How can this be? On a fog-drip night in January 1972, two men walked into my fathers empty bar with gloves on and shot him to death. On the way out of the market, Pablo buys a case of Pacifico. Look, these farmers go back two, three, and four generations. The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. Comprehensive company profiles. The shiny red orbs, three months shy of harvest, pop out from the bright green leaves like bulbs on a Christmas tree. Domestic sales are up 42 percent over the past eight years, but foreign sales have stalled. And that scares the hell out of everybody who lives here.. Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. Theyre dusty with San Joaquin dirt. He sold a chunk of land to the builders of Sunnyvale and decided he could develop the rest himself. The choices for the Kern farmer now come down to two: He can reach deep into his pocket and buy high-priced water from an irrigation district with surplus supplies. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. I park the car and walk in the direction of a scattering of buildings slapped together with stucco and corrugated tin. The project seemed simple: Using existing canals and new 48-inch pipe, he would ship water 10 miles from his property in Lemoore to property south of Stratford. But Paramount isnt Paramount anymore. Im a billionaire. Hes got an awful temper hes trying to control through Kabbalah. We produced a short documentary film. It will carry his private water on his private land, never leaving the regions geological basin. That still leaves the majority of the workforce beyond his cajole. Dont let his boots, blue jeans, and ball cap fool you, the old-timers say. Its a bad day, he says, shooing me out. Did it teach him any lessons? The four grandchildren have visited the orchards once or twice. I returned for two more sessions, and then he and Lynda took off to their $15 million vacation house in Aspen, where they were warring with the locals over a housing project for community workers that was blocking their view. You can reach Alex at alex.tavlian@sjvsun.com. Hes a decent guy making $216,000 a year who doesnt pretend that he isnt beholden to Wonderful. I didnt know good land from bad land. The State Water Project, for the first time in six years, delivers surplus flows. Everyone knew where it was going. Lynda sent the first batches of POM, week after week, as gifts to David Bowie, Rupert Murdoch, and Disney head Michael Eisner. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. His first wife, the mother of his two sons and daughter, told him she was quite happy living in their $30,000 condo in Culver City. This was the same road that took me to Selma, the raisin capital of the world, to pack peaches and plums for Mel Girazian, my fathers old friend. It can be squeezed only so much. Lucky for her that the young man was kind. There are plans, crazy as it sounds, to take out 10,000 acres of almonds. He and Lynda wanted to run their own ads for their own brand. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. Instead, Southern California water users in the arid desert municipal and industrial alike now hold the rights. And its an area that doesnt have ground water, so its there completely because of the State Water Project. ! it says. Boswell says no 2022-08-07 - By Lisa M. Krieger and Veronica Martinez Staff writers . Its the summer of 2016, eight weeks before the big pick, and Im zigzagging across the almonds and pistachios, square mile after square mile of immaculate orchards lined with micro-irrigation systems and heavy with nuts. The city of Los Angeles, by comparison, consumes 587,000 acre-feet. Uneasy about the slow plan to siphon Valley water for Southern California, farmers and water managers are worrying about a large land owner in the region. None of his three children had the slightest interest in taking over the company. The neighborhoods didnt have sidewalks; when it rained, the kids had to walk to school in the mud. The sentimental ones stay away. He bought his first San Joaquin Valley parcel in 1994 when he invested in a foreclosed property in Kings County. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. The wealth-tracking platform provides ongoing updates on the net worth and ranking of each . Selfo works 50 hours a week as an irrigator. Dun & Bradstreet collects private company financials for more than 23 . Because its so much fun to say that Lost Hills has been found., The room full of growers applauds. They were actually harvesting record crops. This is the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. John, his oldest son, had served in the military as an intelligence officer and graduated from Santa Clara law school. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. Youve read the 0 free articles available to you. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. He wants his fair share, but he wants everybody else to prosper, too.. Register now for a free, virtual event about the latest season of "The Uncertain Hour". Because Lupe had no papers, she followed the coyote for many more miles until they reached a steep pass. Why not we start with an extended interview or two? I offered. The abundance of that water in good years has created this overreach of agriculture. What if he dropped his lawsuit and the two of them worked together to solve their water problems? If only Eve had offered Adam a pomegranate instead of an apple, Lynda wrote, every day could have been a holiday.. He was headed to the fields at the same time that another farmworker, drunk on beer, was coming home from the fields. Its his pipe, not mine. California had passed a law intended to stop the rising of new towns in the middle of nowhere. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. He replenished it by shipping water from his property in Tulare County, 25 miles away, infuriating locals there. Boswell had done for the town of Corcoran. Boswell Company. Theres no issue with the pipeline.. Well still make money.. The great drought is officially over. Do you know what I am? Now its the seven-week nut harvest that brings out the inhalers. His grandfather, who came to California from Croatia in 1908, got his start with 10 acres of cherries and apricots in Mountain View. Thats a billion-dollar crop. He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. It took time for the wax to dry. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. Fifty-three percent of our employees are obese, and 12 percent of them have diabetes., The growers start to fidget. The bells in the churches pealed, and out came the villagers with their scythes and axes, believing they had found the reason for their poverty. STRATFORD Water is the lifeblood in the parched San Joaquin Valley, sustaining endless acres of trees, seeds and pastures that feed a hungry nation.
