San Francisco Chronicle
The Kern River, shown passing near Panorama Park in Bakersfield, is one of the southernmost rivers in the Sierra Nevada. A group of Bakersfield residents is seeking to replenish it as a centerpiece for the community.
Scott Strazzante/S.F. ChronicleFor decades, residents of Bakersfield have lived with a river that’s little more than a channel of dust.
The Kern, which pours from the snowy peaks of the southern Sierra, descends upon California’s ninth-largest city and, in all but the wettest of years, runs dry. A sandy, weed-strewn corridor is left winding unremarkably through the downtown, beside roads, beneath bridges and behind businesses.
“Any major city that has a river or that sort of thing, they try to take advantage of it and make it an asset rather than an eyesore,” said Bill Cooper, who grew up near the Kern and has lived in Bakersfield most of his life. “A river can really add to a community. But nobody wants to live in our crappy town. Unfortunately, Bakersfield has that reputation.”
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A group of residents is trying to change that. Cooper and dozens of others are fighting to bring water back to the Kern River, hoping to create a lush, parklike centerpiece in a city best known for the sunbaked oil fields and farms that surround it.
It isn’t an easy go. The river’s waters are already largely accounted for, some serving the municipal needs of Bakersfield and nearby communities, but most drawn for agriculture, the engine of the regional economy. Keeping more water in the river could mean less for growing almonds, oranges, grapes and more than 200 other crops. Many fear that food supplies, jobs and income stand to be lost, and they’re pushing back.
“To just say ag is using all the water and we need to change that, you’re ignoring decades of history and how this came about,” said Edwin Camp, a third-generation grower outside Bakersfield who has staked his livelihood on the promise of Kern River water. “It scares me. What are we supposed to depend on?”
The fight over the river is coming to a head this year in the courts. The dispute pits Bakersfield residents, organized under the banner Bring Back the Kern, and a slate of environmental organizations against the water users: the 413,000-person city and a handful of agricultural water districts.
The California Attorney General’s Office also joined the fray recently, intervening on behalf of the residents. The state is concerned that a judgment that fails to restore water to the Kern could open the door to challenges to flow protections on other rivers similarly burdened by overuse and, increasingly, the warming climate.
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Initially, the residents and their allies won a tentative decision that showed promise for their cause. In 2023, after the river unexpectedly swelled during one of the wettest winters in a half-century, a Kern County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction that obligated the city to keep water in the river to safeguard fish, at least until the trial plays out.
But that order was reversed this month by an appeals court. The three-judge panel found that the lower court had not evaluated broader impacts when it made the preliminary decision about the river water, including harm caused to urban and agricultural water supplies, as required by the state Constitution. Attorneys for the city and water districts praised the ruling as a validation of the long-standing interests on the river.
A trial for the case is scheduled for December. Should the proceedings go forward, attorneys for Bring Back the Kern and their partners are expected to argue that draining the river is a violation of California’s public trust doctrine. The doctrine asserts that certain natural resources must be preserved for the public good.
The public trust issue, which is not new to the water world, was perhaps most famously taken up at Mono Lake, where the courts ruled decades ago that the headwaters of the ecologically prized basin couldn’t be entirely siphoned off for thirsty communities in Southern California.
Each public trust case is different, however, and historically, judges have given deference to commerce, including farming. Both environmentalists and water suppliers statewide are watching closely to see how the matter unfolds on the Kern.
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The Mohawk Street bridge goes over the Kern River in Bakersfield, where the river usually runs dry.
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
A Bakersfield beachThe Kern River is one of the southernmost rivers in the Sierra Nevada, with headwaters near the base of 14,500-foot Mount Whitney.
The river’s 165-mile course runs unfettered through remote forests and canyons before hitting the dam at Lake Isabella and dropping sharply into the flatlands of the San Joaquin Valley. There, draws on the river provide nearly a third of the surface water that fuels Kern County’s $8 billion of annual crop production — among the most of any California county.
In the past, the waterway continued through Bakersfield to the now dried-up Buena Vista Lake on the valley floor. Since the late 1800s, however, increasing water diversions reduced the flow in its lower reaches. Now there is virtually none.
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“We once had a Bakersfield Beach,” said Rich O’Neil, who grew up in the city in the 1940s and ’50s and remembers year-round flows on the Kern through the downtown. “People would sunbathe, swim, fish. There were places to kayak and canoe.”
In the 1970s, when O’Neil joined fellow Bakersfield resident Bill Cooper to spearhead a bike path along the city’s riverfront, the water had already stopped flowing through town. During the early construction of what would become the Kern River Parkway, with a 30-mile-plus bicycle path, volunteers carried in buckets of water — in lieu of river water — to keep the trees alive.
“We were told by city water people they were trying to get water in the channel,” Cooper said. “We believed them. We were young.”
Since 1976, the city of Bakersfield has owned and operated several diversion dams, or weirs, along the river, each of which steers water into canals. About 25% of the water goes to the city and the rest to agricultural water districts. The districts have either longtime water rights on the Kern or contract with the city for supplies.
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