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     I was just catching my breath last week from the news that Boswell had withdrawn their proposal for Yokohl Ranch when I heard that Mark Arax would be interviewed on KVPR.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.

 

 

News from Oroville

To be published February 15, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Driving home Sunday night, I heard the voice of urgency through the radio, issuing an evacuation order for low-lying areas below Oroville Dam.  Earlier that day, I’d heard the opposite news:  that no danger was present despite spillway problems and full-to-overflowing levels of the reservoir.  The change in the news put me into emergency mode.

     In my early thirties, while at Berkeley, I’d studied dam failures and a phenomenon called “reservoir-induced seismicity” for a class on earthquakes I was taking as part of my preparation for environmental planning.  An earlier class, “Hydrology for Planners” taught by a nationally-famous hydraulic engineer, Luna Leopold (one of two sons of environmentalist Aldo Leopold who both taught on that campus,) had focused on floods and flooding, particularly with respect to urban areas.  Reservoirs, unfortunately, are where those two subjects sometimes converge.

     Eight years after Oroville Dam was completed, the city of Oroville (located just downstream from the dam) experienced a 5.7 magnitude earthquake embedded in a series of foreshocks and aftershocks that were caused by the reservoir itself – specifically, the rapid drawdown and refilling of the reservoir.  The damage from the earthquake, which involved no flooding because the new dam remained intact, was estimated at $3 million dollars.  Had the dam failed as a result of those earthquakes, the costs would have been astronomically higher.

     As I write this, the failures on both the main and emergency spillways, which prompted the evacuation of almost 190,000 people, are being managed.  Even if they succeed in lowering the reservoir in time for the next downpour, however, the costs of the evacuation to those shuttled away from homes, jobs, farm animals and implements could easily top the $3 million suffered in 1975, even when number is recalculated for inflation.  Add the costs to the state and multiple counties for providing emergency services, then the costs of repairing the dam’s spillways, and what we have is a portrait of one of the things that’s wrong with building large reservoirs:  the total costs of these projects are never computed in the cost-benefit studies.  They aren’t calculable.

     Oroville is an interesting town, especially considering that the majority of its vast water resources is shipped well beyond the lands surrounding it.  With a population of 16,000 it has much in common with the towns in our readership area.  The first olive processing plant was built there; the original “Mother Orange Tree” still resides there.  Located at the last spot on the Feather River where boats can go, it began as a service center for gold miners in the foothills when the state was still in diapers, then developed small-scale farms.  It has a small downtown with half-empty brick buildings like most of our towns have, and serious challenges for survival.

     Unlike Lindsay, however, it has many people working to preserve its historic quality and stimulate its economic development in sustainable ways.  My friend and attorney Richard Harriman has been following and assisting in these folks’ progress, and has brought me stories of hope even as we ponder how to help something similar come into being here.

     So I’m praying for the folks of Oroville right now, and the future of their downtown restoration.  The Feather River would like to go right through those streets and buildings right now and carry the fruit of many peoples’ efforts all the way to the Sutter By-Pass just south of Nicolaus.  Pray that the Department of Water Resources can stay on top of water under the tremendous force of gravity.  Pray that weighty water doesn’t trigger another earthquake.

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Trudy Wischemann is an environmental planner who writes.  You can send her your favorite flood stories c/o P.O. Box 1374 or leave a comment below.

Free Rain

Published in slightly edited form March 4, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette.


     At dawn two Sundays ago, I was drawn outside by the sound of tomcats fighting.  My face caught the first few drops of rain. I felt blessed.


     Within the hour, there was a downpour, then a few more through the afternoon and evening.  We were getting the soaking we’ve needed all February, just in the knick of time. 


     This past weekend’s rain opened March just as sweetly, with snow in the mountains all the way down to the spine of Blue Ridge.  The foothills’ sparse vegetation was revealed by the patches of exposed soil darkened with moisture appearing between the patches of green.  The grasses and mustard, filaree and fiddleneck will all get a new lease on life in the next few days.  The cattle and their keepers say thank you.


     These two rainy weekends have been a sweet taste of hope in this foreboding year, potentially more disastrously dry than even last year.  Fourth in a row:  how many more can our small farmers take?  How many orange groves and peach orchards will have to die so that Paramount can grow almonds on the westside, where there never is enough moisture, to export to China?


     According to a letter sent by Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District to its landowners in late January, a water district in the State Water Project (serving water to lands south of Westlands Water District on its way to LA,) was offering to sell water to LSID at $1,300 per acre-foot.  Landowners within LSID who wanted to reserve some of that water had to pay the entire amount up-front before Feb. 6th.  If the water did not become available, their money would be returned; if the water was even more expensive, they would have to pay the balance before delivery.


     For those of you who do not farm, those numbers won’t mean anything.  But here’s something to compare it with:  if the cost of gasoline increased from its current low of $3.00/gal. to $40.00/gal. in one year, could you afford to commute to your job?   Would you consider moving, or look for a job closer to home?  A farmer cannot pick up her farm and go where water is cheaper, cannot trade it in for a less water-intensive crop to grow overnight.  What would you do?


     It makes it clear just how much rain is like grace.  This water came to us for free, fell on the just and the unjust alike.  It was unearned.  We did not, and could not, do anything to make it happen except hope and pray.  It was pure blessing, even if it turned streets and parking lots muddy from the dirt washed off our roofs, even if it leaked through in a few places.


     There is a need for us to come together, townspeople and countryside folks, to find ways to share the shortage of water.  I don’t want to go through another summer watching sprinklers mindlessly keeping lawns green while orange groves die outside the city limits.


     In the meantime, say thank you for the rain and the hope.  Let us renew our efforts to learn to live in this place with its limitations as well as opportunities.  Amen.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who has been reading Anne Lamott and Lauren Winner this winter.  You can send her your rainy day stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.