.

And if there hadn’t been pumps moving water from Deer Creek up into the lake bed earlier this spring, it would have flooded farms and towns including Allensworth and Alpaugh, said Jack Mitchell, manager of the Deer Creek Stormwater District.

Elevation maps completed for the district bear out what the Amec Foster report predicted six years ago. The area around Angiola has sunk 24 feet in the eight years since Deer Creek had its previous surveys done, Mitchell said.

“There’s a new lake bottom,” he said.

SJV Water is a nonprofit, independent online news publication covering water in the San Joaquin Valley. Lois Henry is the CEO/Editor of SJV Water. She can be reached at lois.henry@sjvwater.org. The website is www.sjvwater.org

CORCORAN, Calif. – The once-dry Tulare Lake in central California is now reemerging, flooding local farms and communities and causing potential billions of dollars in damage.

Located near the halfway point between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River.

HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER

The rivers that fed the lake, however, were dammed by 1920 and diverted for irrigation and other uses, according to NASA.

In the decades since, the dry lakebed has boomed as communities and farms growing tomatoes, cotton and cattle sprouted over the space once covered by water.

(Max Gorden / FOX Weather)

One of those communities is Corcoran in Kings County. Known as the farming capital of California, Corcoran now faces having its farms, residents and even a local prison being flooded by rising waters in the low-lying land.

A stream of atmospheric rivers, along with the melting of record snowpack, has caused water levels to surge around Corcoran, pushing levees that surround the community to the limit.

SEE HOW CALIFORNIA WAS IMPACTED BY DEADLY ATMOSPHERIC RIVER

(NASA / NASA)

Many roads and fields have already disappeared under the rising waters.

"Possibly 100,000-plus acres is going to be underwater for possibly two years," said Kings County agricultural consultant Mark Grewal.

According to Grewal, the flooding may lead to at least $2 billion in lost revenue and damages.

City officials are attempting to hold the water at bay by raising its 14.5 miles of levees by 3.5 feet. By building up the levees, the city hopes for a gradual runoff.

(Max Gorden / FOX Weather)

HOW DO RAIN AND SNOWMELT FEED WELLS?

Due to a layer of clay that may prevent the water from quickly trickling down into the aquifer below, the timeline for when the water will recede and when the farmland will return remains uncertain.

"It's a very difficult situation," said Greg Gatzka, city manager for the City of Corcoran. "But when you're placed in a position of trust by a community, you have to just go past that to focus on what needs to be done."

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials were in the Kings County community of Corcoran on Tuesday afternoon to get a firsthand look at the threat posed to the city by ongoing flooding issues in the Tulare Lake basin.

Newsom toured some of the flooded areas in parts of Kings and Tulare counties near Corcoran, then provided an update on the state’s short- and long-term response to the flood which has inundated thousands of acres of farmland on the historic lake bed.

See his post-tour address here:

Flooding in the formerly dry lake bed arose after heavy winter storms dumped abundant rain both on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley and a record snowpack in the southern Sierra Nevada range on the east side of the Valley. A series of atmospheric river storms produced so much rain in the Kings, Kaweah and Tule river watersheds that dam operators at Pine Flat Reservoir, Lake Kaweah and Lake Success had to release more water than downstream users could handle, forcing the diversion of flows into the old lake bed. That has resulted in at least a partial – if temporary – restoration of the lake.

Newsom signed an executive order on March 31 to support the emergency flood response in the Tulare Lake basin, not only because of the storms but in anticipation of the spring snowmelt in the Sierra. That order sought to speed flood-reaction activities including diversion of floodwater, removal of debris and making repairs to levees in the basin.

The flooding threat continues as the massive Sierra snowpack begins melting, sending even more water downhill into foothill lakes behind dams that are expected to have to keep releasing water.

Check fresnobee.com later for Tim Sheehan’s recap of the Newsom visit.

Tulare Lake once was the largest fresh-water lake in the western U.S., but was drained in the late 1800s and claimed for agriculture. Heavy rains in the Sierra Nevada range on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley in early 2023 have swollen its historic feeder rivers and streams, refilling portions of the usually dry lakebed.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

River/Stream

Dam/Reservoir

Tulare Lake (historic area)

Kings River

St. John's River/Cross Creek

Kaweah River/Packwood Creek

Elk Bayou/Outside Creek

Tule River

Mill Creek

Deer Creek

White River

Poso Creek

Note: Mill Creek, Deer Creek, White River, Poso Creek and others not shown on the map are not controlled by dams.

Map: Tim Sheehan | The Fresno Bee Source: California Department of Water Resources Created with Datawrapper

This story was originally published April 25, 2023, 10:29 AM.