Even as the supplies of federal and state water have dropped to near zero, agriculture in Kern keeps chugging along, growing more intensive. I exited my car and approached the entrance with its 14-foot columns and wrought-iron balustrades. He was in military intelligence and had a top secret clearance that involved gathering data and evaluating products they made, he said. It should be right here, but I dont see it. He started buying consistently in Kern, Kings and Tulare counties throughout the early and mid-2000s and continues to add properties sometimes at a blistering pace. They married in 1972, and he sold the alarm company for $100 million. Even if they had wheels, they wouldnt be going anywhere. But Semitropic is the first district to get this close to making it a reality. What to give a grieving widow and her five children in Lost Hills but drinking water? One of the most dramatic alterations of the earths surface in human history took place here. Each time I called, his secretary hung up the phone. What Lynda seems to have in mind is a kind of utopian village set amid orchards, not unlike the utopias that were tried by the early dreamers of Southern California. The Cutie and the Halo are now warring in the fields outside the Visalia Convention Center. In a swirl of dust, a worker atop a different machine is blowing the almonds from their spot beneath the trees to the middle of the row. Mostly, though, they cant wait for the avalanche of nuts to end. One of Angiolas main well fields is actually inside the Pixley Irrigation District boundaries where water managers were concerned by the amount of water leaving their district. Maybe not since the wheat barons has the income disparity between farmer and farmworker been greater. Contact Eliza Ridgeway at elizar@latc.com. Between March and May of this year, 25 new sales were recorded in Kern alone, according to ParcelQuest, a web service that tracks real estate deals by county. This year's farm bill, the most recent incarnation of agricultural policy dating back to the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, is a controversial $300 billion package that combines poverty-relieving nutrition programs with big payoffs to agribusinesses. Lupe excuses herself to prepare dinner. The biggest misconception about John is that he wants to sell water to LA, he said. Eli Lilly announced a cap on insulin costs. Angiola was rehabbing old wells, drilling new ones and installed a large pipeline. On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you, Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 310,095, Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 305,002, Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated:71, Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated:83.13, Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department. Right there in the big canal of the Dudley Ridge Water District. 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. His father was 3 years old at the time. Mobil and Texaco and Prudential Life were willing to practically give the ground and trees away. But Paramount isnt Paramount anymore. His oldest son is retired in Seattle. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. Its vastness makes you feel safe and in jeopardy at the same time. He is also known for his water deals. The sober man died. 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. He studied the situation. It was a curious statement but true. "There are a lot of unintended consequences in agricultural policies, (but) the intent is to maintain a viable and healthy agricultural base," he said. Residential. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.. He went out and bought an alarm company. There is also an existing subdivision just southeast of the college near Highway 198 (Cimmaron Park). Hes a 61-year-old developer who grew up on a farm in Sunnyvale in the heart of what would become the Silicon Valley. Of all the wonders of Wonderful, this is the one I find most mystifying. It wasnt a midlife crisis, he told me. You cant be exporting groundwater from one basin to another., Whatever water hes taking, its too little, too late.. He and Lynda wanted to run their own ads for their own brand. I find a former partner of Resnick. These are loaded, Resnick says. "We have one of the premier colleges in the country, and they want to put a slaughterhouse right next to it? Once he finished grabbing the flow of the five rivers that ran across the plain, he used his turbine pumps to seize the water beneath the ground. One of the first things he did with his monopoly was kill the California Pistachio Commission, the industrys marketing group, by yanking his funding. Theyre listening with their heads bent down. My business approach right now is to acquire as much water as I can to be diversified in water. His daughter, who used to own a restaurant, is busy raising her one son. The Federal Trade Commission found Wonderful guilty of false advertising and ordered the Resnicks to stop claiming that POM cured heart disease and erectile dysfunction. Past McFarland and the high school runners who won five state championships in a row in the 1990s. We produced a short documentary film. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. Arax: That is the question that you know Im dealing with in this magazine piece. Lupe says no one in her family, and none of her friends living in the trailer park or on the other side of town, drinks the water that comes out of the pipe. I write an email to the Wonderful PR team. In one orchard, half the trees are dying., I had traveled the fields of Wonderful from one end of western Kern to the other, looking for dying trees. He was the bad guy in agriculture for no bigger offense than that he was big. In the maroon of sundown,I follow the workers back to Lost Hills. A cross of Jesus hangs from the bedpost. A worker can still order a hamburger, but its half the size of the old hamburger and costs $6twice what the wild salmon served with creamed leeks and raw asparagus salad costs. Chance of rain 40%. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. On this same stretch of 99, I once wrote a story about farmworkers who moonlighted as meth cookers to make ends meet. 