Thursday September 5, 2024
SJV Water —
The city of Bakersfield announced Tuesday it was cutting back Kern River flows for a maintenance project. But the hundreds of dead and dying fish found Friday near the Stockdale Highway bridge suggest water had already been ratcheted back.
It’s unknown when flows through Bakersfield might return.
The rapidity of the river’s dewatering and breadth of the ensuing carnage elicited gasps from Cal State University Bakersfield biology Professor Rae McNeish and two students early Friday morning as they clambered over sand bars that had been under water just two days prior.
“Look, you can still see our footprints,” McNeish noted as herons and egrets lumbered into the sky, reluctantly moving away from the smorgasbord of fish, some still flapping, in a shallow pool. One fish continued gasping even after its head had been pecked open by a hungry bird.