Stewart gambled and won for many years. Its not the fidget of boredom. Lupe knocks on his door, and he invites us in. To do that, the state requires each area to form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) to account for whats going in and coming out of the aquifer. This road ends abruptly at the rise of a second fence. It was kind of a crutch in case I flunked, he said. He told his neighbors to alter the flight of the bees or hed sue them for trespassing. In the years of plentiful rains and heavy snowmelt, the bank fills up with more than 1 million acre-feet of stored water. Before he left her to cross alone, he gave her soda, water, chips, and Cheetos. 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. Ive never seen her up close, never watched her in action. The water is being taken from unsuspecting farmers in an irrigation district in Tulare County more than 40 miles away. If you have any trouble accessing your account or linking your subscription, ourSubscription FAQmay have the answer you need. He sold a chunk of land to the builders of Sunnyvale and decided he could develop the rest himself. But I had some good people helping me.. If their fears come true, the Los Angeles water grab in Owens Valley would pale in comparison. Welcome to San Antonio del Norte, he says. There is also an existing subdivision just southeast of the college near Highway 198 (Cimmaron Park). But he wasnt looking for the monotony of steady. You may have never heard of John Vidovich, but his impact on the day-to-day life of the average southern San Joaquin Valley farmer is difficult to be understated. Subscribers support the Los Altos Town Crier please log in or subscribe to continue reading. Here and there my boots crunch down on the dried remains of pomegranates that look like small pieces of scat dropped by a coyote. You have no idea the people on my VIP list who drink it. 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. China, for one, prefers the Iranian pistachio. With that insight, he sold the company for $2.5 million and went into the security guard business. At Highland Park High, he excelled in math and struggled in English. When Resnick plants, he plants his trees wall to wall. It took time to gain the respect of the people, and I was afraid. There, he tells me, in the shadow of the states great concrete vein moving snowmelt north to south, I will find a private, off-the-books pipeline that Stewart Resnick has built to keep his trees from dying. And whats the end game of moving that water? They just do what they want and you have to sue to stop em, Mitchell said. Each time I called, his secretary hung up the phone. He found it. He thinks Ive understated the crop.. In contrast, John Vidovich, who helms Sandridge, comes from a Silicon Valley farming-turned-developer family. What if I failed? Farm bill strikes local note with developer/farmer | News It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. No. The river is nothing if not fickle. My husband would have been shot dead like the others, but he was lucky. As for making a major water grab in the Central Valley, Page said Vidovich has nothing on the Wonderful or JG Boswell companies, both of which have far larger land holdings than Vidovich. When he was told there were fields upon fields, he did not believe there could be this many fields. Look, I have no guilt. So much snowmelt comes down the mountain that it nearly takes out Oroville Dam. The aqueduct brings the water, yes? Past Delano and the first vineyards that Cesar Chavez marched against. In the winter of 2010, Vidovich put up for sale half his draw of state water from the Dudley Ridge Water District. Hes oblivious, or so it seems. Maybe this explains why the United Way could declare the valley one of the nations skinflints, a place where the wealthy farmers donated to the childrens hospital or Fresno State athletics but almost never to the communities filled with Mexicans where their crops grew. Feudal. 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. The citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. Through the haze I can see the knoll of the aqueduct come closer. The State Water Project, for the first time in six years, delivers surplus flows. Whether its Fresno or Kings or Tulare or Kern counties, hes grabbing land where the groundwater is plenty or a river runs through it or the aqueduct spills its north-to-south flow. I ask him how the drought has affected Wonderful. We produced a short documentary film. He recalled bidding on a construction project while studying for the bar exam. Thats all fine and good, Resnick replied, but what about the $1 million-plus hed spent on lawyers fees? Since the middle of the drought, the price of almonds has dropped almost by half. And, you know, at some point in time that water is in risk of going to an urban area. Since international sanctions were lifted five years earlier, Iran has been crowding the market with its more buttery-tasting pistachios. So do the Israelis, who go to the trouble of repackaging the nuts so it doesnt appear that theyre consuming the product of an enemy. I retrace the road I came in on and cross old Tulare Lake, which rose by flood and sank by drought. A husband and wife sharing the reins is rare for corporate America, rarer still for industrial agriculture. 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. At issue? 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. Instead of trying to sell the fruit as a piece of fruit, they squeezed its seeds into POMWonderful. When youre making the kind of money were making, whats the upside? (See sidebar online.). 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. Antioxidants that delivered 32 grams of sugar in each serving didnt come cheap: $11 a bottle. The four grandchildren have visited the orchards once or twice. At Wonderful Health and Wellness, were educating our employees about this health crisis. During the holiday season, they sent out 4,000 gift boxes to their nearest and dearest friends filled with their fruits and nuts, along with a card of the two of them dressed in skin-colored body stockings, posing as Adam and Eve. Hes thankful to the Resnicks, especially Lady Lynda, for that. The vibration here isnt quite as vehement. The plastic unfurls across the grove like a giant roll of Saran Wrap. One out of eight has diabetes. I doubt the Resnicks have any idea of the fester that eats at this place, the shame piled on shame. The tumbleweeds on open ground give you a peek into what Lost Hills looked like before the aqueduct made a river here. By age 19, Lynda had dropped out of college, married a magazine ad man, and opened her own advertising agency. 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. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. The farmers there are raising almost 1 million acres of crops, and fewer than half these acres are irrigated with flows from the Kern. "What I was most alarmed about was how I, and most people in the area, knew nothing of this proposal," he told The Leader. I walk to another part of the orchard and watch phase two. 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. Theyre baby tumbleweeds that have come home. Was Fire Marshal John Vidovich Taken Out by the Firefighters Union Domestic sales are up 42 percent over the past eight years, but foreign sales have stalled. On the shallow bottom, the women fished mussels and clams with their toes. But thats not an issue I deal with., I dont even know what it was, to be honest with you.. It wouldnt even make a couple of sections of his almonds. Vidovich, he said, is just the new water baron on the block, thats all. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. Contact Eliza Ridgeway at elizar@latc.com. I pull over into the dirt of a pomegranate orchard, the ancient fruit that the Resnicks have turned into POMWonderful, the sweet purple juice inside a swell-upon-swell bottle. The man and his pincers cant be bothered. Just get started became one of his guiding principles. There was a majordomo of the house, a butler, a chef, a sous-chef, three housekeepers, a limo driver, and a trio of assistants who worked in the basement, juggling Lyndas calendar and the buying, wrapping, and shipping of gifts she handed out to her Rolodex of highfalutin people. Stewart had made it clear that Lynda would not be joining us. 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. Stephen Vidovich retired but kept a watchful eye on the company, getting daily reports and giving advice, John Vidovich told the San Jose Mercury News after his fathers death. We can surely help you find the best one according to your needs. His many land purchases and involvement on water boards are all about farming, not selling water to L.A. As featured on. Ive gone too far. The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. I kept my notes and tapes and waited for another day. Sitting in his mansion in 2008, he already counted more than 100,000 acres of orchards across five counties. 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. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. The farmer corralled the snowmelt and erased the valley, its desert and marsh. A giant pistachio nut flashes on the big screen. Posted on August 6, 2018 Bakersfield Californian.