Beyond Boswell

Published Feb. 21, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I was just catching my breath last week from the news that Boswell had withdrawn their proposal for Yokohl Ranch when I heard that Mark Arax would be interviewed on KVPR.  The subject was his article “A Kingdom from Dust” on Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s operations just published Jan. 31^st in the California Sunday Magazine (https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust).

           

     Once known as Paramount Farms, renamed to Wonderful, Inc., these operations now exceed those once farmed by Boswell.  Although there’s a difference in levels and kinds of philanthropy, like the clinics and schools being built in Lost Hills and Delano, there’s great similarity to the Boswell empire in control over water and land, which we learned in Arax and Wartzman’s  The King of California:   J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (2003.)  The Resnick article just published is also part of a forthcoming book by Arax, hopefully to be released next year.

           

     Getting this Resnick story now rather than later, however, may help us face the need to take back the decisions over land and water that belong in the public’s sphere.  “Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States,” Arax wrote early in the piece, “a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns.”  Arax also writes of Stewart’s partnership with his wife, Lynda, as unique and portentious.  With their influence over the entire citrus industry, we who live in the Sun-Gazette’s readership sphere are already feeling the effects in lost navel markets and acres of replants to mandarins no longer packed in our towns.

           

     Wonderful’s crop production through the drought was remarkably high, a fact that led Arax to track down their water supply.  One thing he discovered was a “private, off-the-books pipeline” that was taking water “from unsuspecting farmers in an irrigation district in Tulare County 40 miles away.”  Learning that a land developer from Santa Clara Valley named John Vidovich was the wheeler for that water provides clues about what we’ll need to prevent in the future.

           

     Writing about the Wonderful Citrus complex sited along Hwy 99 just south of the Tulare/Kern county line, “with its four-story storage building designed in the shape of an almighty box of Halo mandarins, (the complex was) conceived by Lynda, cost one fortune to build and a second fortune to light up.  I doubt the Resnicks have any idea,” Arax continued, “of the fester that eats at this place, the shame piled on shame.”  I think one layer of that shame is that we seem unable to bootstrap our public power high enough to make these guys realize who they’re taking from and how they’re damaging the future they’re trying to make with their charitable contributions in the communities of Lost Hills and Delano.

           

     This is just a taste of what’s available in Mark’s article.  If you’re interested in the future of this part of the Valley, it’s worth starting here – and now.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher who writes.  You can send her your thoughts on the Big Boys c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Real Progress

Published in edited form January 31, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “You can’t stop progress,” I’ve been warned my whole life as I worked against the predictable devastation I saw coming in progress’s wake.  Maybe that’s true, but the news this past week suggests that progress can be re-directed.

           

     Saturday’s front page article in the Fresno Bee showed fingerling Chinook salmon from the San Joaquin River.  Last fall, spring-run salmon made it to the foot of Friant Dam and reproduced for the first time in 60 years, re-starting the cycle many thought was lost forever.  Like the migrating birds returning to Tulare Lake’s man-made wetlands, the salmon run appears to be more resilient than most of our imaginations.  What we thought was lost to “progress,” Mother Nature resupplied once we committed ourselves to restoring the conditions we’d stripped from her plan.

           

     Even more pertinent for those of us in Tulare County who dream of a more sustainable future was the news that the Boswell Corp. withdrew its plan to build Yokohl Ranch.  “You’re kidding,” said one friend I called; “No way,” said another.  Ten years ago the dream of saving Yokohl Valley from this plan was ridiculed by many, made cynical by the King of California’s power - even those of us who were infected by the dream of preserving it.  One of my Tulare County heroes whose cinch straps had worn thin fighting for another, much smaller valley, said it wasn’t worth trying to fight it.  Whatever Boswell wants is inevitable.

           

     And I don’t kid myself about that power dynamic.  That company has decided that it doesn’t want to spend its resources this way, that’s all.  Whether that decision was affected (at least in part) by the costs of deflating opposition to their project, we may never know.  But there are some positive lessons I get from this news.