Developer John Vidovich Pays $10K of George Shirakawa Jr.'s Legal Bills Arax: This place called Lost Hills, it is kind of a modern-day company town not unlike Hershey, Pennsylvania. While some counties and water boards prohibit water exports, others dont. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. This must be the spot the Wonderful field man was describing. The idea was to enroll at Rutgers and study to become a doctor. The giving goes to college scholarships and tutors. Ive gone too far. Hes not only able to irrigate his nut trees with an imported flow of groundwater40,000 acre-feet in some years. Bruce Springsteen turned it into a song on his Ghost of Tom Joad album. He wanted to stay in the customer service business and heard from his doctor that Teleflora, the giant flower-delivery company, could be bought for a buyers price. Im down, Stewart, he protests. Maybe this explains why the United Way could declare the valley one of the nations skinflints, a place where the wealthy farmers donated to the childrens hospital or Fresno State athletics but almost never to the communities filled with Mexicans where their crops grew. I try to calculate how many hundreds of aluminum sections need to be linked seamlessly, or at least watertight, to cover the distance of a mile. And Vidovich has said if he . Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. Theres a lot to commend here, I tell Anzaldo, but where does persuasion end and coercion begin?, As a second-generation Mexican American, Anzaldo says he knows the powerful clench of fast food and sugar among his own family. Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. It was simply a place to park some money and have another opportunity. He drove to Delano, the farm town where Chavez and his union had made so much trouble and history. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. Already, they are paying $69 a month to the local utility district. Once each tree has been shaken, the nuts are left on the ground for a few days to dry.
John T Vidovich, 67 - Los Altos, CA - Has Court or Arrest Records Its not the fidget of boredom. Why not California? But he got too big. Im in a dire situation.. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. Vidovich digs 17 new wells, several to the depth of 1,400 feet, and pumps groundwater into ditches and canals that move the flow across miles of flat lake bed. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. At the east end, where the highway meets Interstate 5, the traveler gets a choice. As she announces the newest gift, the men and women in the back of the crowd smile and applaud politely and try not to show their faces to the publicity crew she has brought with her to film the event. Ah, he says, so youre the one whos been snooping around. She grabs him by the wrist, and they make a beeline for the convention hall door.
Lemoore Council likely to respond to proposed feedlot near Lemoore and He remade himself into a graduate of the UCLA law school, a cleaner of Los Angeles buildings, a vendor of security alarms, a seller of flowers in a pot, a minter of Elvis plates and Princess Diana dolls, a bottler of Fiji Island water, a farmer of San Joaquin Valley dirt. As the head of a quasi-public agency, he knows he cant completely blow off my questions. Native Americans fished from reed boats. Are big banks following through on their climate pledges? His 15 million trees in the San Joaquin Valley consume more than 400,000 acre-feet of water a year. He studied the situation. You dont believe me?, No, I believe you, Resnick says. I pull over into the dirt of a pomegranate orchard, the ancient fruit that the Resnicks have turned into POMWonderful, the sweet purple juice inside a swell-upon-swell bottle. A piece of pipeline south of Stratford rests in the arm of a piece of heavy equipment on Dec. 16, 2021. One of his films, The Blob, became a cult classic, and they lived in a house on the Westside with two Rolls-Royces in the garage. The tumbleweeds on open ground give you a peek into what Lost Hills looked like before the aqueduct made a river here. The Wonderful Company is located in Californias Central Valley where droughts hit frequently, but that hasnt stopped the company from harvesting record crops. The price for pistachios has climbed from $4.50 a pound to an unbelievable $5.25 a pound. I then move to the far side of the orchard, where another worker, riding a huge mower, is kicking up an even bigger cloud of dust. All the new water pours into the delta, and what doesnt go out to sea fills up the aqueduct again. They issued a commemorative medal of Tiger Woods winning the 1997 Masters that offended the golfer. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. Because the road ends here, there is no physical way to follow the canals flow. Title. Too many pomegranates. When a farmers orchards encompass 186 square miles, finding the field man can be a challenge. The helicopter buzzing started in February, scattering cattle. Thousands of California oaks were felled. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. In my lifetime alone, California has gone from 13 million people to 40 million people. Hes carrying 55,000 pounds of crop in two swaggering trailers open to the sun. Lynda assisted her with the design and color scheme but otherwise has remained hands-off. We had gangs and murders, but thats better, too., He has come to El Toro Loco to cash his check and buy some beer. Stewart tries to interrupt, but hes not the boss in this room. But if you want to be in agriculture, you need to go to the Central Valley, said Vidovich. By the time he drove back, he was a citrus grower. You cant reverse diabetes, but you can control it with a blood sugar level between 6.5 and 8. Lupe and Manuel, like many of the residents, grew up next to each other in a pueblo called San Antonio deep in the state of Guerrero, a mountainous region of dramatic beauty. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. This is a lot of gestures to unpack, and as I exit the grounds, I keep turning around to get one last look thats true. She walks off the stage with Stewart. I grab my notebook and walk up to one of the vans. He wonders what agriculture will look like in western Kern in ten years. Even as the supplies of federal and state water have dropped to near zero, agriculture in Kern keeps chugging along, growing more intensive. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire." "But those two guys hate each other." "Not anymore.
