What happens to all the runoff water from the rain once the ponding basins in Fresno and Clovis reach capacity?
Fox26 News followed the water that streams west of Highway 99 to see where it ends up.
Fresno Irrigation District is making sure runoff water from Fresno and Clovis doesn't go to waste. It created a number of recharging basins west of HWY 99.
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They're not big bodies of water but FID General Manager, Bill Stretch, says these recharge basins make a difference.
"We'll take that stormwater from the cities then will route it out here and recharge the groundwater aquifer which is beneficial to growers around here and some of the communities."
Stretch says it helps recharge the aquifers in westside communities of Easton, Kerman and Biola. The Wagner Basin about 12 miles west of 99 was brought online this year.
Fresno Irrigation District now has 35 basins that cover 890 acres. It's a game-changer.
We would ship it outside of the district because we had no home for that water.
Since 2005 water dripping into the underground table from these basins is slightly more than what Millerton Lake holds.
"So the amount of groundwater recharge we've done just like this is just over 550,000 acre-feet. So you can see how important these types of projects are to a district like ours."
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Due to recent storms, there's too much water in Millerton Lake. Now some of it is being streamed to one of Fresno's biggest recharge basins.
"We started diverting water in and we're bringing it to the City of Fresno's Leaky Acres facilities. That's there off Ashlan and Hwy 168 so were bringing water in there."
FID isn't through building basins. It's committed to buying 420 acres and adding up to a dozen in the next decade.