Nothing changes. Vidovich has more than one reason to be evasive. Tonight, feeling no pain, hell sit in one of the strip clubs in Bakersfield and maybe buy himself a fancy lap dance.. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. More recently, he earned $40 million in an easement deal with a water bank and exchange that seeks to siphon flood water out of a Kings County canal for storage in Kern County. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. Other billionaires getting behind Biden are investor Haim Saban, worth $2.9 billion, DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, worth $1 billion, and Signum Global Advisors founder Charles Myers whose net worth is unknown. The feedback were hearing is No. In fact, some of the workers think that we havent gone far enough., The workers arent around for a quick survey. Groundwater accountability sparks clash of Central Valley ag titans LOIS HENRY: Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. Who is going to use it? said attorney Herr, according to SJV Waters Henry. EIN: 41-0953924. It wont hurt the canal, he said. Like other small farmers, my water stays on my ground. Vidovich digs 17 new wells, several to the depth of 1,400 feet, and pumps groundwater into ditches and canals that move the flow across miles of flat lake bed. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire." "But those two guys hate each other." "Not anymore. The great drought is officially over. This is the first installment of a new SUNLIGHT Series: Kings of the River, a review of the machinations and battles on the oft-overlooked Kings River. Weve had our battles in the past, and I dont agree with everything hes doing. The states massive plumbing system is sending virtually nothing to farmers. Giant pincers manned by a single worker grab the tree by the throat and start shaking. Inside sits a young man named Pablo. 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. His story is the one Ive been carting around in my notebook for the past few decades, sure I was ready to write it after five years or ten years, only to learn of another twist that would lead me down another road. What kind of place is this? And he was able to use canals and pumping stations to then get that water in this pipeline that very secretively was connected to irrigation ditches in Lost Hills. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. His father, Stephen Vidovich, founded DeAnza Properties in 1966 and led the charge to convert the Santa Clara Valley from farmland and pave the way for Silicon Valley to become the hub of late-20th century and early-21st century American innovation. Recommended for you Videos 4:28. He needs nearly 1,000 acre-feet a day for 165 daysthe length of nut-growing seasonto hang a good crop across his acres in western Kern. It makes interesting reading. Today is quincena day, twice-a-month payday, and he needs me to scram because the workers coming in to cash their checks and wire 25 percent back across the border to families in Guanajuato and Guerrero will wonder if Im with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. Stewart would deny that Giblers reporting played a part in their philanthropy. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. The sober man died. Water rights are like democracy, he told Forbes in 1989. 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. Dont let his boots, blue jeans, and ball cap fool you, the old-timers say. It becomes something else as soon as they encounter their workers in another guiseas a fellow shopper at Costco or as the parents of the kid who goes to school with their kid. This water basically came from a land owned by someone who's also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. He packed his bags and left his wife and kids. She graduated from Duke University with a BA degree in biology. I find a former partner of Resnick. She was a very frugal lady. The state of California has adopted a new law that finally regulates the pumping. It becomes scorn because they cant allow it to become pity or self-hatred. Its been more than a year since the grand opening, and theyre still operating in the red. The independent growers and processors, no surprise, regarded him as a bully eager to employ teams of lawyers and tens of millions of dollars to force his agenda. And so the question of sustainability is front and center here now in California. He unfolds a $20 bill from a wad he keeps inside a bent paper clip, and we take a seat in the far corner. Wild salmon and all these sides made from scratch. This is Twisselman. The Story of How Beverly Hills Billionaire Farmers Stewart and Lynda By age 19, Lynda had dropped out of college, married a magazine ad man, and opened her own advertising agency. They dont do agribusiness. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. He told his neighbors to alter the flight of the bees or hed sue them for trespassing. When nature bites down hard, and the government flow gets reduced to a trickle, growers in Kern turn on their pumps and reach deeper into the earth. We cant insist on wellness the way we can insist on plant safety. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. He can mix this private water with his leftover state water and ship it to at least one stranded neighbor who will pay the price. My grandmother said it was his leftist politics that ate up that vineyard and the ones that followed. Vidovich didnt have to wait long for a buyer to come calling. No picking of crop agitates the earth like the picking of almonds and pistachios. More often than not, it is hauling away some piece of the valleys bounty. Along a fan of the Kings River, a raisin farmer in Selma shows me his well thats coughing up sand. It should be right here, but I dont see it. The image of water moves on and on through miles of western Kern. Title. Since then, his Sandridge Partners has accumulated ownership or control of thousands of acres of farmland across the Central Valley 123,424 in Kings County alone, per ParcelQuest, focusing on land with secure surface water rights or where groundwater is abundant. The family takes showers in it, and she washes their laundry in it, and if she runs the water long enough, she will use it to wash her vegetables and cook her rice and potatoes. The William Saroyan Theatre was packed that October 1996 night. I did sell water out of Kings County to an urban user and people didnt like it. The pipe needed to cross under Boswells dirt canal, but that seemed like no big deal to Vidovich. The city of Los Angeles, by comparison, consumes 587,000 acre-feet. The workers didnt react well. Name. Nearly $365 million worth of Wonderful almonds will have dropped down from the dry sky. From Dudley Ridge, pipelines belonging to the farming empire of The Wonderful Company (owned by Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick) the move the once-Angiola water via pipeline to Kern County to irrigate the companys fields of pistachios, pomegranates, and citrus. Summary. Im down, Stewart, he protests. Big fish eat the small fish here. She was in her late 20s, almost a decade younger than Stewart, and the mother of two children. None of his three children had the slightest interest in taking over the company. All of it was Lyndas doing, of course. Father Stephen excelled in land deals, trading the toil of farming for successful real estate offices and expense accounts. Digging in was its own wisdom, he discovered. The juice isnt selling like it used to. Springsteen shook his head and smiled a thin, ironic smile. His oldest son is retired in Seattle. Even if they had wheels, they wouldnt be going anywhere. Nothing will stop the houses. They planted the first 640 acres, half the pomegranates in the country at the time, knowing there was zero market. And then they pump more groundwater. Yes, the pipeline belongs to Resnick. Rain for Rent, the pipes say. Johannesburg He spent his vast fortune on a 30-year quest to save the rhinoceros. Stewart and Lynda created a new brand, the Halo, from the same variety of mandarin. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. Thats why hes in trouble., So he makes a deal for private water?, Yep. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. View the profiles of people named John Vidovich. But theres none for his precious corn, almond and pistachio trees in the south county and, because of new restrictions, he cant simply drill a new wellthere. All I know is I dont want to split it up or sell it in some leveraged buyout. The bloodless ones stay away. It supports two full-ride college scholarships to the top graduates of Corcoran High School and a faculty position at Fresno State. Then he motions to Lynda, whos standing off to the side of the light-dimmed stage. On the day the trees fall quietly upon the orchard floor, no one is here but the Mexican on his tractor. Resnick dipped into his savings from his job at a mental hospital and went in half on the machine. A woman named Lupe is standing above me on the wooden stairway that climbs to the front door of her trailer. I had finished the last chapter of The King of California, a book I wrote with a good friend about J.G. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. He bought his first San Joaquin Valley parcel in 1994 when he invested in a foreclosed property in Kings County. EMEA +44 20 7330 7500. Ive done no big wrong in my life that would cause me to have any. A pump is shooting water out of the canal and into the Rain for Rent pipes. They donated $15 million to found UCLAs Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and more than $25 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to build a pavilion in their name. And now Vidovich is the aggressor, said Doug Verboon, a Kings County supervisor and walnut farmer who works the same 187 acres that his grandfather bought in 1906. Bernards eyes are fixed straight ahead. California growers, in the grip of drought, have produced 900 million pounds of the green nut. Whatever remains is not nearly enough to make up for the shortfall of imported water from the state. The pipeline, bankrolled by his investment firm Sandridge Partners, is an efficient and conservation-minded way to ship water, he says. California water war: San Joaquin Valley landowners battle over scarce After three years of drought, tensions are running high all over rural California. Now its the Bobcats turn. They issued a commemorative medal of Tiger Woods winning the 1997 Masters that offended the golfer. And like other of the regions water barons present and past Resnick and Boswell Vidovichs last name is a sort of shorthand in coffee shop chatter from Delano to Easton. I sit in my car and wait in the parking lot. But I couldnt have picked a more cinematic name than Lost Hills. The drought?. The Boswell Company wants it blocked, saying it threatens the companys own water supplies, which run through a canal over the pipelines underground route. This drought has brought Stewart to his knees. His bar was a place for guys, Damon Runyontype guys., Resnicks pals were all Jewish kids from upper-class families, so it wasnt easy being the poorest one, the one whose father was a gambler and capable at any moment of losing the few comforts they had. Because he hadnt done it with Daddys money or what he considered a superior brain, he attributed his wealth to luck and to a simple lesson he had learned early in life. She seems a little nervous waiting in the wings. He doesnt know about the pipeline. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. Ex-Fire Marshal Sues City, Alleges Quid Pro Quo Deal - LA Weekly When he materializes onstage, he is wearing narrow black jeans, a black mock turtleneck, and a dark jacket. Vidovich, in 2009, according to media reports, sold the rights to 14,000-acre-feet of state water from a . Ive never seen her up close, never watched her in action. Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. They were actually harvesting record crops. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. These are loaded, Resnick says. This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. I do all the calculations from the numbers I am able to gather, and I cannot figure out how these nuts are getting enough water. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. Valuable research and technology reports. "Water rights are like democracy," he told Forbes in 1989. At the time, I was heavy with state water but the state water had low allocations and I had no other water source over there (Dudley Ridge land in western Kings County), he told Henry. They greet me with smiles and handshakes. Not long before, Vidovich was trying to grab water from Resnick, not give it. The farmers responded that the path of a bee wasnt something they could supervise, and they threatened to sue him back. Fiefdom. They're drought's best buddies." John Vidovich will tell you he's the interloper who came over the other mountain, the Coast Range. San Antonio south doesnt exist anymore. He is a small, good-looking man with a patch of black hair under his lip. He was about my size, but he was very tough. This is the route my grandfather, one of a legion of fruit tramps, took as he drifted from farm to farm in the 1920s picking crops. For years, agriculture has been given a wide berth when it comes to monopolistic practices. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. Fresh from a shower, a red Kabbalah string tied around his wrist and a multihued pair of socks covering his feet, he welcomed me. This is gamblers ground unlike any other in California, and as I drive from hill to dale, examining each orchard, my head spins. Its a water-saving method, Vidovich said. He was the bad guy in agriculture for no bigger offense than that he was big. She tells me the water comes out of the tap yellow and foul smelling, and she doesnt trust it. So he started laying pipes last December. We saved the best for last, he says. . I sort of remember growing up on a farm, he said. Once you have them, you spend a lifetime defending them.. But if its the tube that Im looking to follow, I must drive through the almond grove. Lupe gave birth to two daughters, U.S. citizens, who are now 11 and 6. It will carry his private water on his private land, never leaving the regions geological basin. So beginning in the 1940s, Kern farmers went out and grabbed a share of not one distant river but two: the San Joaquin to the north and the Sacramento to the north of that. Somehow, 30 or 40 nuts arent compelled to drop. Los Angeles Fire Marshal John Vidovich was at the peak of his career in 2015. Dynamic search and list-building capabilities. I meet up with the Wonderful field man who first tipped me off to the pipeline. John Vidovich. Burglar alarms, on the other hand, offered round-the-clock vigilance without coffee breaks. Research is showing that grapeseed oil is healthier than corn oil and canola oil and may be better for you than olive oil, he tells me. He guides me to the caf, and we grab our lunches from the buffet. She can be reached at lois.henry . He had moved out to Long Beach, bought some property, and built one of those new strip malls. While water has been moved, bought, sold and traded in California for decades, most deals have typically involved small supplies. He accused Resnick in 2008 of using various shell companies to monopolize control of the Kern Water Bank. In a valley of dead rivers, each one killed on behalf of agriculture, the aqueduct was the one river still alive. Thousands of Wonderful acres lay bare. The knoll begins to rise. LOIS HENRY: Water conspiracy or just poor optics? I learned back then that our farmers thought the whole world was out to screw them. 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. Too many pistachios. The water sent to Kern County1.4 million acre-feet a yearhas doubled the cropland. 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. Twenty miles outside Fresno, I cross the Kings, the river that irrigates more farmland than any other river here. His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. Theres no waiting around. Making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process?. She walks off the stage with Stewart. I park the car and walk in the direction of a scattering of buildings slapped together with stucco and corrugated tin. His father had lost it in a bet. Order finds itself through action. It goes to doctors and nurses, trainers and dietitians, who track the weight of workers, prod them to exercise, and wean them off soda and tortillas. Its a bad day, he says, shooing me out. His dad had sold the bar and was adrift. Still, he was starting to think about his legacy, and thats why he finally agreed to meet with me. Even as the supplies of federal and state water have dropped to near zero, agriculture in Kern keeps chugging along, growing more intensive. John Vidovich. Theyve always been able to bully anyone, he said. The Resnick story certainly deserved a book, but did he really want me to be the one to write it? Theyre just mad Im here, he said. A Kingdom from Dust The California Sunday Magazine The pipeline project is suspended while the two sides battle in court. He tells me to meet him in Lost Hills. Hes got another meeting to attend. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. Jim Wilson of J & D Wilson & Sons Dairy says two of his cattle died and $80,000 worth of fencing was damaged after a Boswell Co. helicopter buzzed his farm that he leases from John Vidovich, in . Brad Steinwede. She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. You have no idea the people on my VIP list who drink it. 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. You look like Border Patrol undercover.. But she cannot remember the last time she or Manuel or their children drank it. 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. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. About five years ago, Lynda started our community development organization in Lost Hills, and the journey has been an amazing one.
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