Phone Number: (724) 495-**** John T Vidovich, age 84 View Full Report Address:***** Butternut Ridge Rd, Elyria, OH. It takes my visiting the irrigation district office during a public meeting for him to cough up more details. She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. This doesnt count the 21,000 acres of grapefruits and limes hes growing in Texas and Mexico. He commands his realm, and she commands hers, and he takes care to mind the line. each comment to let us know of abusive posts. If I follow them north through Resnick pomegranates, I can find out where the water is coming from. TV Shows. Coke, Gatorade, and Monster Energy are sky-high in sweeteners, but dont be fooled by that SunnyD, either. Annual sales at the Mint jumped to nearly $1 billion. Its going to be what its going to be. His law license is inactive, according to the California State Bar Association website. What? This is how the land of Wonderful is keeping alive its trees. At age 81, he's gotten so big, he doesn't know how big. Vidovich is known in the area for his political activity as well as his development projects. But that money enabled me to go into Angiola (a water district in Tulare County) and have other water sources.. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. We send money home each month to our families left behind, Lupe says. The Cutie and the Halo are now warring in the fields outside the Visalia Convention Center. Theyre listening with their heads bent down. The FDA sent a warning letter, and Wonderful pledged to study the chlorine levels in the bathing tanks. A woman named Lupe is standing above me on the wooden stairway that climbs to the front door of her trailer. Each tree produces 38 pounds of nuts. When a farmers orchards encompass 186 square miles, finding the field man can be a challenge. Fresh from a shower, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist and a multihued pair of socks covering his feet, he welcomed me. As he walks away, I notice his $400 sneakers. California is free to return to its amnesia. Your current subscription does not provide access to this content. He indicated that a proposal was currently being drafted for the council's Tuesday night approval. Satellite images from NASA show the area around the well fields Angiola was pulling from is the epicenter for land subsidence in eastern Tulare County from overpumping. Four tribes of Yokut lived along its shores. Though he also acknowledged that during the drought he sold some to fellow Dudley Ridge landowner Stewart Resnick, who owns the massive Wonderful Company. Talk to me, Hussein says, draining a can of Rockstar. 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. One cousin arrived only last week. High 53F. Last time he checked, he told me he owned 180,000 acres of California. The latest water fight between two of the San Joaquin Valley's largest growers will continue with heavy equipment intended to block a pipeline project allowed to remain on the banks of the Tulare Lake Canal in Kings County. Hes dressed Italian chin to footLoro Piana jeans and Hogan tennis shoes. All told, 36 men operating six machines will harvest the orchard in six days. Not a single penny was put in that piggy bank.. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. The aqueduct was built with tax money, yes? Eat a corn tortilla instead, she urges. Because a human picker is not needed in the almond and pistachio groves, the nut harvest doesnt spread around money the way it spreads around dust. While fans often love to make their own posters inspired by the franchise, the new artwork is taking various facets of the franchise and highlighting it from the artist's . For a long time, she got no credit. Hes serious about taking water out of this valley, Pace said. So much snowmelt comes down the mountain that it nearly takes out Oroville Dam. If youre messing with peoples lives and it doesnt work, thats serious. It had to work. Tens of millions of dollars spent on philanthropy in Lost Hills wasnt just good for the people, she discovered. 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. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. 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. For the bright kids who have no interest in a bachelors degree, she has designed the Wonderful Agriculture Prep Program to serve an additional 1,000 students. It wouldnt even make a couple of sections of his almonds. Yet he doesn't think the farm bill in its present form is going to achieve its protectionist goals. As a class of people, the farmers and real estate developers harbor a deep-down contempt for what they have built. Low 44F. Lost Hills sits on an upslope. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. I thwack both lines. By the eighth day of harvest, the sun is gone. He was semi-retired living in Clovis when another Kings County farmer, Pat McCarthy not Vidovich called him to do some work for Angiola. Its his pipe, not mine. And Vidovich ended up pumping water an extraordinary amount of water out of the ground in an area where theyre pumping so much water on the ground the land is sinking. In December, Vidovich filed an application with the Kings County Planning Department for a slaughterhouse and a feedlot for up to 12,500 animals. Back then, the Los Angeles Times had a bureau in the middle of California. The hillocks that existed back in Yokut Indian days were flattened by a hunk of metal called the Fresno Scraper. He paid em three times what anyone else wouldve for their land and now theyre all gettin water because of his policies, Page said. The bloodless ones stay away. The south valleyits people and poverty, its obesity and diabetesis her newest mission. One more hour and Im outta this fucking place.. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. When I started to realize the socioeconomic issues of the Central Valley, I decided to stop writing checks to other charities and bring my business acumen into the project. Lynda assisted her with the design and color scheme but otherwise has remained hands-off. Rather, it is the authority vested in Wonderful that counts. We cant insist on wellness the way we can insist on plant safety. Shoving aside the coins, they introduced a Scarlett OHara doll that, by itself, raked in $35 million in sales. So its a really extraordinary kind of development thats never happened in agriculture in California before really to raise the living of your workers. "The plan is to hold a special meeting on Tuesday, then submit," he explained to The Leader via a text. We'd love to hear eyewitness Chance of rain 80%.. Cloudy with periods of rain. And in fact these guys were able to squeeze and buy water in the open market, and do a few other things to keep their crops going and they were in the midst of drought. When Lynda learned that half the students receiving thousands of dollars in company scholarships were dropping out of school, she wasnt deterred. EDMUND JOHN VIDOVICH Lake Havasu City, Arizona Trinitas Partners LLC Investment Management Redwood City, California CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ALMOND GROWERS ASSN. Since international sanctions were lifted five years earlier, Iran has been crowding the market with its more buttery-tasting pistachios. The tule fog sets down again in the valley. About 25,000 acre feet of groundwater. Springsteen shook his head and smiled a thin, ironic smile. Vidovich says the animus against him goes back to his 2009 sale of State Water Project (SWP) contract rights tied to land he owned in the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. How much water are we talking about?, Id rather not get too specific. When youre making the kind of money were making, whats the upside? He was a big drinker, a big liver who loved the fast life. He lingers in the crowd long enough to shake hands with a friend from Bel-Air whos planting thousands of acres of pistachios in the worst ground of Tulare Lake. The knoll begins to rise. It was the early spring of 2008, and this time his secretary didnt hang up on me. Stephen Vidovich died in 2007, at the age of 81, driving a tractor near one of his remaining vineyards. He purchased his first 640-acre section in the late 1970s and kept adding more sections of almonds, pistachios, pomegranates, and citrus until he stretched the lines of agriculture like no Californian before him. Subscribers support the Los Altos Town Crier please log in or subscribe to continue reading. Thats why he built the pipeline. I didnt know good land from bad land. To fix the subsidence, and keep the town dry in the next flood, residents and the state prison are having to pay $10 million in extra taxes. Altogether, Resnick has purchased 300,000 acre-feet of water from farmers and water districtsat a cost of $200 millionto cover his shortfall during the drought. From a safe, Ellsberg had lifted the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of how successive presidents lied to the public to cover up the failings of the Vietnam War. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. So why hasnt this place gone to tumbleweeds? He landed a steady job with a big grower and a year later paid a coyote $5,000 to bring Lupe and their baby son to Lost Hills. According to some observers, the facility is expected to hold a 1,000-cow feedlot (which can be developed upwards of 12,500 animals) and a slaughterhouse at the proposed site, within spitting distance of the city of Lemoore and West Hills College Lemoore. Keep it Courteous. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. 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. We were asleep at the wheel. I try to calculate how many hundreds of aluminum sections need to be linked seamlessly, or at least watertight, to cover the distance of a mile. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. She is determined that their lives will play out differently from the lives of their parents, but she means no disrespect by this. Its a $500 million project, of which Semitropic is hoping to get $250 million from Proposition 1 funding. As far as the company can tell, no active salmonella has ever traced back to the plant. No ones going to get fired for bringing home 2,500 pounds of nuts an acre. She was a very frugal lady. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. Neves also added that there would undoubtedly be an effort to explore more reasonable sites for the facility, away from educational and city populations. Among the graduating class are kids headed to Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth, and the state and community college systems. Taxpayers support the continued production of such commodities, at least in theory, through direct payments to farmers amounting to $5 billion last year under the direction of the farm bill. Hes so involved, in fact, he even chairs the monthly meetings for Buena Vista Water Storage District where Sandridge owns thousands of acres. Hed been diagnosed with early prostate cancer and had no doubt that the juice was keeping him well. Then the drug cartels took over the countryside and planted poppies. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. 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. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. He makes $10.50 an hour, and the company provides him with a 401(k) plan and medical insurance. If I follow them south into Resnick almonds, I can see where the water is going. Water is what led me to Stewart Resnick in the winter of 2003. 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. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. I ask him how the drought has affected Wonderful. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. The farmer moved the rain. The nuts are kept there a few more daysany longer and the ants will attack themto complete their drying. The scale of productionand the ability to process, market, and sell its own cropsallows Wonderful to be mostly mediocre in the fields and remain highly profitable. That was the last straw for Pixley, which sued in 2013. John Vidovich, ultimately, followed in his fathers footsteps after obtaining a law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law. All the new water pours into the delta, and what doesnt go out to sea fills up the aqueduct again. If you have any trouble accessing your account or linking your subscription, ourSubscription FAQmay have the answer you need. Number one, the settlement agreement between Angiola and Lower Tule/Pixley irrigation districts wont allow Angiola or Sandridge to move the water out of Kings County. So were seeing a shift now and then to have nature imposing its will on the situation. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. He got into UCLA and joined a Jewish fraternity. Two men sit inside separate cabins of a small tractor with pincers on one side and a catcher on the other. A fully equipped teaching kitchen will turn the harvest into school lunches. He wouldnt know one of his Valencia orange groves from one of his Washington navel orange groves. You look like Border Patrol undercover.. 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. At one point, he was moving nearly 30,000 acre feet a year, according to Angiolas records. They went to law school together and joined the same program in the Navy reserves. That still leaves the majority of the workforce beyond his cajole. As the head of a quasi-public agency, he knows he cant completely blow off my questions. 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. The way the Bobcat goes full steam, it takes but a few seconds of splendid violence to uproot a tree. Now its the Bobcats turn. Ive never seen her up close, never watched her in action. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. He was 13 and standing inside the Rutgers Pharmacy on the first day of his first job. Main Street is Highway 46, which slices through the middle of town. I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. You cant be exporting groundwater from one basin to another., Whatever water hes taking, its too little, too late.. If only Eve had offered Adam a pomegranate instead of an apple, Lynda wrote, every day could have been a holiday.. The space for a familys secrets is only a few feet. For the next two or three seconds, the almonds pour down like hail. He lives down the road in Wasco, the Rose Capital of America, though the roses, too, have turned to nuts. So everybody should have it, right? He launches into a CFOs riff on the pistachio market. I applaud, too. He saved up a down payment for a raisin ranch west of Fresno, where my father was born in the worst of the Great Depression. It was kind of a crutch in case I flunked, he said. We're not trying to stop enterprise, okay," he added, suggesting that Lemoore's citizens, over the years, have invested heavily in Lemoore and might have problems with a feedlot and slaughterhouse within shouting distance of the city's population. And its even worse for the children in Kings County. Theres a mountain range to my left and a mountain range to my right and in between a plain flatter than Kansas where crop and sky meet. Vidovich owns the property in question, and he is well known in Valley circles. Some of them have paid $12,000 to buy their trailers and spent thousands more to fix them up. Where do you begin with a man of great riches if not the distant places you might have in common? A plume of dust joins up with other plumes of dust until the sky over the valley turns sickly. 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. Thats a billion-dollar crop. A cross of Jesus hangs from the bedpost. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. Page had been a longtime board member of the Semitropic Water District and Vidovich wanted that kind of expertise. My head keeps hitting the sunroof. Shes designing the school. Hes headed to the Wonderful plant, 13 miles north of Lost Hills, to drop off his load. Yes, the pipeline belongs to Resnick. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. Water that he will take, critics fear, and eventually sell to Southern California cities. What spikes blood sugar more than a can of Coke? Hes thankful to the Resnicks, especially Lady Lynda, for that. John Vidovich and the Discover executive team are rated an A- by 65 employees. Twenty miles outside Fresno, I cross the Kings, the river that irrigates more farmland than any other river here.