           

     The most important one is that sacrifices count.  Mine were small:  time spent writing, worrying, talking, more writing.  Others’ were larger: members of the Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth worked for years to document facts, then use them to lobby for and enlighten the general public and its governmental officials.   Some of the individuals involved in the group realized another component was missing, that there was a void in our public awareness of the true value of our beloved, human environment here.  One answer was the development of the group sponsoring the website www.tularecountytreasures.org (check it out!) which tells stories of the individuals who  have shaped our relationships to this place, sometimes sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

           

     There were larger sacrifices, too.  One long-time Yokohl family rancher, Tom Daly, who died in 2014 while working calves for a friend, refused to sell his land to Boswell although the offered price was 5 to 10 times higher than the going rate.  And all of these people made their sacrifices according to deep beliefs, which they held and acted upon despite the widely-held notion that Boswell’s proposed 10,000 unit development, described as self-contained, self-sufficient (i.e., “sustainable,”) would be good for this county.  Those sacrifices, large and small, were made because we believe Yokohl Ranch would be bad for this county, not just bad for Yokohl Valley.

           

     The real progress I see is that we appear to have an opening to have that discussion.  How should the water resources of this county be used?  What kind of development would be good for those of us who actually live here in the center of a small, fertile universe?  Let’s get talking.

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Trudy Wischemann is a land reformer who writes.  You can send her your ideas of progress c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Silver Linings

Published in edited form April 22, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     We’ve entered Orange Blossom Week with no orange blossoms left on the trees, a combination of the drought-induced early bloom and the late timing of the event (caused in part by trying to avoid conflict with Easter.)  It struck me as odd until I remembered silver linings.

     The whole idea that there are silver linings to even the darkest storm clouds is really a biblical concept:  that in dire conditions God may be sending a hidden blessing.  Reading Habakkuk this weekend, I discovered that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was God’s winnowing hand, a way of recovering His people from their lust for other gods and the domination of the common people by the sin-filled, greedy Jewish elite.

     An orange grower friend called last week to catch up. Living outside the boundaries of the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District, he pumps groundwater to irrigate his trees. In normal years all he has to worry about is the winter recharge of his wells, Edison rates, and the lifespans of his pumps.  This year his worry is doubled by the possibility that neighbors, again having no surface water deliveries from the district, will draw down the aquifer and leave his pumps high and dry.  

     “The bloom was light,” he added, contemplating the possibility that there may not be enough crop to warrant irrigating beyond keeping the trees alive.  “That could be a silver lining,” I thought to myself.  Then he said “But I see the baby oranges already.”  I knew immediately that this true farmer will do everything he can to get those oranges to maturity and to the packinghouse, where my neighbors will find work this winter and be able to keep living here.

     The drought itself may have a silver lining.  I find myself holding my breath a lot, too aware (thanks to my education) that our population is well above the natural carrying capacity of this land and that the physical, political and social infrastructure we have created to amend that natural capacity is fragile.  In many places it is broken, perhaps beyond redeeming.

     That awareness has made me super-conscious of my domestic water use.  I find myself dedicating more of my day conserving the water I use and hauling the best of the used water outside to my plants and trees. “Run once, use twice” has become my new motto. These efforts have a silver lining: they connect me to this little piece of land I live on and give me a supportive role in its life.

     It has also led me to look for models of how we here in California might begin to resolve some of the raging conflicts over water supply and use.  Most people who think this drought is man-made look to Sacramento as the location of the evil-doers.  But if they  look west, like where my walnut grower friend who sits on the board of the Tulare Irrigation District looked, discovering a 40-acre “pump farm” where Boswell is pumping Tulare ID’s conscientiously-recharged aquifer with 29 huge pumps running 24/7, they will see that we have neighbors to blame (or at least hold accountable) in this shortage.

