Wow. Includes Address (3) Phone (3) Email (1) See Results. Vidovich threatened that all FPB members critical of "Operation Catch-Up" or who spoke to . As in most significant projects, there will be public hearings to review the proposed project's impacts. Tell me, he asked, though it wasnt entirely a question. Each section of pipe is 40 feet long. She wasnt content to pursue the usual list of wealthy businessmen as clients. Not that long ago, we used to time our sinus infections by the immense cloud of defoliants sprayed on the cotton fields at the end of Indian summer. 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. The land is turning to salt. We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content. You look like Border Patrol undercover.. According to published articles, Vidovich comes from a Silicon Valley family, and he bought his first Kings County property in a foreclosure in 1994. As the head of a quasi-public agency, he knows he cant completely blow off my questions. Bankers and their fair-weather financing exasperated Resnick. Not the people. Groundwater and floodwater are two very different things. The bowls on her kitchen table are filled with grapes, berries, bananas, and red and green bell peppers. "There are a lot of good places for it (feedlot). The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. Fresh from a shower, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist and a multihued pair of socks covering his feet, he welcomed me. His grandfather Resnick had fled the Ukraine in the wake of another killing of Jews by Cossacks. I was 16, and his packing house was my first job, a baptism into the money, money, money world of the men who grew fruit and the men who sold it. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. He went out and bought an alarm company. The net return on the pistachio proves that Wonderfuls dominance in the market has benefited every grower in the room. Youre the one who leads the way on selling agricultural water to the cities. He makes $10.75 an hour. Yes, the pipeline belongs to Resnick. Still, none of it would have happened without luck., What he and Lynda had done with the wretched pomegranate was another matter. Now its the seven-week nut harvest that brings out the inhalers. Selling the farm to migrant families has required Lynda to rebrand agriculture. The designers at the Mint made a porcelain doll with a tiny replica outfit so precise that it had to be hand-beaded with 2,000 fake pearls. He ran unsuccessfully for the Los Altos Hills City Council in 2006, served on the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and is former chairman of the Santa Clara County Republican Committee. My business approach right now is to acquire as much water as I can to be diversified in water. She had her own bookabout her genius as a marketergoing. I learned back then that our farmers thought the whole world was out to screw them. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. To provide context for the size of his subsidy, Vidovich estimated that the current California drought, which has led him to irrigate an additional 24,000 acres, will cost his business tens of millions of dollars this year, while the subsidy brought in $1 million. If Resnick retains every drop, he might squeeze 25 acre-feet of water a day out of both pipes. His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. We cant insist on wellness the way we can insist on plant safety. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. They had survived the drought. 2022-02-14 - BY LOIS HENRY. And the Resnicks run the place, thats where this story gets conflicted and very complicated because in the last five to eight years they have committed millions and millions of dollars to making this place better educating the children, helping the workers deal with obesity and things like that. Notifications from this discussion will be disabled. 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. EDMUND JOHN VIDOVICH Lake Havasu City, Arizona Trinitas Partners LLC Investment Management Redwood City, California CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ALMOND GROWERS ASSN. 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. Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. He maneuvers down the middle of the row, sweeps up the dried almonds, and throws them into a catcher. Absolutely not. But out in the Buena Vista Water Storage District where Vidovich chairs the board, his original detractors all love him, Page said. Never mind that this is one of the most over-drafted basins in California or that the land is sinking a half-foot a year. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. "This is the first step of a long journey. Im down, Stewart, he protests. By the eighth day of harvest, the sun is gone. In the trailer next door, Lupes cousin Margarita lives with her husband, Selfo, and their three young children. Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. They have no way to grasp the $50 million to $80 million a year that the Resnicks say they are spending on philanthropy. Among the graduating class are kids headed to Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth, and the state and community college systems. Drought turning to floodit is the story of California. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. Longtime Los Altos resident Stephen John Vidovich, founder of De Anza Properties of Sunnyvale, died of an apparent heart attack June 19 as he was driving a tractor on his property in the Cupertino hills, said his son John Vidovich. By: jdubble07. The way the Bobcat goes full steam, it takes but a few seconds of splendid violence to uproot a tree. Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. 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. "There are a lot of unintended consequences in agricultural policies, (but) the intent is to maintain a viable and healthy agricultural base," he said. I was prepared to knock on the door, but a housekeeper, flanked by two blow-dried dogs, greeted me on the front steps and led me inside. This water basically came from a land owned by someone who's also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. Resnick wanted no part in my story. The bunches of chartreuse-tipped nuts hanging from antler branches never touch the ground. The tumbleweeds on open ground give you a peek into what Lost Hills looked like before the aqueduct made a river here. 2023 Minnesota Public Radio. Residential. You have permission to edit this article. It was good for the bottom line. Wages that used to go to workers stay in the pocket of the nut growers. They knew little about the company except it was selling its keepsakes for five times the amount Teleflora was. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. Except when you plug John Vidovichs name into the equation. Its happened before, he said, up in Green Valley, which is west of Interstate 5 and a few miles north of the Kern County line. The punitive damage portion, about $73 million, was overturned on appeal and the case has been sent back to Kings County. I study the terrain. And one Kern County water district could be the linchpin to it all. Read our full comments policy: losaltosonline.com/comments, $5.00 The aquifer either doesnt exist or is so befouled by salts that the water is poison. I saw horrible things, Margarita says. He blames Iran. He wouldnt know one of his Valencia orange groves from one of his Washington navel orange groves. 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.. Ive gone too far. The courtship of Stewart and Lynda went fast. So the state couldnt deliver, in one year couldnt deliver any of it. A day later, I get a call from Mr. Resnick. He certainly looks the part in his well-worn jeans and checkered shirts. China, for one, prefers the Iranian pistachio. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. Number three, water from Angiola cant physically get to Semitropics proposed storage cells. Feudal. Thats our goal. I write an email to the Wonderful PR team. As a consequence, the farmland here, nearly 100,000 acres planted in permanent crops, is completely reliant on the governments supply of mountain water. He doesnt know about the pipeline. They spend $50 a month on bottled water. Being healthy is a choice. True, Angiolas canal stops about 23 miles southeast of the project. This is a company that runs its resources to the max, he tells me. No water in the ground to make up for the missing government supply. He takes a look at his watch. As the growers punch more holes into the ground looking for a vanishing resource, the earth is sinking. The eye numbed by the tedium of orchards isnt prepared for the 1.3 million square feet of industrial assault, though the palm trees and roses along the perimeter try for a transition. On Oscar night, she handed out free samples to the stars at the Vanity Fair party. Theyll take home $11 an hour for their labors. Somehow, it made its way to Lynda. It cracks open and out pops the head shot of Stewart Resnick in a pistachio green tie. All told, 36 men operating six machines will harvest the orchard in six days. His father was 3 years old at the time. He knows what I dont know. Rain for Rent, the pipes say. It should be right here, but I dont see it. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. Now Lynda herself stands before us, a single light over her head. Water that has shipped you know hundreds of miles from the north of California where there are these abundant rivers. Section, block, and row dont compute; he has to direct me by cellphone and guideposts. For years, agriculture has been given a wide berth when it comes to monopolistic practices. Plastic drip-irrigation lines stick out of the ground at wrong angles. It is one more way to extend the brand. The Iranians dont irrigate their trees. EIN: 41-0953924. It wasnt a midlife crisis, he told me. Pace farmed in the valley and partnered with Vidovich for a while. Exactly what groundwater would be moved? Its an economy of scale on a scale no ones ever tried here. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. Now in farming, were in a unique position. You can plant only so many acres on ground that has no groundwater. Was Fire Marshal John Vidovich Taken Out by the Firefighters Union It was Lynda who came up with the idea of flowers-in-a-gift. Roses are short-lived, she reasoned, but the teapot or watering can that the flowers arrive in is a keepsake. How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? The city sued. We want good groundwater, too., You mean no more pipelines carrying water in the dead of night?, The pipeline. He stammers a bit. He had left for the cornfields a few minutes before the killings.. The GSAs are supposed to set pumping limits to stop overdraft. On the way out of the market, Pablo buys a case of Pacifico. The truck driver hits the wide open of Highway 33 and traces the serpentine of the aqueduct. Shoving aside the coins, they introduced a Scarlett OHara doll that, by itself, raked in $35 million in sales. Angiola was ordered to stop pumping and eventually the districts came to a settlement. She seems a little nervous waiting in the wings. Tonight, feeling no pain, hell sit in one of the strip clubs in Bakersfield and maybe buy himself a fancy lap dance.. Too many almonds. He had no intention of farming it, either. Or is he just the newest water baron on the block? When your current subscription expires later this year, you will be able to renew at losaltosonline.com/users/admin/service/purchase. Bruce Springsteen turned it into a song on his Ghost of Tom Joad album. The parents of Vidovi and Mohat were featured in a documentary film titled Mentor, which premiered on December 9, 2014. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. 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. The district has already paid him $40 million for an easement, or right of way, on that land and signed an agreement with him for how the project would operate. I catch Highway 99 in rare somnolence. It was true that agriculture had been selling state project water to cities for two decades. Everything about our physical selves, Lynda believes, begins in our guts. This is one of the ways the Nut King and the Pomegranate Queen are defying the California drought. At the plant, we built our gyms, and we have stretching and walking activities. Our relatives have been patient. He worries because there isnt enough water now to properly irrigate the almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates. Menu. how many kids does jim harbaugh have - aspire-english.jp He paid em three times what anyone else wouldve for their land and now theyre all gettin water because of his policies, Page said. Up and down the Central Coast, restaurants are boycotting their wines. Fallowing the farm until the footprint gets smaller and smaller. She had recently divorced and wasnt about to settle for a life in Culver City. But he got too big. High 61F. This was Lost Hills before Lynda got involved. Sorry, no promotional deals were found matching that code. First of all, the myriad laws and rules that govern water wouldnt allow that to happen, they say. His dad had sold the bar and was adrift. He and Lynda wanted to run their own ads for their own brand. In Kern County, one in two adults and almost one in five children are obese. The Sureos gang has tagged the front entrance but otherwise has left the inside unmarked. What? It gives me the luxury to keep on working. Anything else I can help you with?, He seems in a hurry. Today, most everything in this desolate reach of Kern County, save for the oil wells, belongs to Paramount Farming, which belongs to the Resnicks. In December, Vidovich filed an application with the Kings County Planning Department for a slaughterhouse and a feedlot for up to 12,500 animals. You rely on Marketplace to break down the worlds events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. A dozen or so U.S.-grown crops are traded as commodities on the stock market, and the greatest subsidies go to corn, wheat, cotton, soybean and rice. What if he dropped his lawsuit and the two of them worked together to solve their water problems? Kings and Tulare farmers and water managers want to know. In the summer of 2010, hed spent several days documenting the deplorable conditions of the modern company town. John Vidovich just wants to farm, he says. The space for a familys secrets is only a few feet. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. Seventy-five years ago, writer Carey McWilliams, in Factories in the Field, lambasted the ribboned Dukes and belted Barons of California agriculture. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. Besides, Pace and others say, overreaching is another Vidovich hallmark. Theres a lot happening in the world. You have no idea the people on my VIP list who drink it. Damn, if he doesnt look even younger and more fit than the last time I saw him eight years earlier. Hes dressed Italian chin to footLoro Piana jeans and Hogan tennis shoes. Its loaded, Bernard says. The people here have traveled too far. Past Bakersfield and the high school football stadium where Frank Gifford and Les Richter, two future NFL Hall of Famers, squared off in the Valley Championship in 1947 in the driving rain. No luck. The compass in my car says Im headed east, but that means almost nothing inside a province of 15 million trees. When the Depression struck, his parents migrated to Middlebush, New Jersey, where they bought a few trucks and peddled coffee and pots and pans. In a valley of dead rivers, each one killed on behalf of agriculture, the aqueduct was the one river still alive. John Vidovich is scion of his family's development firm, De Anza Properties, which owns Rancho Shopping Center and is renovating Los Altos Gardens. Sure enough, cozied up next to the bank of the aqueduct, I see a glint. But its just a cover for taking water out, Pace said. Theyre our future, she says. The matter was headed to court when Vidovich paid a visit to Resnick. 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. How much bigger can agriculture get. Some of them have paid $12,000 to buy their trailers and spent thousands more to fix them up.
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