Like many billionaires, he didnt have a decent explanation for his fortune. He had none of his fathers sentimentality. It was true that agriculture had been selling state project water to cities for two decades. They were farmers back in San Antonio, growing lettuce, cilantro, and radishes on a small plot of land. As it happened, just down the road, on the other side of the lake bottom, Resnick had captured his own body of water, the Kern Water Bank, and planted millions of nut trees on desert scrub. You and I look at this meal, he says. The highway runs two lanes here, three lanes there, through miles of agriculture broken every 20 minutes by fast food, gas station, and cheap motel. State water dwindling year after year. I ask her if she is concerned about wasting water, given the drought and the distance the water has traveled20 miles from a well in Wascoand that the cost goes up the more they use. More often than not, it is hauling away some piece of the valleys bounty. Tonight, feeling no pain, hell sit in one of the strip clubs in Bakersfield and maybe buy himself a fancy lap dance.. Up and down the Central Coast, restaurants are boycotting their wines. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. And then it hits me when I reach the road to Weedpatch, where my grandfathers story in Americaa poet on his hands and knees picking potatoesbegan. A van pulls up to the curb, and the door slides open. The wall of Pacifico and 16-ounce cans of Bud is rebuilt daily. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. On our trips to Disneyland, I must have blinkered my eyes heading down 99. Posted on August 6, 2018 Bakersfield Californian. She tells me the water comes out of the tap yellow and foul smelling, and she doesnt trust it. Most Los Altos residents don't know it, but one of their neighbors known locally as a developer and political candidate moonlights as a farmer, one currently receiving a dose of notoriety. I kept my notes and tapes and waited for another day. Gianquinto and Vidovich have repeatedly said that it would be nearly impossible for an individual to use state facilities to create a private water market using any water, let alone groundwater. Resnick, he says. The GPS tells me to take Interstate 5, the fastest route through the belly of the state, but Im partial to Highway 99, the old road that brought the Okies and Mexicans to the fields and deposited a twang on my Armenian tongue. For the next two or three seconds, the almonds pour down like hail. This isnt the Lynda posing for photos with Barbra Streisand. The Mojave Water Agency in the high desert needed a backup supply to serve its growing communities of Barstow and Apple Valley, Hesperia and Victorville. Its just smart business. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. They greet me with smiles and handshakes. Theyre no longer in danger. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. Anzaldos grandfather came from Guadalajara in the 1950s as part of the bracero farmworker program. They dumped their stolen car into the canals black waters and got away with murder for the next 32 years. John Gibler, a freelance journalist, found Lost Hills a year before Lynda. He makes $10.50 an hour, and the company provides him with a 401(k) plan and medical insurance. He had his hands on 65 percent of the nations crop. There are often laws binding it to a basin. Compulsive gambler and alcoholic. What Lynda seems to have in mind is a kind of utopian village set amid orchards, not unlike the utopias that were tried by the early dreamers of Southern California. . Lynda isnt just writing checks, Donoso told me. Developer, farmer and water trader John Vidovich plans to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore according to a preliminary application filed with the county. They have no way to grasp the $50 million to $80 million a year that the Resnicks say they are spending on philanthropy. One million acres of the valley floor, greater than the size of Rhode Island, are now covered in almond trees. All told, 36 men operating six machines will harvest the orchard in six days. Even Wonderful Park is spelled with the same heart-shaped O that stamps a bottle of POM. "A small farmer, if he gets his whole limit, it keeps him in business, whereas for us, it's a very small fraction of our revenue," Vidovich said. The contents of each catcher, 500 pounds of almond meat, are placed on a conveyor 20 feet high and dumped into a big-rig hauler for transport to the Wonderful processing plant. Selfo works 50 hours a week as an irrigator. It also means giving back.. "In talking to the planning department, I found out that the initial step is to notify essential agencies in the area for comments. On the day the trees fall quietly upon the orchard floor, no one is here but the Mexican on his tractor. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. Each mound is fed into an even bigger machine whose teeth pulverize the trees and make sawdust. It takes a life every six seconds. The project would consist of a small reservoir, more like short-term storage cells, along the California Aqueduct just north of Kettleman City where floodwater off the south fork of the Kings River would be captured. When John Vidovich was appointed as fire marshal in September 2014, he was given the difficult task of cleaning up the city of L.A.'s stubbornly antiquated Fire Prevention Bureau, making it more . Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. The nets of the Chinese during the Gold Rush caught terrapin that was served as turtle soup in the fanciest restaurants of San Francisco. Its the beginning of September 2016, and battalions of heavy machinery dispatched from the Wonderful equipment yards pound the ground and rattle the trees. It takes my visiting the irrigation district office during a public meeting for him to cough up more details. The farmer corralled the snowmelt and erased the valley, its desert and marsh. Of all the wonders of Wonderful, this is the one I find most mystifying. A flour tortilla. Though the project is billed as flood control, the agreement also allows Vidovich to move groundwater. Lost Hills sits on an upslope. And he was able to use canals and pumping stations to then get that water in this pipeline that very secretively was connected to irrigation ditches in Lost Hills. But we werent there long. They moved to Highland Park, home to Johnson & Johnson and close enough to Rutgers University to hear the fans screaming at Neilson Field. Among the graduating class are kids headed to Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth, and the state and community college systems. John Vidovich. Because of a lack of water? I ask. My husband would have been shot dead like the others, but he was lucky. But a pipeline, which Vidovich is allowed to build under the Semitropic agreement, could span that distance. Now, hes involved in a project that could set him up as a water marketer on an extreme scale. His father grew grapes, cherries, and apricots in the Santa Clara Valley back when Stanford University still had a reason to be known as The Farm. I pity the outsider trying to make sense of it. Its a $500 million project, of which Semitropic is hoping to get $250 million from Proposition 1 funding. Farm bill strikes local note with developer/farmer, losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase, Los Altos teen wins Food Network top prize, Los Altos teen stars as featured contestant on Food Networks Kids Baking Championship, Snow in the hills: Unusual weather (for Los Altos) brings white winter to area, Running the table: Bullis Charter sixth-grader rules his age group in table tennis, Outside Santa Clara County Annual Subscription, Outside Santa Clara County Monthly Subscription. The rain starts to fall, big, fat, slashing drops that feel like electricity on my open palm. Buttonwillow, California Search Background Check John Vidovich was associated with Sandridge Partners, L.P. between 2018 and 2021. Theyre either working in the heat or hiding from the heat. John Vidovich just wants to farm, he says. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. Absolutely not. When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you hes a farmer. Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. 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. Pace farmed in the valley and partnered with Vidovich for a while. Its not true, he wants to farm.. The curtains were made of a fabric woven in Venice and substantial enough that they might finish off a person who happened to be looking out the window in the throes of an earthquake. He and his forebears from Georgia had dried up Tulare Lake, the biggest body of freshwater this side of the Mississippi, and planted 100,000 acres of cotton outside the town of Corcoran. This isnt any road. The type of transaction is also recorded such as cash entry, credit entry, homesteads, patents (deeds . Like a lot of empires, it comes to an end., So what about you? I ask. Scott: And of course that could have serious implications for these workers. He had no papers, like so many others, just an image of what this side of the border looked like. Russo and Ellsberg needed a place to photocopy the 7,000 pages, and Lynda volunteered the Xerox machine at her ad agency on Melrose Avenue. Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading. Though Vidovich describes them as simply having known each other at school, others in Tulare and Kings water circles say Hurley is Vidovichs right-hand man some say henchman. Theyre listening with their heads bent down. In fact, his detractors call him the single greatest threat to Central Valley farming ever to come down the pike. And how will the Resnicks fare? I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it, Vidovich said. Their concern is where Vidovich is taking the groundwater. She was a very frugal lady. The boss came back in, saw his do-nothing, and said only three words: Just get started. He began to move, and the job went quickly after that. Notices were sent to the oversight agencies, including the City of Lemoore, Caltrans, and other relevant agencies. Before he died at age 86, J.G. They plaintiffs' lawyers argued that Vidovich pursued the McCarthy water to offset the $73 million sell-off, even though he knew that it was already spoken for. This is only $3? But for a lot of workers, bringing that big fat burrito from home still makes sense., I had seen what J.G. They arrive in Chevy trucks and Dodge vans and spill out in groups of four or five under the sweat-stained hats of the 49ers, Penn State, and the Yankees. The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom wont last forever. His law license is inactive, according to the California State Bar Association website. All told, nine men operating five machines will pick clean this orchard over the next four weeks. The wind kicks up dirt from the reap of oil and almonds, and the dust cloud carries back into town, raining down on the elementary school first. Unlike many other billionaires, they could poke fun at themselves. Im down, Stewart, he protests. This is the Lynda who now endeavors to see farmhands as something more than workers. He had moved out to Long Beach, bought some property, and built one of those new strip malls. Theyre now building an $80 million charter-school complex in Delano, just down the road from Cesar Chavez High. Pablo prunes and irrigates the almond and pistachio trees and applies the chemicals that cannot be applied by helicopter. Whatever remains is not nearly enough to make up for the shortfall of imported water from the state. And its an area that doesnt have ground water, so its there completely because of the State Water Project. We'd love to hear eyewitness Then he motions to Lynda, whos standing off to the side of the light-dimmed stage. Agriculture in the south valley has extended far beyond the provisions of its one river, the Kern. Vidovich has long been at odds with. But his egotheres no controlling that., Resnick had heard it all before. Under his leadership, Buena Vista has installed a pipeline system to reduce reliance on canals, which lose a lot of water to seepage and the district has become extremely active in buying up land for water banking. I grab my notebook and walk up to one of the vans. If I follow them south into Resnick almonds, I can see where the water is going. She walks off the stage with Stewart. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. Burglar alarms, on the other hand, offered round-the-clock vigilance without coffee breaks. Resnick dipped into his savings from his job at a mental hospital and went in half on the machine. The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. He came on board full-time in 2011, give or take, he said. Summer or not, theyre dressed in shirt layered upon shirt and the same no-name dusty blue jeans. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. Lets meet again in two weeks, he said. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. Typically, each pound sells wholesale for $4.25. I enter an equipment yard where a Wonderful farmhand is standing next to a tractor. Stewart refers to the occasional trek between Lost Hills and Beverly Hillsroughly 140 milesas a carpetbaggers distance. It seems even longer, he says, if you add in the psychological distance of being an East Coast Jew in a California farm belt where Jews are few and far between. "When commodity prices are at record highs, it is irresponsible to increase government subsidy rates for 15 crops, subsidize additional crops and provide payments that further distort markets.". SpanishStyle Oxtail Stew Recipe. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. 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. Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. I walk up and reintroduce myself. Whos it going to? I tried not to stare at the gold that was everywhere: heavy-legged gold furniture, paintings in thick gold frames, gold-leaf carpet, and gold-fringed drapes. He was headed to the fields at the same time that another farmworker, drunk on beer, was coming home from the fields. Conceived by Lynda, it cost one fortune to build and a second fortune to light up. Vidovich freely admits that most of his land is for water rights. Six hundred pistachio growers in blue jeans isnt her usual crowd. So the state couldnt deliver, in one year couldnt deliver any of it. His accountant suggested he buy apartments. Hes dressed Italian chin to footLoro Piana jeans and Hogan tennis shoes. supernatural tattoos designs. They donated $15 million to found UCLAs Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and more than $25 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to build a pavilion in their name. So, capturing that south fork floodwater would benefit both Kings and Kern county farmers, according to Semitropics Gianquinto. Drought turning to floodit is the story of California. The crops we grow can only be grown in a few places in the world. What? Inside sits a young man named Pablo. High 53F. Theres not much left over, he says. He got into UCLA and joined a Jewish fraternity. But Semitropic is the first district to get this close to making it a reality. His father met his mother, the cantors daughter, and they married. We can surely help you find the best one according to your needs. Together, the Resnicks have wedded the valleys hidebound farming culture with L.A.s celebrity culture. On a Facebook page with postings in Spanish, they offer a glimpse of life inside pistachio world. They give thanks for a job that provides decent wages and access to a free wellness center next door staffed by a full-time doctor, physicians assistant, registered dietitian, and marriage and family therapist. Ill have to go deeper if I can.. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. Over the years, they had donated large sums of money to political campaigns, and some of it went to Republicans who had pledged to prop up California agriculture. He holds a little more than 100,000 acres in Kings County, 40,000 acres in Kern, and 10,000 acres in Tulare County. Too many pomegranates. If he were on the scene today, hed have to add sashed Queens to the list. Rain for Rent, the pipes say. Wonderful, by contrast, shoots for the middle. Talk to me, Hussein says, draining a can of Rockstar. And so I began with slaughter and madness and then moved on to bartenders for fathers. Where the pipes butt up against Twisselman Road, a more clever bit of engineering is required. I look back at Resnick. His grandfather Resnick had fled the Ukraine in the wake of another killing of Jews by Cossacks. Anything else I can help you with?, He seems in a hurry. Lynda believes that if theyre enticed in the right direction, the 1,300 workers might choose to prepare the same healthy fare at home. It took time to gain the respect of the people, and I was afraid. Its not easy to hear, but Im not going to sugarcoat this, she says. One of Angiolas main well fields is actually inside the Pixley Irrigation District boundaries where water managers were concerned by the amount of water leaving their district. But most of this water has been spent by the Resnicks and other account holders in years two, three, and four of the drought. I didnt grow up here, but if it wasnt for California, its openness and opportunities, I wouldnt be sitting where Im sitting., No other farmer, not even Gallo, had cornered a market the way Resnick had cornered the growing, buying, processing, and selling of pistachios. He told his neighbors to alter the flight of the bees or hed sue them for trespassing. The water sent to Kern County1.4 million acre-feet a yearhas doubled the cropland. He worked as a gardener in Los Angeles and then heard about the almond trees on the other side of the mountain where the living was so much cheaper. He is a single man who rents a bedroom from other family members for $150 a month. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. I learned back then that our farmers thought the whole world was out to screw them. The citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. By the time he died an old man on his tractor in the Cupertino Hills, where he had planted grapes again and was making wine, the transformation of his valley by the silicon chip was complete. To grow, Big Ag needed a bigger and more dependable supply. It wouldnt even make a couple of sections of his almonds. Why not we start with an extended interview or two? I offered. Hes a decent guy making $216,000 a year who doesnt pretend that he isnt beholden to Wonderful. Of the 22,000 acres they ripped during the drought, 18,000 acres are being replanted in pistachios. It gives me the luxury to keep on working. It isnt going down because he wont let it go down. Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until smoking. By the eighth day of harvest, the sun is gone. The knoll begins to rise. 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. Relatives arranged his passage, paying the coyote the new rate of $12,000. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. Once each tree has been shaken, the nuts are left on the ground for a few days to dry. He recalled bidding on a construction project while studying for the bar exam. He isnt farming dirt. He lives down the road in Wasco, the Rose Capital of America, though the roses, too, have turned to nuts. Hes farming water. So so sleepy, says another. One more hour and Im outta this fucking place.. Every time I see it, Im inspired and proud of what weve been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. Once he finished grabbing the flow of the five rivers that ran across the plain, he used his turbine pumps to seize the water beneath the ground. He paved over the last orchard in the Santa Clara Valley with some apartments and then went looking for another valley where he might build his own empire. The giant J.G. In the late 1970s, he went looking for a hedge against inflation. I would have worn my Levis, he says, but Lyndas here, and she thinks I dress like a bum. Were standing in the sun outside the plants corporate office, a building whose clean lines and retro furniture wear the imprint of Lynda, too. Family Office Market Place, and any affiliates, (the "Company") have adopted and implemented this privacy policy as part of our commitment to protecting your personal information from misuse. Pace gave a nod to Vidovich on that count. Longtime friend and associate Ted Page defended Vidovichs operations. The Tulare Lake Canal Company, controlled by JG Boswell Company, moved the equipment onto . The John Wick: Chapter 4 posters are rolling in one after another. Still, he was starting to think about his legacy, and thats why he finally agreed to meet with me. Lupe gave birth to two daughters, U.S. citizens, who are now 11 and 6. EDMUND JOHN VIDOVICH Lake Havasu City, Arizona Trinitas Partners LLC Investment Management Redwood City, California CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ALMOND GROWERS ASSN. Scott: So you set out with this question: how was he defying nature? When the clamps let go of the trunk, 8,000 almonds, green outer shells wilted and partly opened, the meat inside a wooden womb, lie scattered on the flat dry earth. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. each comment to let us know of abusive posts. This 79-minute documentary focuses upon the overall culture of bullying at Mentor High School; outlining the abuse both teenagers endured and the efforts made by both sets of parents to address their concerns prior to their children's suicide. By then, Wonderful, if it still exists, will be a portfolio run by men even farther away than Beverly Hills. The Spanish rice isnt rice but cauliflower made to look like rice. Brad Steinwede. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. A judge found this past March that the initiative was flawed because Vidovich used his own project description instead of the neutral description by the Cupertino city attorney. In the summer of 2010, hed spent several days documenting the deplorable conditions of the modern company town. I now hear whispers of water belonging to farmers two counties away being pumped out of the ground and hijacked in the dead of night to irrigate the nuts of Lost Hills. This is the west end of Lost Hills, the extraction end. My grandmother said it was his leftist politics that ate up that vineyard and the ones that followed. accounts and the history behind a news event. It is the ditch up the road, the one that carries no water, that is filled with old mattresses and spent appliances. For as far as I can see, the water in the canal runs inky through the orchards. Damn, if he doesnt look even younger and more fit than the last time I saw him eight years earlier. In a valley of dead rivers, each one killed on behalf of agriculture, the aqueduct was the one river still alive. From the east side of Tulare County to the west side of Fresno County, theyre planting more nuts and Halos. Annual sales at the Mint jumped to nearly $1 billion. The imported flow arrives by way of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, the one-of-a-kind hydraulic system built by the feds and state to remedy Gods uneven design of California. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. tupperware garlic keeper how many kids does jim harbaugh have He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. As farmworker colonies go, this one isnt as grim as others Ive visited. Young men and women from Teach for America will do their two-year stints at the complex and live in village housing. According to sources, an application for a proposed feedlot and slaughterhouse was submitted last month. Hes never driven a tractor or opened an irrigation valve.
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