Ousted L.A. fire marshal claims corruption among city fire inspectors He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. EMEA +44 20 7330 7500. By the time they returned to Beverly Hills, he had lost interest in a book about his life, at least one that I might write. The wide-open middle of California did its lullaby on me again. All Access Digital offer for just 99 cents! He called it fake junk, sued, and won. Tracts of houses, Californias last affordable dream, civilize three or four exits, and then its back to the open road splattered with the guts and feathers of chickens that jumped ship on the slaughterhouse drive. The oldest of five children, he came from Mexico when he was 18. Coke, Gatorade, and Monster Energy are sky-high in sweeteners, but dont be fooled by that SunnyD, either. She joined the Oakland Tribune in 2001. All Rights Reserved. Recommended for you Videos 4:28. They made a new plantation here.
Sandridge Partners plans new beef processing plant | John Lindt The POM tanks, Im told, are backed up with a three-year supply. Where the pipes butt up against Twisselman Road, a more clever bit of engineering is required. I roll past Tulare, where every February they hold the biggest tractor show in the world, even bigger than the one in Paris. But he wasnt looking for the monotony of steady. If youre messing with peoples lives and it doesnt work, thats serious. It had to work. Tens of millions of dollars spent on philanthropy in Lost Hills wasnt just good for the people, she discovered. Vidovich wrote out a check for the full amount, then went looking for the water to prop up Resnicks monopoly. The farmer isnt here to smell the cracking open of wood, the ripping open of warm secret earth. The company operates the most wells in the lake basin and the deepest ones. Her husband, Manuel, will awaken in 30 minutes to prepare for his night shift. No journalist had written a word about his rise as an agricultural giant, how he had turned public water into private water by grabbing control of Californias largest water bank, a project jump-started with $74 million in taxpayer money. But inside he had these weaknesses. The Iranians dont irrigate their trees. And neither was 1952, Tri-Valley bids farewell to water restrictions as end of drought emergency declared. So why hasnt this place gone to tumbleweeds? The Mojave Water Agency, a San Bernardino-based water provider. You may have never heard of John Vidovich, but his impact on the day-to-day life of the average southern San Joaquin Valley farmer is difficult to be understated. When a copy found its way to The New York Times, Lynda was pursued by federal prosecutors until they concluded she was more dilettante than radical. The project would take five days to completewhen the canal wasnt in use. Each tree produces 38 pounds of nuts. Theres going to be a lot of very creative and motivated people looking for ways to get water to their crops, or to get water to somebodys crops moving it around from low-value to high-value acreage, said Jay Lund, head of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. The white flowers have set into buds, and the buds have become baby almonds covered in fuzz. Sugar kills, she tells them. The uncle died at age 22 fighting in Afghanistan. Hes smiling but speaks only Spanish. This is a park for the people, to give them a break from their hard lives. And while Resnick and Vidovich have been at odds in the past over San Joaquin Valley water feuds especially centering on the appearance that Resnick was overly-familiar in his utilization of the Kern Water Bank the feud is long gone. Falling groundwater levels are stressing their wells. But some residents and local leaders are growing wary of the companys dominance and secrecy. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. She divorced her husband in 1968 and began dating Anthony Russo, who worked at the RAND think tank in Santa Monica with military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. As far as the company can tell, no active salmonella has ever traced back to the plant. I know theres a more forceful way to ask the question, but to what end? Financial Data. Hes planting ground that no one has ever planted before. Its ridiculous, he said. He yanks and pulls, and it finally comes off, throwing him a foot backward. At Highland Park High, he excelled in math and struggled in English. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. My head keeps hitting the sunroof. He started cleaning pizza parlors and drugstores. He was in the mood to gamble. She had her own bookabout her genius as a marketergoing. To fix the subsidence, and keep the town dry in the next flood, residents and the state prison are having to pay $10 million in extra taxes. Altogether, Resnick has purchased 300,000 acre-feet of water from farmers and water districtsat a cost of $200 millionto cover his shortfall during the drought. What is indisputable is that over the past 20-plus years, Vidovich has quietly amassed more than 100,000 acres in the Central Valley, gaining footholds on numerous water boards, which has given him control over vast amounts of groundwater the valley's lifeblood. Already mechanization is changing, you know, the labor situation. Lynda is also mapping out a farm-to-food program where students will grow fruits, vegetables, and grains on a plot of village land. And then they pump more groundwater.
