海角大神

Tulare Lake is both a curiosity and a disaster. For now, it is a 100 square-mile bowl of waist-deep water in California鈥檚 Central Valley, submerging prime dairy farms and almond groves. With the Sierra Nevada鈥檚 record snowpack melting, the lake could double in size, threatening a town of 20,000 and a prison housing 8,000.

Tulare Lake has never entirely left. Once the United States鈥� largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, it dried up after World War II, its water gradually diverted for farms and cities. But it comes back every few decades when the snowpack runoff is heavy 鈥� the last time in 1983.聽

The lake is a reminder of what California once was and what perhaps it will be. For thousands of years, it was one of a necklace of marshy lakes through the now parched heart of the San Joaquin Valley, a portrait of California before it was profoundly recast by human thirst. Today, it shows the urgency of the work ahead.聽

鈥淲eather whiplash鈥� of plentiful precipitation followed by drought has always been a California thing, but meteorologists suggest it is getting worse. In a state where water is increasingly precious, how can such 鈥渂ig melts鈥� be managed?聽

Two reservoirs there are already experimenting with new ideas, hoping to save more water while also avoiding flooding. Early results are promising, . In Texas, worsening flooding is leading to new 鈥減ocket prairies鈥� in urban areas, while China is pioneering 鈥渟ponge cities鈥� that use permeable materials, rain gardens, and green roofs to absorb water. They represent new ways of thinking, and the Monitor has reported on both.聽

As one expert in Texas told us: 鈥淲e tend to be biased towards technological solutions and engineering solutions rather than natural solutions. We don鈥檛 think of nature solving our problems.鈥