John Vidovich is scion of his family's development firm, De Anza Properties, which owns Rancho Shopping Center and is renovating Los Altos Gardens. Im driving too fast for the ruts in the road. 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. 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. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. This isnt any road. 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. Brad Steinwede. Number three, water from Angiola cant physically get to Semitropics proposed storage cells. Food and Beverage Manufacturing . This is gamblers ground unlike any other in California, and as I drive from hill to dale, examining each orchard, my head spins. Boswell pumps reach 2,500 feet into the earth looking for water to grow crops, looking for water to sell. One of his frat brothers was a wealthy kid whose father ran a janitorial business. john vidovich documentary Not a single one of them wants any part of Wonderful. Already, they are paying $69 a month to the local utility district. Boswell told me what a fool he and his forebears had been for wasting water, sun, and soil in California to raise fiber, of all things. Two men sit inside separate cabins of a small tractor with pincers on one side and a catcher on the other. Kingdom. So why hasnt this place gone to tumbleweeds? "I want to be as open-minded as I can and get all the facts I can," he insisted. All I know is I dont want to split it up or sell it in some leveraged buyout. Nowhere to turn, I turn back around and roll down my window. Lessons? he says, sounding perplexed. Read our full comments policy: losaltosonline.com/comments, $5.00 His operation is extensive and very smart.. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. Many are here without documents, after all. The great drought is officially over. Mitchell agreed, giving Vidovich credit for seeing where groundwater laws were headed before anyone else. He said he bought his first parcel here in 1994 when he invested in a foreclosed property in Kings County. The water sent to Kern County1.4 million acre-feet a yearhas doubled the cropland. I exited my car and approached the entrance with its 14-foot columns and wrought-iron balustrades. The type of transaction is also recorded such as cash entry, credit entry, homesteads, patents (deeds . My grandfather lost the farm to vine hoppers is the story he told. It was simply a place to park some money and have another opportunity. He drove to Delano, the farm town where Chavez and his union had made so much trouble and history. Then the men of cotton, driven out of the South by the boll weevil, put the five rivers into canals and dried up the lake. He did this first in the name of wheat and then beef, milk, raisins, cotton, and nuts. More than one ballad was about the valley, so he came to Fresno. But not even the two projects working in perfect tandem can defy drought. High 53F. John Gibler, a freelance journalist, found Lost Hills a year before Lynda. It hardly ceases for the next five months. No luck. Chance of rain 40%. But thats the way it is. When it doesnt come, he finds a way to make it come. He spits tobacco juice into the empty can of Rockstar. Tracts of houses, Californias last affordable dream, civilize three or four exits, and then its back to the open road splattered with the guts and feathers of chickens that jumped ship on the slaughterhouse drive. No picking of crop agitates the earth like the picking of almonds and pistachios. The idea of capturing Kings River floodwaters isnt new. Because it is a community of all Hispanics.. 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. The sellers include farmers in the Tulare Lake basin who are pumping so much water out of the ground that the levees protecting the town of Corcoran are sinking, not by inches but by feet. He was short, bull-like, and didnt take crap from anyone. It takes a life every six seconds. Who anticipates that you cant fill a water bank for six or seven years?, Come on, I say. It comes out to $2,000 a month. And one of the things he was doing was sort of an off-the-books irrigation deal? Compare and book now! They arrive in Chevy trucks and Dodge vans and spill out in groups of four or five under the sweat-stained hats of the 49ers, Penn State, and the Yankees. She was a very frugal lady. Cotton still grows on the lake bottom, but less and less each year. Hundreds of giant praying mantises standing on platforms of concrete are pulling oil from a Chevron field. Since the middle of the drought, the price of almonds has dropped almost by half. But that doesnt make people buy a second bottle. They point to three new pump stations along Angiolas main canal just north of the county line that have the ability to move 100,000 acre feet a year into pipes that head south and west. She walks off the stage with Stewart. But inside he had these weaknesses. Longtime Los Altos resident Stephen John Vidovich, founder of De Anza Properties of Sunnyvale, died of an apparent heart attack June 19 as he was driving a tractor on his property in the Cupertino hills, said his son John Vidovich. I head straight into the glare of the sun shooting over the Coast Range. 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 father's death. Water fight between two of Valley's largest growers heads to court A day later, I get a call from Mr. Resnick. Its happening. The bosses wont speak of it, he says. But if its the tube that Im looking to follow, I must drive through the almond grove. The oldest of five children, he came from Mexico when he was 18. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. Ill have to go deeper if I can.. It is flowing to a place of dire thirst. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. The rain of almonds has moved on to the next tree. Ive done no big wrong in my life that would cause me to have any. Shell check in every so often to see how business is going. As the nuts pour down onto the roof of the catcher, the operator shifts the trough so that it becomes a conveyor belt. Vidovich and a co-defendant were found guilty in 2014 of conspiracy to breach a land sale contract and ordered to pay nearly $130 million in compensatory and punitive damages. He became more involved with De Anza, working with his dad, whom he describes as bigger than life.. 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. Preview. For now, theyre selling to farmers like Resnick who can pay the price. Other water districts contended it was much more. VIDEO: Just a farmer | Video Gallery | bakersfield.com The district has already paid him $40 million for an easement, or right of way, on that land and signed an agreement with him for how the project would operate. The ceiling, all sheetrock and spackling, remains a work in progress. I stick to the left lane and try to stay ahead of the pack. This amounted to 14,000 acre-feet. Vidovich is, after all, a powerful landowner in the Central Valley. He thinks Ive understated the crop.. I remind him of the time we spent together eight years earlier in his Sunset House. And in fact these guys were able to squeeze and buy water in the open market, and do a few other things to keep their crops going and they were in the midst of drought. No longer does it have to be a career that brings Mexicans to their hands and knees. One year, it delivers 900,000 acre-feet of snowmelt. The net return on the pistachio proves that Wonderfuls dominance in the market has benefited every grower in the room. But she doesnt dictate this or that. Angelica would prefer not to get into the details of their financial arrangement. 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. Arax: That is the question that you know Im dealing with in this magazine piece. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. Every last tree has been torn out of the ground. In the trailer next door, Lupes cousin Margarita lives with her husband, Selfo, and their three young children. The food is more. 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. Because a human picker is not needed in the almond and pistachio groves, the nut harvest doesnt spread around money the way it spreads around dust. Includes Address (3) Phone (3) Email (1) See Results. None of this is my idea. When the mansion was built in 1927, it was known as the Sunset House. Then hed lose his temper and get the strap out.. I know I cant do this forever, he says. Hes a decent guy making $216,000 a year who doesnt pretend that he isnt beholden to Wonderful. The court settlement allows him to take the water to Dudley Ridge, but it cant go outside Kings County. accounts and the history behind a news event. We are sensitive to that. But a pipeline, which Vidovich is allowed to build under the Semitropic agreement, could span that distance. It also means giving back.. But he did pass and was admitted to the bar in 1980 at the age of 24. Vidovich shrugged it off, saying the flaw amounted to putting the descriptions on the wrong pages and quickly appealed. Everything but the turkey had come from his orchards. She wasnt content to pursue the usual list of wealthy businessmen as clients. The water is cold, clean, and salty, though not too salty for a desperate man. His real estate empire became big enough to bring aboard each of his four children. I saw horrible things, Margarita says. They dumped their stolen car into the canals black waters and got away with murder for the next 32 years. Kings and Tulare farmers and water managers want to know. The Kings is as erratic a river as the Kern so floodwaters are unpredictable. Jun 27, 2007. Pink and white oleanders divide the highway, and every third vehicle that whooshes by is a big rig. Making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process?. He lingers in the crowd long enough to shake hands with a friend from Bel-Air whos planting thousands of acres of pistachios in the worst ground of Tulare Lake. Youre the one who needs to see., We pull out of the parking lot, past the palm trees and roses, and head up the thin ribbon of Highway 33 into the dust-swirling tunnel of nuts and fruits. Groundwater accountability sparks clash of Central Valley ag titans It will be interesting to see what the regulatory boards say. Theres Cheat Death for their antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice and Get Crackin for their pistachios and Untouched by Man for their Fiji water. Resnick also has lands just south of the Kings/Kern county line in Lost Hills and many of Vidovichs detractors believe thats where a lot of that Angiola groundwater is going. 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. We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content. Vidovich has been buying land in the Central Valley for more than 20 years. A portion of his wages will be set aside each month to pay down the debt. Stewart and Lynda planted 15,000 more acres and bought a juice plant. 