By Tim Sheehan / The Fresno Bee
 
LOS BANOS — Federal officials told hundreds of farmers in the Westlands Water District on Monday that they will get even less irrigation water — just days after the district announced a rationing plan.

Farmers in the nation’s largest federal water district will be hit hard — many said they expect to abandon crops or even go out of business for lack of water.

Two members of Congress and district officials urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to declare a state of emergency.

Efficient water use crucial for Valley farmers
From the sky, John Diener’s farm looks like a swath of Kansas grafted onto the rugged flatlands of the San Joaquin Valley’s west side.

Hundreds of acres of crops grow in a circular patches on Diener’s land. The idea is to save water with an irrigation system that rotates around a pivot in the center of each field.

The automated system is common in the Midwest, where farm labor is scarce — but it’s gaining traction here as growers adapt to the new reality of farming.

Valley towns struggle to break dependency on ag
MENDOTA — Less than two miles from downtown, a section of flat-as-a-pancake farmland is giving way to a concrete monolith that eventually will house about 1,200 federal prison inmates.

That’s just about the only tangible effort to create nonagriculture jobs in this farming town of about 10,000 people — and it’s nowhere near enough to help employ the thousands who have lost work amid an unprecedented crisis.

For years, Mendota and other west side farm towns have sought to broaden their job base and wean themselves from the vagaries of irrigated agriculture — the very basis of their existence. But geographically and economically, the deck has been stacked against them.

Water draws Interior chief to Fresno for hearing
MENDOTA — Under increasing political pressure to address California’s water crisis, the Obama administration said Wednesday it will dispatch Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to a hastily organized town hall meeting Sunday in Fresno.

Interior Department officials have not yet identified a location for the meeting, which is scheduled to run from 2:30 to 4 p.m. But it will be Salazar’s first official on-the-ground visit to the region.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, state agriculture officials said that a combination of drought and federal environmental regulations have the potential to turn a short-term water crisis into a long-term agricultural and economic disaster.

Valley growers to get bad news on water deliveries
West Valley farmers Friday will hear the news they have feared for weeks an unprecedented forecast of no federal water for their multibillion-dollar industry.  Read more

Interior secretary to talk water in Fresno.

By Tim Sheehan and Michael Doyle / The Fresno Bee

MENDOTA — Under increasing political pressure to address California’s water crisis, the Obama administration said Wednesday it will dispatch Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to a hastily organized town hall meeting Sunday in Fresno.

Interior Department officials have not yet identified a location for the meeting, which is scheduled to run from 2:30 to 4 p.m. But it will be Salazar’s first official on-the-ground visit to the region.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, state agriculture officials said that a combination of drought and federal environmental regulations have the potential to turn a short-term water crisis into a long-term agricultural and economic disaster.

    
CRAIG KOHLRUSS / THE FRESNO BEE
Shawn Coburn, center, of Coburn Ranch, speaks to the California State Board of Food and Agriculture during a meeting Wednesday at Mendota High School.

 California water shortage story archive

 During a hearing Wednesday of the state Board of Food and Agriculture at Mendota High School, panelists raised many of the same issues as at rallies this spring: Less water for west-side growers means less acreage planted, creating a spike in unemployment and economic hardship for farm laborers and their communities.

“With this regulatory and geologic drought, we’ve seen really how agriculture touches every life,” state Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said. “Especially in this region, so many lives are being affected beyond the farmers and farmworkers. … The communities impacted go well beyond the farm sector.”

Agriculture on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley relies largely on water transferred through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from Northern California. But the effects of a three-year drought, coupled with federal environmental decisions to protect the delta smelt and salmon, have severely narrowed the periods in which massive pumps can be used to move water from north to south. Read more

Group supported by farmers and farmworkers will begin trek in Mendota.

By E.J. Schultz / Bee Capitol Bureau
 
They have rallied and lobbied, pleading for more water to revive the downtrodden west Valley.

That hasn’t worked — so now they will march.

Hoping to bring national attention to their cause, members of a group called the Latino Water Coalition will lead a four-day “California March for Water” that begins Tuesday in Mendota and ends near Los Banos.

If all goes as planned, thousands of farmworkers, farmers, college students and others will make the trek, which covers portions of Highway 33 and Interstate 5, ending at the San Luis Reservoir on Friday.

Organizers make no bones about it — they want to evoke memories of Cesar Chavez and his legendary marches for farmworker rights in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Mexicans know what a march means,” said Mario Santoyo, a member of the Latino coalition. “It means that they’re willing to sacrifice for a cause.”

But these are different times, for sure.

Chavez led boycotts of growers in his drive to unionize farmworkers. The Latino Water Coalition, which includes Hispanic business and civic leaders, works in concert with growers.

