This water basically came from a land owned by someone whos also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. Its a bad day, he says, shooing me out. We are horrified by the lack of regard for both neighbor and nature, and we hope that the community will accept our deepest and most sincere apologies and find it in their hearts to forgive us. They pledge to donate the 380 acres to charity. They rely only on rain, which concentrates the flavorful oils. Contact 4? In a profile of Vidovich written by Lois Henry then of The Bakersfield Californian now writing exclusively for her own service, SJVWater the farmer-lawyer-real estate magnate made no bones about where local misgivings began. Johannesburg He spent his vast fortune on a 30-year quest to save the rhinoceros. The footprint of agriculture has grown a good deal beyond what the water can cover. I walk to another part of the orchard and watch phase two. They were farmers back in San Antonio, growing lettuce, cilantro, and radishes on a small plot of land. To carry water from someplace far away to another place far away, he says. His trees were drinking from the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, from rivers and irrigation canals and the water bank. Im in another land, an expanse of hard, ugly, cratered-out earth the color of sand. I meet up with the Wonderful field man who first tipped me off to the pipeline. Contact 2? Im down.. This was the same distancegeographic, psychicthat allowed him and Lynda to clear-cut the oaks and to kill the independent pistachio commission, to grab a water bank that belonged to the state and to pretend for 30 years that Lost Hills wasnt a place of dire need. 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. I hop out of the car. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. Past McFarland and the high school runners who won five state championships in a row in the 1990s. He and Lynda wanted to run their own ads for their own brand. This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence. All Access Digital offer for just 99 cents! I try again to pin him down, but hes a man who likes to think of himself as wily. Like other small farmers, my water stays on my ground. Whether its the glint of a 15-carat, yellow canary diamond ring, a 25th wedding anniversary gift from Stewart, or one of the pomegranate-colored rubies she says are a girls best friend, its hard to tell from the back row. Like a lot of empires, it comes to an end., So what about you? I ask. Locals also are nervous about six new pump stations, controlled by Vidovich, that they fear could pump massive amounts of groundwater out of Tulare County, into the California Aqueduct, and down to Southern California. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. And Vidovich has said if he . In a report filed Wednesday with the county . At Wonderful Health and Wellness, were educating our employees about this health crisis. With that insight, he sold the company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. Each tree produces 22 pounds of nuts. On the way out, the voice in their head, Lyndas voice, goads them to give one more hour to the Wonderful Fitness Center. One year later, Vidovich turned his gain from the water sale to Mojave into an almost outright acquisition of land in the Angiola Water District in Tulare County. Thats changing. That company led to another company, and he soon owned half the commercial alarm accounts in Los Angeles. Ultimately, it drives a lucrative if sad mission, as uttered by the looming giant himself. Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. Theyre our future, she says. Ive told them all no. By the decree of Lynda, who once contemplated a bowl of those juicy little seedless mandarins and on the spot named them Cuties, this is now the land of Wonderful. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. One of his frat brothers was a wealthy kid whose father ran a janitorial business. Stewart gambled and won for many years. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. As he bled the aquifer dry, he called on the government to bring him an even mightier river from afar. She gestures to the young students in the front row, the ones enrolled in the ag-prep classes, and asks them to stand up and take a bow. He unfolds a $20 bill from a wad he keeps inside a bent paper clip, and we take a seat in the far corner. Twine strung trailer to trailer hangs with the laundry of fathers, mothers, and children.
Real Time Billionaires - Forbes Thats our goal. We tell the children about the fields when they are young so they dont know the fields when they are old, she says. More than a dozen family members have followed Lupe and Manuel to Lost Hills. The Boswell company, their attorneys and Tulare Lake Canal Company president Mark Unruh did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Then the men of cotton, driven out of the South by the boll weevil, put the five rivers into canals and dried up the lake. It becomes scorn because they cant allow it to become pity or self-hatred. The colors turn brilliant in the light made spectacular by the particles of dust. Theyre dusty with San Joaquin dirt. But others are suspicious of Vidovichs record of buying land and selling its water, both surface and groundwater, out of the area, sometimes to urban users. He started cleaning pizza parlors and drugstores. He had none of his fathers sentimentality. She was a very frugal lady. It is one more way to extend the brand.
From now on, theyll grow on land that offers a double protection against drought. It is flowing to a place of dire thirst. If this were any other part of Kern, the farmers would be reaching into the earth to make up the difference. Silicon Valley developer John Vidovich wants to build a water pipeline on his property; cotton king J.G. But some residents and local leaders are growing wary of the companys dominance and secrecy.