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. I tried not to stare at the gold that was everywhere: heavy-legged gold furniture, paintings in thick gold frames, gold-leaf carpet, and gold-fringed drapes. 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. 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. He and the Resnicks had fought an ugly legal battle that tore their Cutie brand in two. "What I was most alarmed about was how I, and most people in the area, knew nothing of this proposal," he told The Leader. Died on 26 Oct 2005. A minute later, I reconnect with the pipeline and pursue its length for a football field. Business got so brisk that he bought two trucks and hired crews. A pump is shooting water out of the canal and into the Rain for Rent pipes. If this were any other part of Kern, the farmers would be reaching into the earth to make up the difference. 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. 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. 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. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Already, the high school is filled with hundreds of students bused in from farmworker towns that are among the poorest communities in the West. A flour tortilla. When all three phases are finished, 1,800 students will be attending the high school, middle school, elementary, and preschool. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. Section, block, and row dont compute; he has to direct me by cellphone and guideposts. The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom wont last forever. Scott: How sustainable is this operation given that California only recently came out of a long drought and may actually be headed there again soon? John Vidovich of De Anza Properties | eyesunnyvale.com Hes never driven a tractor or opened an irrigation valve. Each bush is saddled with more than a hundred pomegranates the size of softballs and baseballs. Then I get lucky. tupperware garlic keeper g2c advantages and disadvantages. I feel his gaze going past me, his voice turning oddly sentimental. The growers would stand in front of the cull line and never stop moaning about how much of their fruit got rejected by Girazians graders. Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. It moves in a wave from trunk to limb to nut and back down to earth. It isnt a lot of water., Im not going to give you the numbers. Then some of the money we save goes to pay the coyote. Its gambling. The vibration here isnt quite as vehement. He had left for the cornfields a few minutes before the killings.. 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. Twine strung trailer to trailer hangs with the laundry of fathers, mothers, and children. Eat a corn tortilla instead, she urges. I cut across Twisselman Road to the pipeline gliding along the aqueduct like a silver snake. Look, I have no guilt. Maybe not since the wheat barons has the income disparity between farmer and farmworker been greater. ", "I don't know why the county can't work with Sandridge (Vidovich's company) and suggest other locations because it's going to cause the county significant issues in terms of air quality Kings County doesn't have the best," said Gornick. Posted on August 6, 2018 Bakersfield Californian. His father, Stephen Vidovich, formed De Anza Properties and helped develop the valley. Each square-mile section is divided into blocks, and each block counts a precise number of rows. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. Because its so much fun to say that Lost Hills has been found., The room full of growers applauds. Vidovich went home with $74 million in his pocket. Her husband, Manuel, will awaken in 30 minutes to prepare for his night shift. 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. You have permission to edit this article. Under his leadership, Buena Vista has installed a pipeline system to reduce reliance on canals, which lose a lot of water to seepage and the district has become extremely active in buying up land for water banking. Scott: So we should talk about the labor that makes this all possible. Just ahead I can see the last section of pipe throwing a cascade of white water into a main canal belonging to the Lost Hills Water District. I park the car and walk across the barren rows. The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. Problem is, I feel like Im 50. Mark Arax: Yeah. The partner kept the Cutie name but only after paying the Resnicks tens of millions of dollars. The harvest begins in January with one type of mandarin and ends in December with another type of mandarin and in between spills forth everything in your supermarket produce and dairy aisles except for bananas and mangoes, though the farmers here are working on the tropical, too. And then what happens in drought is there is this desperation to keep it going. I didnt see our creation, much less the figures bent under the canopies of vine that our creation counted on. Instead of trying to sell the fruit as a piece of fruit, they squeezed its seeds into POMWonderful. The city manager is in the process of coordinating a response, "said Gornick. When its Pablos turn, he hands Hussein a check for $437, and Hussein counts out $433 back to him in cash.