Together they lobby for state money for dams and canals and the lifting of pumping restrictions at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that were imposed to comply with environmental laws.

The cutbacks and drought have forced growers to fallow land, leaving farmworkers without jobs.

The march “is kind of a union between the farmworkers and the farmers because they’re both hit,” said Santoyo, an assistant general manager at Friant Water Users Authority, which represents east Valley growers.

The union that Chavez founded — the United Farm Workers — is not participating in the march and declined to comment. Read more

Fresno Bee staff reports
 
Faced with an Election Day choice between their unchallenged incumbent congressman and writing in somebody, tens of thousands of voters in the region instead went with a third option — they left their ballots blank.

In the 19th Congressional District, where Mariposa Republican George Radanovich had no official challengers and two men qualified as write-in candidates, close to 24,000 voters in the Fresno County portion of the district didn’t vote at all. That’s close to 27% of the total 19th District ballots cast in Fresno County.

Up north in the Stanislaus County portion of the 19th District, the percentage was even higher — nearly 37% left their ballots blank.

It was a similar story in the adjacent 18th Congressional District, where Merced Democrat Dennis Cardoza was unopposed. Around 21% of Merced County voters simply didn’t vote.

Up and down both districts, the story was pretty much the same.

Fresno County Clerk Victor Salazar wasn’t shocked by the blank ballots in the congressional races. Because it is a presidential election year, he said, “that can be expected.”

Voters often go the polls specifically to vote for a presidential candidate and are less informed about other races, especially ballot initiatives. So, they leave much of their ballots blank.

But still, Salazar was surprised by the high number of blank ballots in Radanovich’s district. “That’s a big chunk,” he said, adding, “There are also those who say, ‘I don’t have a choice.’ ”

The 19th District covers parts of Fresno, Madera and Stanislaus counties and all of Mariposa and Tuolumne. The 18th District covers parts of Fresno, Madera, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties and all of Merced. By — John Ellis See this story

By Tim Moran/ tmoran@modbee.com

The budget, available on the county’s Web site, totals $966.54 million, up about 1 percent from the proposed budget adopted in June, and 2.2 percent higher than last year’s final budget.

The numbers are likely to change when the state finally approves a budget, because many county programs depend on state money or services. State legislators and the governor are grappling with a $15 billion deficit, and county officials expect cuts that will alter the local budget.

“We’ve evaluated virtually every version of what we’ve heard out of Sacramento,” Patty Hill Thomas, chief operations officer for the county, said. “Because of the uncertainty, we are pursuing adoption of a final budget, but it’s not likely what is recommended will be the final budget for long. We will have to come in and make fairly significant changes.”

The county has struggled with its own financial problems, including a continued decline in property taxes, flat sales taxes, and large and pressing building needs.

Property tax revenues are expected to drop more than $4 million below the estimates for the June proposed budget.

Those capital projects include a jail expansion that could cost more than $200 million, and a longer-term juvenile detention facility with a price tag of $8 million to $12.3 million. Also, the Community Services Facility at Hackett and Crows Landing roads needs a new heating and air conditioning system that could cost $4 million. Read more

But Kings County shows a surprising drop in its poverty rate.

By Russell Clemings / The Fresno Bee
 
In good economic times or bad, the story never changes in the central San Joaquin Valley — on average, its residents are among the poorest in California and the nation.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau drove that point home Tuesday.

In 2007, the bureau’s American Community Survey listed Tulare County as having a higher percentage of people living in poverty than any other California county of the 40 for which data were available. Almost 24% of that county’s residents lived in households where the income was below poverty level. Second worse in the state was Imperial County, with nearly 22%.

Only five U.S. counties with 250,000 or more people ranked higher in poverty. Three were along the border between Texas and Mexico, one was the Bronx in New York City, and the fifth was Philadelphia County, Pa.

Other Valley counties fared little better in the state rankings. Fresno County was in fourth place, with 20% of its people — one in five — living in poverty last year. Read more 

By Charles McCarthy / The Fresno Bee
 
AHWAHNEE — Wild pigs roaming the Central California foothills are turning rural yards into hog heaven, ripping through lawns and shrubbery as they seek roots, worms and other buried edibles.

The pigs have roamed the state for decades, but this year something has driven more of them into inhabited areas, experts say. And they seem to be more destructive.

“It’s like somebody’s out there all night with a tractor,” said Clu Cotter, a California Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist who is responsible for Madera and Fresno counties.
Hungry herds ranging from a dozen up to 40 pigs can quickly transform a well-manicured yard into something resembling a war zone. They destroy drip irrigation systems for a cool slurp of water. They have ripped through barbed-wire fences to pig out on lawns.