Water War New Money Vs. Old Power in Parched California The farmer moved the rain. Shell check in every so often to see how business is going. Theyre droughts best buddies.. It was Lynda who teamed up with the USDA to develop 21 new single-family homes and 60 new townhouses on a couple of acres of almonds that Wonderful tore out. What market share has been lost in Asia and the Middle East, the company is looking to get back in Mexico with its spicy Latin line of nuts. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. Maybe not since the wheat barons has the income disparity between farmer and farmworker been greater. This is how Resnick became a pistachio, almond, and pomegranate grower.
Mobile home park owner raises $94K to fight Measure D Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. If you study his moves, you can see a method to the acres he is accumulating. No whistle shouts mealtime in the modern-day company town. His father was 3 years old at the time. 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. I thank him and hurry down the dirt road through the almonds, eyeing the rearview mirror to see if a Resnick truck is following me. He isnt farming dirt, Arax wrote. How will courts rebuke of Berkeleys natural-gas ban affect the national movement it began? A giant pistachio nut flashes on the big screen. Two days after the Tulare Lake Canal Company sued Sandridge Partners, the farming and water giant owned by John Vidovich, to halt trenching work on a water pipeline set to cut . Age : 59. Wonderful is getting smaller, he says. Tender sprouts poke out of the dry soil, and I bend down to feel their prickle. Water rights are like democracy, he told Forbes in 1989. But you ask the growers we process, and theyll tell you that year in and year out, no one offers a better price. Water is what led me to Stewart Resnick in the winter of 2003. What happens to them if Wonderful downsizes? But the one thing he cant control is what hes most dependent on water. He only needed to find groundwater from another basin to replace the state aqueduct water he had just sold. He makes $10.50 an hour, and the company provides him with a 401(k) plan and medical insurance. She delivers it in classic Lynda style. They do that because they love it., A POM craze followed. That little red string is supposed to remind him to count to ten. No longer does it have to be a career that brings Mexicans to their hands and knees. As a class of people, the farmers and real estate developers harbor a deep-down contempt for what they have built. His grandfather, who came to California from Croatia in 1908, got his start with 10 acres of cherries and apricots in Mountain View. Here and there my boots crunch down on the dried remains of pomegranates that look like small pieces of scat dropped by a coyote. We are creating foods. Nothing keeps prices high like a monopoly. Because, while he does farm thousands of acres of pistachios, almonds [] Everything about our physical selves, Lynda believes, begins in our guts. Boswell had done for the town of Corcoran. He had no intention of farming it, either. Youve read the 0 free articles available to you. One way or the other, we got rid of our last farm a few years before I was born and moved to the Fresno suburbs. Shes now providing tutors and counselors in every region of California to boost the graduation rate. It should be right here, but I dont see it. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. Wheres it coming from? The grass is a color green on the verge of blue, and the cutouts for trees are razor etched. 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. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. In the maroon of sundown,I follow the workers back to Lost Hills. Where is the water going? In 2009, Vidovich sold the annual rights to 14,000 acrefeet of water belonging to property sitting in the Dudley Ridge Water District, located in Kings County, for an eye-popping $73 million. I ask him about his delivery of servicespruning, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, waterthat can be calibrated and timed to enable the smallest unit to achieve maximum yield. On the whiteboard in front of the weights, the big boys list their totals. We produced a short documentary film. For college, he picked California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo over the hill and majored in agriculture business. This means he can avoid the thievery of a labor contractor who acts as a middleman between the farmer and the farmworker and charges for rides and drinks and doesnt always pay minimum wage. The abundance of that water in good years has created this overreach of agriculture. 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. Asia Pacific +65 6212 1000. I walk up and reintroduce myself. 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. Arax: They lose their livelihood. Faced with scarcity, farmers are very protective of their pipes and canals, said Barton Buzz Thompson, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the universitys Water in the West program. He makes $10.75 an hour. In his book, The Dreamt Land, Fresno-based reporter and author Mark Arax noted that Vidovichs business moves were driven out of an almost singular commodity: water. I feel too good to give any of it up.. 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. Former L.A. Fire Marshal John Vidovich has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging he was "unlawfully and unceremoniously ousted from his job" in August 2016. On a fog-drip night in January 1972, two men walked into my fathers empty bar with gloves on and shot him to death. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. The project would take five days to completewhen the canal wasnt in use. You cant stop a grower from taking his own water to his crops, said consultant Grewal. I applaud, too. Mattress maker Tempur Sealy International (TPX) is also in the mix with a P/E ratio of 14.1 relative to five years of annualized 29% earnings growth. Already, the high school is filled with hundreds of students bused in from farmworker towns that are among the poorest communities in the West. Like the waters of the lake, the indent of the Resnicks will recede from the land, too. Who is going to use it? said attorney Herr, according to SJV Waters Henry. Where does the water end up? The bowls on her kitchen table are filled with grapes, berries, bananas, and red and green bell peppers. "Water rights are like democracy," he told Forbes in 1989. One more bin, a post reads. Talk to me, Hussein says, draining a can of Rockstar. The independent growers and processors, no surprise, regarded him as a bully eager to employ teams of lawyers and tens of millions of dollars to force his agenda. If he were on the scene today, hed have to add sashed Queens to the list. During the holiday season, they sent out 4,000 gift boxes to their nearest and dearest friends filled with their fruits and nuts, along with a card of the two of them dressed in skin-colored body stockings, posing as Adam and Eve. She joined the Oakland Tribune in 2001. The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in between. To grow, Big Ag needed a bigger and more dependable supply. I follow him inside to a long line of workers that ends at a plastic window where Hussein sits on the other side, working the cash register like a teller at a race track. It wanted assurance that the pipeline wont interfere with the canal, as well as proof that Vidovich has $5 million in insurance if the canal gets damaged. Shes built a grocery section in the back of the caf stocked with grapeseed oil and what she touts are Whole Foodsquality vegetables and fruits that sell at Walmart prices. Why grapeseed oil, I ask Andy Anzaldo, head of grower relations and a fitness buff, whos taken on the added duties of what might be called Wonderfuls Minister of Health. The way the Bobcat goes full steam, it takes but a few seconds of splendid violence to uproot a tree. His face is blank. He didnt know where to begin. His oldest son is retired in Seattle. No picking of crop agitates the earth like the picking of almonds and pistachios. This is the Lynda who now endeavors to see farmhands as something more than workers. Anything else I can help you with?, He seems in a hurry. Somehow, 30 or 40 nuts arent compelled to drop. Young men and women from Teach for America will do their two-year stints at the complex and live in village housing. Due to the drought, this water would be impossible to replace, it said. The checks the workers bring in here from Mr. Resnick are the same checks they bring in for years. Id have to say that fully half of my success has been luck. Lets meet again in two weeks, he said. Neighbors dont tell on neighbors.. 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. 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. A bunch of trees are going dry, he says. But I couldnt have picked a more cinematic name than Lost Hills. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. It was the same distance that allows them to control more land and water130 billion gallons a yearthan any other man and woman in California and still believe it isnt enough. I cross the Tulare County line heading south into Bakersfield, and there in front of me, for no eye to miss, stands the Wonderful Citrus complex with its four-story storage building designed in the shape of an almighty box of Halo mandarins. But thats not an issue I deal with., I dont even know what it was, to be honest with you.. The tule fog sets down again in the valley. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. The oldest of five children, he came from Mexico when he was 18. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. Through the haze I can see the knoll of the aqueduct come closer. Now shes getting lots of credit.. Marketplace is a division of MPR's 501 (c)(3). Already mechanization is changing, you know, the labor situation. Future of state housing is at stake in UC ruling, governor says, Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, erved as Santa Clara County Planning Commissioner, Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. EMEA +44 20 7330 7500. The pistachio trees in Wonderful number 6 million. The truth a mercenary has landed on. I had not seen any. The city of Los Angeles, by comparison, consumes 587,000 acre-feet. Theres an unease about the room. John Vidovich made headlines - and a lot of enemies - in 2009 by permanently selling rights to 14,000-acre feet of state water from a Kings County water district to southern California for $73 million, according to media reports. Mobil and Texaco and Prudential Life were willing to practically give the ground and trees away. Arax: So because there is no groundwater out in Lost Hills, they came up with this idea of pumping groundwater from 40, 50 miles away. John Vidovich is a real estate developer who specializes in land use and development deals involving everything from mobile home parks and large apartment complexes to wine vineyards, pistachio farms and water baron. How will money and power reshape this desiccated landscape? I didnt see the tumbleweeds along the roadside and the strip of parched earth that separated what remained of the desert from the perfect rows of irrigated agriculture. Its John Vidovich. The stock is up 33% in the last year and more . He went out and bought an alarm company. At the time we were handing out college scholarships in the valley, but Lynda decided it wasnt nearly enough. A year and a half after hearing Sandeland in the wake of Giblers storyLynda kicked into high gear their mission to save Lost Hills and several other farmworker towns where Wonderful operated its orchards and processing plants. Lynda spent $150,000 at an auction to buy the beaded gown and matching bolero jacket, the Elvis Dress, that Princess Diana had worn on a visit to Hong Kong. VIDEO: Christmas wonderland featuring the Grinch . Big fish eat the small fish here. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. What if the endless days without rain become endless years? Both GSAs, along with three others in the Tulare Lake subbasin, submitted a single joint groundwater plan. They married in 1972, and he sold the alarm company for $100 million. One more hour and Im outta this fucking place.. Thats when the Resnicks decided to sell the concept of wellness to their 4,300 employees throughout the valley the same way they sell workplace safety. You can reach Alex at