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. Im 80 years old. This is Lynda.. Its a $500 million project, of which Semitropic is hoping to get $250 million from Proposition 1 funding. I meet up with the Wonderful field man who first tipped me off to the pipeline. Springsteen shook his head and smiled a thin, ironic smile. At one point, he was moving nearly 30,000 acre feet a year, according to Angiolas records. Photo courtesy of Trent Davis Bailey/The California Sunday Magazine. The suit alleges that then-Fire Marshal John Vidovich implemented an "Operation Catch-up" program in which he used untrained and inexperienced inspectors to perform duties after media reports that the LAFD had thousands of overdue inspections. He commands his realm, and she commands hers, and he takes care to mind the line. My life is about California. He owns the land next to the aqueduct where the reservoir would be built and is the one who brought the floodwater project idea to Semitropic a few years ago. But for every good-sized fruit, theres a bunch that never sized up. Resnick is giving him one of his looks. By the time he died an old man on his tractor in the Cupertino Hills, where he had planted grapes again and was making wine, the transformation of his valley by the silicon chip was complete. John, his oldest son, had served in the military as an intelligence officer and graduated from Santa Clara law school. This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence. No longer does it have to be a career that brings Mexicans to their hands and knees. Wow. Water is what led me to Stewart Resnick in the winter of 2003. How much water are we talking about?, Id rather not get too specific. It must have wounded all the more because she and Stewart thought of themselves as progressive Democrats. But if its the tube that Im looking to follow, I must drive through the almond grove. If those seem like minute details for the head of a major development company to trouble with, hes even more hands-on with Sandridge Partners LP, the family business he formed for farming acquisitions. 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. Whatever remains is not nearly enough to make up for the shortfall of imported water from the state. Together, the Resnicks have wedded the valleys hidebound farming culture with L.A.s celebrity culture. He ran, unsuccessfully for city council in his hometown of Los Altos Hills in 2006. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. Fresh from a shower, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist and a multihued pair of socks covering his feet, he welcomed me. She was in her late 20s, almost a decade younger than Stewart, and the mother of two children. But nobody didnt like my dad.. In my lifetime alone, California has gone from 13 million people to 40 million people. The aquifer either doesnt exist or is so befouled by salts that the water is poison. Theres a lot happening in the world. Three dogs, part pit bull, the menacing part, have given up on the shade and lie on the open road. Theyre dusty with San Joaquin dirt. Vidovich shrugged it off, saying the flaw amounted to putting the descriptions on the wrong pages and quickly appealed. . For now, shes playing country western music on the sound system and trying to lure a combination of oil-field workers, supervisors at Wonderful, and travelers driving the last miles of James Dean. Many are here without documents, after all. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. She didnt understand his drive. By . That company led to another company, and he soon owned half the commercial alarm accounts in Los Angeles. The man and his pincers cant be bothered. Like many billionaires, he didnt have a decent explanation for his fortune. April 17, 2020. The sentimental ones stay away. The knoll begins to rise. Vidovich is known in the area for his political activity as well as his development projects. The three of them spent two weeks of all-nighters making copies. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. It was good for the bottom line. The court settlement allows him to take the water to Dudley Ridge, but it cant go outside Kings County. I would have worn my Levis, he says, but Lyndas here, and she thinks I dress like a bum. Were standing in the sun outside the plants corporate office, a building whose clean lines and retro furniture wear the imprint of Lynda, too. Its the summer of 2016, eight weeks before the big pick, and Im zigzagging across the almonds and pistachios, square mile after square mile of immaculate orchards lined with micro-irrigation systems and heavy with nuts. The bunches of chartreuse-tipped nuts hanging from antler branches never touch the ground. This amounted to 14,000 acre-feet. Past Oildale and the boxcar where Merle Haggard grew up. She wasnt content to pursue the usual list of wealthy businessmen as clients. Resnick picks up the water in Dudley Ridge, Vidovich says. To carry water from someplace far away to another place far away, he says. Unlike the almond, the pistachio is moist and combustible. He did this first in the name of wheat and then beef, milk, raisins, cotton, and nuts. No one pushes their product harder. It was this persistence and, above all, good timing that explained his bigness. According to Lemoore's city manager, local officials will likely respond to the feedlot proposal at Tuesday's (Jan. 18) council meeting. After school and on weekends, wed clean and wax floors. Vidovich threatened that all FPB members critical of "Operation Catch-Up" or who spoke to . The city of Los Angeles, by comparison, consumes 587,000 acre-feet. He had none of his fathers sentimentality. "At a time of high food prices and record farm income, this bill lacks program reform and fiscal discipline," Bush said in a statement May 21. I stand over the pipes and give them a hard slap. No way, according to Vidovich and his longtime associates. All but a handful come from Mexico. Because it is a community of all Hispanics.. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. SGMA refers to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed in 2014 that mandates water basins be in balance by 2040. The land is turning to salt. We are creating foods. Nothing keeps prices high like a monopoly. 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. Like the wheat barons of the 1870s who lived on San Franciscos Nob Hill, Resnick isnt of this place. Its been more than a year since the grand opening, and theyre still operating in the red. Number two, Angiola is trying to maintain the local aquifer by retiring land to limit pumping. As farmworker colonies go, this one isnt as grim as others Ive visited. I didnt grow up here, but if it wasnt for California, its openness and opportunities, I wouldnt be sitting where Im sitting., No other farmer, not even Gallo, had cornered a market the way Resnick had cornered the growing, buying, processing, and selling of pistachios. This is a lot of gestures to unpack, and as I exit the grounds, I keep turning around to get one last look thats true. We saved the best for last, he says. She was aiming to surround herself with famous actors and artists and public intellectuals. 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. In Lost Hills, they call her Lady Lynda. She shows up in high fashion and stands in the dust and tells them about another charter school or affordable-housing project she is bringing to them. This project may not be fully thought out," said Neves. 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. Get an email notification whenever someone contributes to the discussion. One day, gunmen mowed down residents with AK-47s and threw grenades at the church filled with parishioners. In a timespan even shorter than Resnicks, the 61-year-old Vidovich has bought up more than 100,000 acres of farmland scattered across the valley. A balancing of books in an office in the city has decided that this orchard and others around it, covered by too little water, can go.