The animals can be foul tempered, especially when they’re protecting their young. But when one is shot, the rest of the herd usually vanishes into the night. They’re smart and wary, Cotter said.

Some homeowners in the foothills have permits to shoot the invaders. Others have traps set.

Glenn Harmelin is among those who have taken the battle to the pigs.

Night after night the swine would return to his yard outside Ahwahnee, stripping his berry bushes and leaving a ruined mess.

“They’re like rototillers,” Harmelin said. “… Anywhere there was water, they went for it.” Read more

Interest-only and Alt-A borrowers may be in the next wave of foreclosures.

By Sanford Nax / The Fresno Bee

A new threat is emerging that could keep the tidal wave of foreclosures continuing into 2011, experts say.

More interest-only and so-called option adjustable-rate mortgages handed out during the real-estate boom — loans considered a step up from subprime that were intended for borrowers with higher credit scores — are starting to go bad as home values continue to fall. These loans also are called alternative-documentation loans, or Alt-A.

Subprime loans, often with adjustable rates, blew the bottom out of home prices beginning last year and sent a flood of bank-owned homes on to the real estate market after many borrowers found they couldn’t keep up with escalating payments.
The same thing could happen with Alt-A loans, many of which will “recast” — or adjust upward — beginning next year. Defaults are expected on interest-only mortgages because the borrower pays only interest for a period of time, usually five or seven years. Then the remaining balance must be paid over a shorter term, which increases the monthly payment — especially if the loan features an adjustable rate.

Because the loans were selling like hotcakes in the early part of the decade, many are coming due in the near future, experts say. Read more

By Dennis Wyatt/Managing Editor/Manteca Bulletin
There would be hell to pay if the South San Joaquin Irrigation District board gave $250,000 to the “No on Proposition 8″ campaign.

The Nov. 4 state ballot measure is designed to make the legal definition of a marriage in California as one between a man and a woman.

If the SSJID used money from the sale of electricity for such a purpose, you can rest assured that the entire board would probably be recalled in record time.

And if you think it is improper for what is basically a monopoly to use proceeds for such a political purpose, don’t look now but that its exactly what you helped fund if you are a PG&E customer.

PG&E has sent the No on Proposition 8 campaign a $250,000 check to help the campaign to make sure that the ballot measure fails so same sex couples’ right to marry will continue after Nov. 4.

Of course, PG&E will tell you ratepayers didn’t pay for the $250,000 contribution to make sure marriage is never defined again as only between a man and a woman in California. It comes from the 11 percent cut of what they charge that the California Public Utilities Commission says can go toward profits and other expenses not regulated by the state.

So if you’re a PG&E stockholder, PG&E simply reduced the pool of available money for dividends to back the fight against Proposition 8.

It is the latest “in your face” stance that PG&E has taken toward ratepayers and shareholders alike.

Among the highlights of recent years include:

• paying the chief executive officer and other top echelon corporate types who took them to the edge off bankruptcy $12 million in bonuses while the utility was still trying to get out from under its financial mess.

• donating turf taken by eminent domain for a pipeline through a Delta turf farm and then turning around and donating it - for a tax deduction - to a new Lathrop elementary school while at the same time attacking SSJID for raising the specter of using eminent domain ultimately to take control of the South County retail system to lower power costs.

• buying a new corporate jet while PG&E was teetering on bankruptcy and raising rates left and right.

• hiring a political firm who put an intern in the back of the SSJID board room who used a laptop with wireless connection to access and download sensitive material from SSJID computers while a public meeting was in progress.

• convincing the California Legislature they’d help irrigation districts get into the retail power business by giving them exemptions to the competitive transmission charges in exchange for deregulation and then throwing roadblocks at every turn in front of the only irrigation district to take them up on the offer - SSJID.

You get all of that plus some of the highest electrical rates in the country for being a PG&E customer. Read more

Irrigation district’s solar-power farm is a sign of progress in environmental efforts

South San Joaquin Irrigation District has emerged as a winner in the area of solar power. The irrigation district, which supplies water to growers in much of the southern part of San Joaquin County, unveiled its new solar-energy farm last week.

The facility is not going to solve any of the state’s power concerns, but it’s a significant step in the right direction when it comes to harnessing alternative sources of energy. The 1-megawatt, $7.9 million solar farm supplies power to the district’s adjacent water treatment plant, which supplies some drinking water to Manteca, Tracy and Lathrop.

The bottom line: The solar farm is expected to chop $400,000 annually in electricity costs at the plant. With the help of state rebates, the solar farm should pay for itself within 10 years.

SSJID also is attempting to purchase PG&E’s retail electricity business in the area, but the power giant has successfully opposed that bid for now. Still, both are entities that espouse progress in the energy arena. What SSJID has accomplished certainly qualifies as progress. See this article