‘Down the drain’: Tulare Lake’s return flooded this pistachio farm
‘What do we need to do not to lose everything? Because right now, it seems like we are about to lose everything.’
— MAKRAM HANNA
A few years ago, Makram Hanna took his savings from his work in real estate and decided to make a big investment together with relatives and two other families. They bought 1,270 acres of farmland in Kings County, and in 2021 they planted pistachio trees.
Many of those trees, which have yet to produce a crop, now sit under 2 feet of water.
“It’s a disaster,” Hanna said, standing with arms crossed beside rows of inundated trees. “Huge losses.”
The floodwaters cover hundreds of acres on the farm. Hanna fears that many of the trees will not survive.
The return of Tulare Lake after this year’s major storms has left Hanna and his family with a costly ordeal — and questions about how they might be able to recover from the loss.
“To see everything we worked for going down the drain, it’s very hard,” he said. “We have to think about the future, and where we get funds to rebuild our farm. It’s very difficult.”
The lake has reappeared in other wet years, including 1969, 1983 and 1997, and many of the fields that flooded were planted with seasonal row crops, such as tomatoes, cotton and safflower. For these types of crops, growers can simply evacuate sprinklers and other equipment to wait out the flooding.
Tree crops, however, sustain more costly damage. And in recent years, landowners have planted more pistachio orchards around the Tulare Basin, as well as in other parts of the San Joaquin Valley. Some of those orchards turned out to be vulnerable when rivers swollen with runoff broke through levees and inundated farmlands.
For Hanna, who commutes to the farm each week from his home in San Diego
County, dealing with the flooding and trying to save the remaining trees presents a stressful challenge.
The 68-year-old immigrated to the United States from Egypt in 1979 and says overseeing the pistachio farm reminds him of his childhood, when he worked during summers on his grandmother’s small cotton farm.
Months ago, he enjoyed walking through the rows and inspecting the trees. Lately, he is intent on finding ways to limit the damage.
“My focus is to find a solution for this disaster,” Hanna said. “What do we need to do not to lose everything? Because right now, it seems like we are about to lose everything.”
Of the more than 1,200 acres of pistachio trees on the farm, Hanna said, more than 800 acres are flooded; the rest are dry or nearly dry.
On a recent afternoon, Hanna was strategizing how to get a diesel motor working to pump water to irrigate dry areas of the farm and keep those trees alive.
He said he also has been grappling with other questions: “When is the water going to recede, and where are we going to get the money to rehab our ranch? And should we rehab the ranch? Is it salvageable?”
If Hanna and his partners decide to take out dead trees and plant new ones, the cost will be high. Replanting a single acre of pistachios can cost roughly $20,000.
Hanna said the farm has a liability insurance policy, but he doubts it will cover much, if any, of the flood damage. He expects that his family and their partners will need to shoulder substantial losses.
“All my savings, all my inheritance and all my brother and sister’s inheritance — it’s all right here,” Hanna said.
The flooding came as a sudden shock after years of success in business. As a young man, Hanna studied molecular biology at Cal State Northridge and later did odd jobs, including construction and busing tables. He eventually got into selling real estate, including auto shops and buildings at business parks, and developed gas stations.
“I lived the American dream,” Hanna said. “The reality is, no matter what the work is, just be persistent, and you’ll succeed.”
The pistachio farm isn’t Hanna’s first agricultural venture. He started in the early 2000s with 40 acres of wine grapes in Madera and farmed it on his own until he decided to pool resources with the other investors in the farm near Corcoran.
Hanna said they studied the area before deciding to purchase the land.
The farm was being used for row crops, but Hanna and his partners, seeing that neighboring ones were planted with pistachios and almonds, decided on pistachios.
Many other farmers have made the same decision over the last two decades, planting pistachios or almonds in place of other crops. Between 2002 and 2022, California’s total pistachio acreage skyrocketed from 106,000 to 554,000. In addition to being profitable, pistachios are hardy trees that can thrive with moderately salty water and soil, which is widespread in parts of the valley.
Hanna said another reason he wanted to plant pistachios is that he sees them as an “environmentally friendly” crop. He touted the trees’ ability to sequester carbon and said his farm’s water use — about 2.7 acre-feet per acre annually — was less than fields producing three rotations per year of tomatoes, cotton and corn.
Hanna said he wasn’t aware of previous flooding on the land. However, a map of flooding from the 1983 reappearance of Tulare Lake includes the property.
In May, as floodwaters rose, Hanna inspected the levee that protected the farm. It was built decades ago by farmers, and an engineer told him it was going to break.
When the levee gave way May 23, water poured through the breach onto the farm, inundating the trees.
Hanna was flying back to San Diego on a commercial flight, looking down at the area from a window seat, when he saw floodwaters rushing onto his farm.
“The intrusion of the water after the levee broke was violent, and there is no way you could control it,” he said.
As he spoke, the pond beside the orchard was filled with wading birds, including avocets and black-necked stilts. The scent of marshy mud hung in the air.
Nearby, a work crew from the California Conservation Corps was reinforcing the levee that protects Corcoran. In the distance, the hum of an airboat emanated from the lake. Pacific Gas and Electric crews on the vessels were removing equipment from power poles after shutting off electricity in the area.
Anticipating the flooding and the loss of power, Hanna’s workers had moved pumps and installed the diesel motor. Hanna said that in early June, he was trying to have a diesel tank placed next to the motor to get some pumps working again.
Three weeks later, workers were trying to fix the levee and were pumping water out of the flooded part of the orchard.
“We’re not giving up. This may completely bankrupt us, but we don’t want to fail to try,” he said.
Hanna said he is thankful that a third of the farm has been spared by the floodwaters, which have begun to recede.
“I hope and pray that it would get better,” he said.
Hanna, a Coptic Christian, said his wife has sought to reassure him by reminding him that “it’s all tangible.”
Still, the worries are hard to escape, and he has been having trouble sleeping.
“I only slept two hours last night,” he said. “It’s stressful. But you know, I have my family and have my faith, and that helps. And I have good partners too.”
Beyond his situation, Hanna said he is concerned that California hasn’t been investing enough in water infrastructure projects, such as a long-discussed plan to increase storage by raising Pine Flat Dam. Had that dam been raised by 12 feet, as proposed, “it would be very meaningful to everybody, to every farmer in that area,” he said.
He thinks this type of project would help as climate change brings more intense floods.
“If we have control over that water, we wouldn’t have the dismal problem that we are facing right now,” Hanna said.
Others in the area, including leaders of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Tribe, have suggested setting aside farmland to allow the lake to stay instead of draining it again. But Hanna said that if Pine Flat Reservoir were expanded, more water could be stored and released gradually to replenish the area’s depleted groundwater and sustain agriculture and wildlife habitats.
“Government needs to take charge and inject capital to build water projects that benefit our environment, our residents and farmers,” he said.
While struggling with the flooding, Hanna has continued paying farmworkers. He was talking with a contractor about bringing a crew to prune trees and do other work.
“By the grace of God, we have two fields here that are being saved,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they are saved. So we’re going to start working on them.”
As for the trees that remain underwater, Hanna doesn’t know how many might be lost: “The reality is, we’re going to have to wait it out and see what will happen.”