Another intrepid California billionaire named John Vidovich, scion of the Vidovich fortune, has a different path forward for the Golden State, one that he's established in his own land and water grabs. Hes smiling but speaks only Spanish. 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. He doesnt know about the pipeline. John Vidovich - Biography It exists as one thing they can almost rationalize out in the fields. Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood concerns persist across California. Boswells team predicts huge harm. A major set of wells for Angiola sits within the Pixley Irrigation District, where the Vidovich-controlled district began improving old wells, installing new ones, and building a pipeline. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. Lynda built sidewalks and storm drains, the new park and community center, and repaved the roads. He never knows when, but the pattern is the same, based on flight radar recordings. He was a big drinker, a big liver who loved the fast life. Somehow, it made its way to Lynda. Nothing will stop the houses. Im a billionaire. Hes got an awful temper hes trying to control through Kabbalah. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. Who is going to use it? said attorney Herr, according to SJV Waters Henry. A cross of Jesus hangs from the bedpost. The fight between the Tulare Lake Canal Company, controlled by the J.G. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. Veronica Martinez is the news librarian for the Bay Area News Group. To read more copy and paste or select. Scott: So you set out with this question: how was he defying nature? In an era of climate change, everybody is scrambling. Hes headed to the Wonderful plant, 13 miles north of Lost Hills, to drop off his load. But with shared ambitions of buying land and moving water, theyre all doing the same thing, in our eyes.. 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. What if he dropped his lawsuit and the two of them worked together to solve their water problems? I didnt see our creation, much less the figures bent under the canopies of vine that our creation counted on. This is Lynda.. Even if they had wheels, they wouldnt be going anywhere. A native of Sunnyvale, Vidovich was the son of a Bay Area real estate scion. They made a new plantation here. They rely only on rain, which concentrates the flavorful oils. The farmer isnt here to smell the cracking open of wood, the ripping open of warm secret earth. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. She won a gold Effie, advertisings Oscar. No rain in five years. Thats how he came upon the San Joaquin. Only after the media were alerted did Stewart and Lynda claim to have discovered the clear-cutting. At the buildings he was cleaning, he noticed that no one was watching the front and back doors. They hide from the fact that it relies on the subjugation of peasants from Mexico they themselves have brought here. Hes serious about taking water out of this valley, farmer Milt Pace, who once partnered with Vidovich, told The Bakersfield Californian. The net return on the pistachio proves that Wonderfuls dominance in the market has benefited every grower in the room. Nowhere to turn, I turn back around and roll down my window. The deed had been done in a series of hidden meetings in Monterey. His partner in the mandarins once told me that when Stewart is done with you, hes done with you. As he drives off, he throws a clue out the window. Scott: So we should talk about the labor that makes this all possible. If she has her way, they will go to college, too. China, for one, prefers the Iranian pistachio. My old well cant compete with his new wells. How can another record crop be sitting pretty on these trees? It is flowing to a place of dire thirst. Month after month, she made ends meet on a $1,600 budget. And when youve been as lucky as weve been, you start to think you can ride out drought, too., He did learn one lesson. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. 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. But that doesnt make people buy a second bottle. Vidovich claims that he was . But if you want to be in agriculture, you need to go to the Central Valley, said Vidovich. The neighborhoods didnt have sidewalks; when it rained, the kids had to walk to school in the mud. Late to the states water game, the regions farmers are the first to have their supplies curtailed. Shes designing the curriculum.. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. Made of durable plastic, the pipe would be buried four feet below the bottom of the canal, with a foot-deep cement barrier to protect both. John Vidovich, the owner of the Santiago Villa and Sahara mobile home parks in Mountain View, is listed as a partner in both businesses. More than half our employees are obese or near obese, Anzaldo tells me. While Vidovich owns the surrounding land, Boswells Tulare Lake Canal Company traverses it with a longstanding legal easement established back in 1906, in spidery cursive print, by the long-dead owner of a long-gone ranch. The gas to and from the orchards costs him $80 a week. Being Wonderful means more than growing, harvesting, and distributing the best of the best. The aqueduct brings the water, yes? It will carry his private water on his private land, never leaving the regions geological basin. Yes. Hes trying to play dumb, but I can see the sliest of grins peeking out from his mustache and goatee. His face is blank. These are loaded, Resnick says. I follow one of the engines of harvest as it rolls into an orchard like a tank. Two men sit inside separate cabins of a small tractor with pincers on one side and a catcher on the other. His father met his mother, the cantors daughter, and they married. This water basically came from a land owned by someone whos also a near billionaire a guy named John Vidovich. No whistle shouts mealtime in the modern-day company town. A road will pick up and connect me to where the tube is going. The miles clock by not as road but as story. The control Resnick exercises inside his $4.5 billion privately held company does relinquish to one person: his wife, Lynda, vice chairman and co-owner, the Pomegranate Queen, as she calls herself. I look back at Resnick. It also means giving back.. Since international sanctions were lifted five years earlier, Iran has been crowding the market with its more buttery-tasting pistachios. On the north end sits the Wonderful Soccer Field with its all-weather track, stadium lights, artificial turf, and giant yellow sunburst embossed at midfield. The south valleyits people and poverty, its obesity and diabetesis her newest mission. The partner kept the Cutie name but only after paying the Resnicks tens of millions of dollars. While some counties and water boards prohibit water exports, others dont. He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. Billionaire comes to the rescue of billionaire., But those two guys hate each other., Not anymore. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. Why not send him an email? the secretary suggested. John Vidovich is a real estate developer who specializes in land use and development deals involving everything from mobile home parks and large apartment complexes to wine vineyards, pistachio farms and water baron. Was Fire Marshal John Vidovich Taken Out by the Firefighters Union The Boswell Company wants it blocked, saying it threatens the companys own water supplies, which run through a canal over the pipelines underground route. Theyre just mad Im here, he said. 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. As it happened, just down the road, on the other side of the lake bottom, Resnick had captured his own body of water, the Kern Water Bank, and planted millions of nut trees on desert scrub. Stewart refers to the occasional trek between Lost Hills and Beverly Hillsroughly 140 milesas a carpetbaggers distance. It seems even longer, he says, if you add in the psychological distance of being an East Coast Jew in a California farm belt where Jews are few and far between. The big-rig drivers are cranky two ways, and the farmworkers in their last-leg vans are half-asleep. Its gone, I say. Summary. The son, 5 foot 6 and thin, with closely cropped blond hair and blue eyes that fix on you, isnt concerned about ingratiating himself. As a class of people, the farmers and real estate developers harbor a deep-down contempt for what they have built. His account appeared in the Earth Island Journal, a small environmental quarterly out of Berkeley. He doesnt know what pipeline means. Even for someone with Vidovichs savvy, the depth of this summers drought could be devastating. But his egotheres no controlling that., Resnick had heard it all before. There have been several instances where damaged equipment has reduced flows, he said. If I want to know more, I need to talk to Lupes brother, Gustavo, who has worked as an irrigator at Wonderful for five years and knows what the company is planning for the future. 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. Neighbors dont tell on neighbors.. It took time to gain the respect of the people, and I was afraid. I then move to the far side of the orchard, where another worker, riding a huge mower, is kicking up an even bigger cloud of dust. 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. On one side of the road and the other, for miles in both directions, the dirt belongs to Wonderful. He unfolds a $20 bill from a wad he keeps inside a bent paper clip, and we take a seat in the far corner. Too many pistachios. Im in another land, an expanse of hard, ugly, cratered-out earth the color of sand. Hes not only able to irrigate his nut trees with an imported flow of groundwater40,000 acre-feet in some years. Already, Wonderful has bulldozed 8,000 to 10,000 acres of pomegranate trees over the past few years to send more water to its nuts. 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. What market share has been lost in Asia and the Middle East, the company is looking to get back in Mexico with its spicy Latin line of nuts. Its John Vidovich. Its known as a census-designated place, which is another way of saying that Kern County has every reason to neglect it. So he started laying pipes last December. The rent is $540. The men and women who planted, irrigated, sprayed, and picked our crops were phantoms. The POM tanks, Im told, are backed up with a three-year supply. Im not going to live forever, even with the massive amounts of pomegranate juice Im drinking. Did it teach him any lessons? So the company drafted a list of demands. His father worked as a truck driver, transporting crops to the city. Its been more than a year since the grand opening, and theyre still operating in the red. 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.. The farmer moved the rain. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. Resnick grabs at a pomegranate that might win a blue ribbon at the fair and tries to twist it free. In his best Borscht Belt nasal, he takes a jab. Over the years, they had donated large sums of money to political campaigns, and some of it went to Republicans who had pledged to prop up California agriculture. She washes two kinds of lettuce and cuts up fresh papaya to mix into a salad. The sober man died. Inside, a trainer watches over a line of treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bikes. The footprint of agriculture has grown a good deal beyond what the water can cover. The bells in the churches pealed, and out came the villagers with their scythes and axes, believing they had found the reason for their poverty. Lynda spent $150,000 at an auction to buy the beaded gown and matching bolero jacket, the Elvis Dress, that Princess Diana had worn on a visit to Hong Kong. It was true that agriculture had been selling state project water to cities for two decades. What is indisputable is that over the past 20-plus years, Vidovich has quietly amassed more than 100,000 acres in the Central Valley, gaining footholds on numerous water boards, which has given him control over vast amounts of groundwater the valley's lifeblood. LOIS HENRY: Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley's 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. Im going to Kern County, just shy of the mountains, to figure out how the biggest farmers in America, led by the biggest of them all, are not only keeping alive their orchards and vineyards during drought but adding more almonds (79,000 acres), more pistachios (73,000 acres), more grapes (35,000 acres), and more mandarins (13,000 acres). How come?, We dont need it anymore, he whispers., Back at the plant, Lynda is meeting with Wonderful doctors, nurses, and farmworkers. Its my property, and I have a right to cross..
Michael Eugene Guyton,
Homes For Rent Happy Valley, Oregon,
Mid Ocean Club Bermuda Membership Cost,
Female Version Of Perseus,
Grange Park Pickleball,
Articles J
john vidovich billionaire