The oil companies and insurance companies were looking to unload their farms in Kern County, Steir learned, chunks of earth that measured 20,000 and 40,000 acres. She was the daughter of Jack Harris, a film distributor, who moved the family to Los Angeles when Lynda was 15 to produce movies. The white flowers have set into buds, and the buds have become baby almonds covered in fuzz. Asia Pacific +65 6212 1000. None of his three children had the slightest interest in taking over the company. Vidovich, meanwhile, is accusing Boswell-backed groundwater agencies of dragging their feet on pumping reductions to the point their actions could sink the small, rural town of Corcoran up to another 11 feet. It would return as tule fog to remind the white man of his theft. The problem is this last drought lasted five years. When the clamps let go of the trunk, 8,000 almonds, green outer shells wilted and partly opened, the meat inside a wooden womb, lie scattered on the flat dry earth. 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. So the way Pablo uses own isnt necessarily a pejorative. Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. Under her rethink agriculture program, the kids will be trained in plant science and irrigation technology, marketing and sales. Then some of the money we save goes to pay the coyote. When I crossed the border and found Lost Hills, there was nothing here, he says. The depletion is causing land to collapse nearly a foot a year, in what U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists Devin Galloway and Francis Riley called one of the single largest alterations of the land surface attributed to humankind.. Theyre droughts best buddies.. They're drought's best buddies." John Vidovich will tell you he's the interloper who came over the other mountain, the Coast Range. He blames Iran. By then, Wonderful, if it still exists, will be a portfolio run by men even farther away than Beverly Hills. Its happening. The bosses wont speak of it, he says. 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. In blue jeans and running shoes, he cuts a slim figure, with closely cropped gray hair and steely blue eyes. Then he turned and faced me. He paved over the last orchard in the Santa Clara Valley with some apartments and then went looking for another valley where he might build his own empire. If she has her way, they will go to college, too. His dad had sold the bar and was adrift. 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. The great drought is officially over. The Sureos gang has tagged the front entrance but otherwise has left the inside unmarked. To top it off, the greedy SOB (farmers rarely uttered Vidovichs name) intended to keep his 7,000 acres of nut trees in Dudley Ridge. Silicon Valley developer John Vidovich wants to build a water pipeline on his property; cotton king J.G. Hes thankful to the Resnicks, especially Lady Lynda, for that. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. I steer past Wasco to the dust-blowing orchards that flank Lost Hills, the densest planting of almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates on earth. Whatever remains is not nearly enough to make up for the shortfall of imported water from the state. It is leaning more heavily on groundwater, say locals, because its selling or transferring portions of its surface supplies from the State Water Project and Kings River. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. A fully equipped teaching kitchen will turn the harvest into school lunches. And while Vidovich grows crops on thousands of the acres he holds and processes his own almonds at a plant in Wasco, his vast holdings in farmland have granted him entree onto a bevy of water district boards, controlling the regions economic lifeline. Each mound is fed into an even bigger machine whose teeth pulverize the trees and make sawdust. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. Wheres it coming from? In a profile written by Lois Henry, then of The Bakersfield Californian now writing exclusively for her own service SJVWater, Vidovich readily acknowledge the acrimony the sale caused. By the time they returned to Beverly Hills, he had lost interest in a book about his life, at least one that I might write. I cash them the same. We pile back into the van and head up the road. She wanted me to put our $5 million in an account, draw interest, and we could live happily on the 50 grand a year.. She remembers handing the boy to her sister-in-law, who carried phony papers, and watching them cross by bridge into California. It takes a lot of work to get ahead. She and Manuel were able to buy their trailer several years ago. Because Lupe had no papers, she followed the coyote for many more miles until they reached a steep pass. When he was told there were fields upon fields, he did not believe there could be this many fields. One of the neighbors watched in disgust as the bulldozers tore into the hillside. 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. It was the early 1900s, and his grandfather and grandmother decided to secure passage to America. The 789 acre project . Thats changing. Rubbish, said Vidovich, in a Los Altos office decorated with maps of his land holdings. He was the bad guy in agriculture for no bigger offense than that he was big. She was in her late 20s, almost a decade younger than Stewart, and the mother of two children. Five years ago, they decided to get rid of the nacho chips, french fries, and soft drinks. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. This must be the spot the Wonderful field man was describing. My father, born in a vineyard outside Fresno, was a raisin grower before he became a bar owner. 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. Theres Cheat Death for their antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice and Get Crackin for their pistachios and Untouched by Man for their Fiji water. The Resnicks are growing again. They were actually harvesting record crops. (SJV Water/ Lois Henry) A large water pipeline being built near Lemoore in Kings County is raising eyebrows as much for its possible uses as for the name associated with its construction John Vidovich. The believer and the skeptic do their tussle inside my head. Shes designing the curriculum.. 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. I saw horrible things, Margarita says. Boswell Company. The Iranians dont irrigate their trees. The leathery skin on the fruit has turned a nice orange-red. Theres not much left over, he says. He gambled on the price of nuts going up, and he gambled on the water never going dry. The water sent to Kern County1.4 million acre-feet a yearhas doubled the cropland. The plastic unfurls across the grove like a giant roll of Saran Wrap. The aquifer either doesnt exist or is so befouled by salts that the water is poison. I take out my cellphone and swipe across Google Maps. The crops we grow can only be grown in a few places in the world. What he knows is that Wonderful is buying up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year in a series of hidden deals. Across the field, a heavy machine is stacking whats left of the trees into giant mounds. Their houses made from railroad boxcars have been painted purple, blue, yellow, and gold. Our relatives have been patient. He worries because there isnt enough water now to properly irrigate the almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates. When youre making the kind of money were making, whats the upside? He kept planting more and more trees. He had no intention of farming it, either. Their goal is to prevent me from successfully farming. Its not the fidget of boredom. None of this is my idea. In the winter of 2010, Vidovich put up for sale half his draw of state water from the Dudley Ridge Water District. Name. So I ask about the big picture. Like the wheat barons of the 1870s who lived on San Franciscos Nob Hill, Resnick isnt of this place. Its going to be what its going to be. On one side of the road and the other, for miles in both directions, the dirt belongs to Wonderful. 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. 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. The winter goes down as one of the wettest in recorded history. One year later, Vidovich turned his gain from the water sale to Mojave into an almost outright acquisition of land in the Angiola Water District in Tulare County. I get it. Then I get lucky. Across the street, the Soto family has built a new Mexican restaurant named Gabbys that dwarfs every other business on the street with its Spanish Mission faade. Digging in was its own wisdom, he discovered. Mr. Vidovich was a descendant of one of the pioneer farm families that settled here from Croatia . Tender sprouts poke out of the dry soil, and I bend down to feel their prickle. In the maroon of sundown,I follow the workers back to Lost Hills. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I reached a moment in my life where I had to give back in a meaningful way, she tells the camera. I leave Gabbys and follow a winding concrete path through the new Wonderful Park. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. 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. Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood concerns persist across California. Its bringing water from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County. Nowhere to turn, I turn back around and roll down my window. I write an email to the Wonderful PR team. Each face wears its own weary. He was in the mood to gamble. Lucky for her that the young man was kind. As she announces the newest gift, the men and women in the back of the crowd smile and applaud politely and try not to show their faces to the publicity crew she has brought with her to film the event. 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. Now its the Bobcats turn. I try again to pin him down, but hes a man who likes to think of himself as wily. Wow. All the new water pours into the delta, and what doesnt go out to sea fills up the aqueduct again. The aqueduct was built with tax money, yes? I head straight into the glare of the sun shooting over the Coast Range. Developer, farmer and water trader John Vidovich plans to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore according to a preliminary application filed with the county. A plume of dust joins up with other plumes of dust until the sky over the valley turns sickly. 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. The Newsom Water Resilience Portfolio has seven investment principles, none of which includes the actions of water entrepreneurs, such as farmer John Vidovich who has been trying to put together a voluntary speculative groundwater market in Kern County for dry years. Bernard, hard to believe, is driving straight toward the aqueduct. Never mind that this is one of the most over-drafted basins in California or that the land is sinking a half-foot a year. Scott: And of course that could have serious implications for these workers. Where is the water going? Damn, if he doesnt look even younger and more fit than the last time I saw him eight years earlier.