     In the early 1990’s, in a similarly-raging water war in Idaho, a woman named Janice Brown, who ran a trout-fishing motel on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, teamed up with Dale Swenson, the head of the local irrigation district, to form the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council.  The council brought together all the competing interests to learn to manage the flows of the Henry’s Fork for the benefit of all.  The first two years were fearful.  But by the late 1990’s, more than 150 people participated in the coalition, including river-runners, loggers, farmers and land managers, and the coalition had reached a point where it stood for equitable use of the river’s flows for all the economic sectors involved.  (Visit www.henrysfork.org to view their continuing efforts.)

     For those of us served by the Friant-Kern, who live outside the watershed where the majority of our water has come for 60 years, this concept may be more difficult to fathom.  But the need is there.  Maybe the silver lining of this drought is that we will begin to acknowledge the conflicts over water development and use, and begin finding solutions - together.

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Trudy Wischemann is a faithful water and community development researcher who writes.  You can send her your silver lining stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Free Rein

Published in slightly edited form March 11, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“We gallop everywhere we go
 I just loop the reins
And I never say Whoa
To my little red horse.”

     I’m borrowing these lines from a Juni Fisher song to show the roots of the common phrase “free rein.” For those who have never been on a horse’s back, it may not help much.  But being astride an animal ten or fifteen times heavier, stronger and faster than yourself, and letting him have his head, so to speak – can teach the meaning of another common phrase, “hang on.”  You’d better hope your hands can find the reins and “rein him in” (to use another common phrase) as you approach the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

     Last week, when I wrote “Free Rain,” I was hearing this other “rein” in my head.  For almost 40 years I have been researching and writing about California’s water story.  No matter what the issue or urgency, the largest landowners in this valley always have had free rein over the water supply.  They have had free rein over the regulators of our water supply.  They most always have free rein even over the media reporting the news about our water supply.

     Last week I wrote about the letter the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District (LSID) sent to its landowners about the availability of water to purchase at $1,300/acre-foot (af).  The seller listed was not a government agency but a contractor for State Water Project (SWP) water.  I called Scott Edwards, the manager of LSID, to find out who had water to sell and to learn more about the circumstances.

     “Tejon,” he said is the seller.  He thinks there are two other districts asking to buy the offered water and does not yet know how much LSID will receive of the 865 af requested.  I asked who within our district was able to buy this water, and he said “It’s all kinds of people, not just the big guys,” understanding the meaning of my question.

    

     Tejon is a familiar name to most of us, but rings a special bell in my mind.  Tejon Ranch was (and probably still is) the largest landowner in the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, which surrounds the town of Arvin, one of the two towns I’ve studied since 1981.  Only part of its lands lie within the district boundaries, but even those acres were well in excess of the 160-acre limitation that was supposed to apply to Friant-Kern water when it was first received by that district.  The limitation was never enforced.    

    

     Tejon also receives SWP water through the Kern County Water Agency, which accounts for the availability of water to sell to the Tulare and Fresno County districts who don’t.  Paul Taylor, the Berkeley economist who was the champion of the acreage limitation provisions, understood the State Water Project as one of several means the large landowners created to circumvent the 160-acre law.

    
     Besides offering irrigation water for sale at usurious prices, the large landowners are using their free rein invisibly in other ways, particularly through groundwater pumping.  A friend who sits on the board of Tulare Irrigation District told me that he has become concerned about the water banking his district and the City of Tulare have done diligently for the past 10 years being tapped by Boswell’s “pump farm” to the west.  Thought to be 40 acres with 28 wells, the location is not known, much less how much water they are pumping, where it is being used, or how it is being transported.  No government agency is yet in charge of groundwater pumping.  We have no reins.

    

     The North Rim approaches.  What will we do?

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Trudy Wischemann is a voluntary water conserver who worries about agriculture and writes in town.  You can send her your water saving tips c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.