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Vidovich fires back: Kings Co. water pipeline battle picks up steam She had recently divorced and wasnt about to settle for a life in Culver City. ! it says. The next day, I drive to a spot a few miles beyond the trailer park where the county road dead-ends in a pomegranate orchard, or what used to be a pomegranate orchard before a Caterpillar came crashing through. Down the great aqueduct, by freight of politics and gravity, came the excess waters of the Sacramento River. So I ask about the big picture. Why not California? Uneasy about a slowly-marching plan to siphon Valley water for Southern California, farmers and some water managers are worrying about the growing shadow of one of the regions largest land owners. The front gates of the 25,000-square-foot Beaux Arts mansion on Sunset Boulevard magically opened without a guard giving a nod. His accountant suggested he buy apartments. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. Seventy-five years ago, writer Carey McWilliams, in Factories in the Field, lambasted the ribboned Dukes and belted Barons of California agriculture. But he got too big. More than half our employees are obese or near obese, Anzaldo tells me. His dad had sold the bar and was adrift. Rubbish, said Vidovich, in a Los Altos office decorated with maps of his land holdings. John Vidovich is 67 years old and was born on 11/23/1955. We were asleep at the wheel. California had passed a law intended to stop the rising of new towns in the middle of nowhere. The boss showed him a storeroom filled with chemicals tossed here and there and told him to bring order to the mess. The company is now run by son Jim, or J.W., 69, who lives 2.5 hours away from this dusty valley in a palatial home in the wealthy Southern California town of La Caada Flintridge. She deftly places her body between him and me. During paid breaks, they do their 15 minutes of Zumba, take a walk along a designated path, and munch on the free fruits and veggies put out for them. All told, 36 men operating six machines will harvest the orchard in six days. Thirty-five percent of our pre-diabetic population has gone into the healthy range, she tells the team. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. Vidovich wrote out a check for the full amount, then went looking for the water to prop up Resnicks monopoly. Correction: August 8, 2022 An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Stanford grad James Griffin "J.G." Resnick grabs at a pomegranate that might win a blue ribbon at the fair and tries to twist it free.
LOIS HENRY: Fallout from water war continues as state mulls plans The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. The load will translate into 18,000 pounds of finished nuts in a matter of days. But you take some risks in business. This is the first installment of a new SUNLIGHT Series: Kings of the River, a review of the machinations and battles on the oft-overlooked Kings River. If Resnick retains every drop, he might squeeze 25 acre-feet of water a day out of both pipes. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. And when youve been as lucky as weve been, you start to think you can ride out drought, too., He did learn one lesson.
Groundwater accountability sparks clash of Central Valley ag titans He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. After three years of drought, tensions are running high all over rural California. Theyre all chasing Bobby, whose 325-pound bench press, 335-pound squat, and 455-pound dead lift make him the sole member of the 1,000-Pound Club. The depletion is causing land to collapse nearly a foot a year, in what U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists Devin Galloway and Francis Riley called one of the single largest alterations of the land surface attributed to humankind.. For generations, the company has supplied steady work for Kings County families and has been an integral part of the regions identity, helping to build a community park, the YMCA, Corcoran District Hospital and the high school football stadium. Im here to show the farmer that ags footprint needs to get smaller.. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. So beginning in the 1940s, Kern farmers went out and grabbed a share of not one distant river but two: the San Joaquin to the north and the Sacramento to the north of that. Month after month, she made ends meet on a $1,600 budget. I cash them the same. Look it, Im from Beverly Hills. The Wonderful Company is located in Californias Central Valley where droughts hit frequently, but that hasnt stopped the company from harvesting record crops. Theres a lot happening in the world. Thanks to Wonderfuls $15 million Get Crackin campaignthe largest media buy in the history of snack nutspistachios now rank among the top ten bestselling salty snack items in the U.S. We are no longer processing nuts, he says. If he had his druthers, he said, hed still be living in a little ranch house in Culver City. She was the daughter of Jack Harris, a film distributor, who moved the family to Los Angeles when Lynda was 15 to produce movies. In court, Boswell also warned about the pipelines potential use, suggesting that water could eventually end up in Southern California.
Washington Commanders NFL draft picks 2023 selection analysis - ESPN His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. Now theres something here. You dont believe me?, No, I believe you, Resnick says. That was four years ago. It might be nice if my kids and grandkids could turn to a book someday and read about what weve built., He and Lynda were changing the way food was grown in California and sold to the world. How can this be? The brick-hard ground cant be bought.