Vidovoch's New Kings County Water Pipeline Triggers Alarm Bells The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. He is a single man who rents a bedroom from other family members for $150 a month. Because, while he does farm thousands of acres of pistachios, almonds [] Whether he realizes it, hes part of the biggest pistachio harvest in history. The matter was headed to court when Vidovich paid a visit to Resnick. Talk to me, Hussein says, draining a can of Rockstar. Section, block, and row dont compute; he has to direct me by cellphone and guideposts. Thats changing. Carls Jr., Subway, McDonalds, Wendys, Loves, or Arbys. He guides me to the caf, and we grab our lunches from the buffet. Youre the one who leads the way on selling agricultural water to the cities. Surely, no one does this better than Wonderful? I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. He did little, if any, catting around. The more water he got, the more crops he planted, and the more crops he planted, the more water he needed to plant more crops, and on and on. The pistachio trees in Wonderful number 6 million. He only needed to find groundwater from another basin to replace the state aqueduct water he had just sold. No farmer ever is. The buyer? This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence.
White rhinos for sale, one careful owner: tycoon looks for a But the one thing he cant control is what hes most dependent on water. Facebook gives people the power to. For college, he picked California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo over the hill and majored in agriculture business. Anzaldos grandfather came from Guadalajara in the 1950s as part of the bracero farmworker program. The Newsom Water Resilience Portfolio has seven investment principles, none of which includes the actions of water entrepreneurs, such as farmer John Vidovich who has been trying to put together a voluntary speculative groundwater market in Kern County for dry years. In a profile written by Lois Henry, then of The Bakersfield Californian now writing exclusively for her own service SJVWater, Vidovich readily acknowledge the acrimony the sale caused. One mile, two miles, three miles, fourit keeps going until it reaches another county and back to one of the main canals in the Dudley Ridge Water District. With that insight, he sold the company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. In an era of climate change, everybody is scrambling. In a timespan even shorter than Resnicks, the 61-year-old Vidovich has bought up more than 100,000 acres of farmland scattered across the valley. The water will be stripped from the land and sold to developers of new towns both here and over the mountain. The clash of the agricultural titans, who hold influential positions on local water boards and control thousands of acres with precious water rights, is being waged against a backdrop of deep distrust in the community about both companies hidden agendas. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. He points to the young almond trees that envelop his 20 acres like a siege. No bee can penetrate the shield, and his mandarins remain seedless. A parched Southern California suburb looking to keep up with a booming population. He was about my size, but he was very tough. Lets call it what it is, he says. John Vidovich is 67 years old and was born on 11/23/1955. One man drives and shakes the tree while the other man makes sure the clusters fall into the butterfly opening of the receiver. At the buildings he was cleaning, he noticed that no one was watching the front and back doors. John Hume, . In the trailer next door, Lupes cousin Margarita lives with her husband, Selfo, and their three young children. Every river busting out of the Sierra was bent sideways, if not backward, by a bulwark of ditches, levees, canals, and dams. A California developer, farmer, and water buyer, John Vidovich, is seeking approval to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore on what appears to be a 789-acre project located along Highway 41, just south of Highway 198. . He was a small, trim man, no more than 5 foot 5, in his early 70s with thinning silver hair and brown eyes rimmed in pink.
Gov. Newsom's Water Portfolio Has No Water Entrepreneurs Rubbish, said Vidovich, in a Los Altos office decorated with maps of his land holdings. They greet me with smiles and handshakes. Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. It cant be farmed like it was, he says. How will money and power reshape this desiccated landscape? In the maroon of sundown,I follow the workers back to Lost Hills. A portion of his wages will be set aside each month to pay down the debt. He lives down the road in Wasco, the Rose Capital of America, though the roses, too, have turned to nuts. (SJV Water/ Lois Henry) A large water pipeline being built near Lemoore in Kings County is raising eyebrows as much for its possible uses as for the name associated with its construction John Vidovich. The concept changed the industry. How much bigger can agriculture get. Then it hits me. When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you he's a farmer. When I look around here at what weve built and then look back at my life in New Jersey, I think, How did it happen? For one man and woman to build something like this would be almost impossible today.. Vidovich did not immediately respond . You Have Found Lost Hills! Rather, it is the authority vested in Wonderful that counts. The leathery skin on the fruit has turned a nice orange-red. He left in 1956. I never liked New Jersey, but I never knew why.