Tulare County - The next few weeks will tell the tale.

On August 21 a contractor hired by Tulare Irrigation District (TID) will move equipment in place to begin the concrete lining of 10 miles of an earthen canal corridor just east of Visalia.  Big bulldozers will push over 200 giant oak trees in the pathway of the project once it gets underway in September.

A dramatic series of face-offs in multiple court houses and in meeting rooms that include outraged property owners and mediating government officials vs a determined public agency with few legal constraints placed on them - TID promises some sort of resolution.  TID is resolved that one way or another they get re-paid for a small portion of the high cost of federal water it received annually - water it brings in but loses as the canal winds it way into the district in the form of seepage into the ground.

That seepage benefits surrounding areas - property owners - the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District representing area farming interests and communities like Exeter, Farmersville and Visalia.  The percolating seepage benefits trees and wildlife, all agree.

The “alternative” plan to line the canal is to have jurisdictions kick in money into a fund that would compensate TID for this loss - at least $300,000 annually.  Ironically, most of the compensation being sought by TID would come from money it already pays into an “environmental restoration” fund - about $1 million a year, a portion of which
would be returned by the Bureau of Reclamation under a proposed plan that has been on the table for months.  Friant CVP contractors pay into this environment restoration fund but virtually none of that money came back to the Friant district - spent instead on projects in northern California, notes Debbi Hurley aide to Congressman Radanovich’s office.

TID representatives have been skeptical of the idea of alternative plans in part because jurisdictions and government agencies can change their mind over time. With annual funding cycles the irrigation district must decide whether to put in the canal that could save water for decades, or go with the alternative and accept some measure of risk they won’t get paid down the line.

This week the first face-to-face with all parties including representatives of the Bureau of Reclamation will take place Friday August 4 to work on the alternative plan.  The meeting was set up by Congressman George Radanovich’s office. Both Radanovich and Congressman Dooley have been lobbying the Bureau to allow a payment schedule to TID to be multiple years, at least 10 years, worth of payments guaranteed.  The payment would set up a riparian corridor leaving the canal earthen and even restoring it to its most natural state.

While talking about this tentative plan, TID general manager keeps pushing the project’s build date in September when the district must either start a more than $10million project or wait another irrigation season.  Even as they negotiate they fight their case in multiple courtrooms and in the court of public opinion.  “We’ve been following the POWER group around trying to tell our side to civic groups and city councils,” says TID manager Jerry Hill.  The TID project has not been popular and the members of the board have been personally vilified over the project.

The POWER group is a well organized group of property owners who have vowed to stop the canal lining and have joined together to fund legal, lobbying and negotiating efforts to see it doesn’t happen.

The fear of loss of scenic beauty and water losses from declining water tables as both the Kaweah River water and federal canal water seepage is denied to the delta region.  Key to the opposition is this portion of Tulare County is one of the last remnants of the Kaweah delta system that depends on natural coursing rivers.  The canal runs hundreds of feet from the Kaweah Oaks Preserve and some fear for the future of the preserve if the canal is lined.  So a mix of natural passion and concern by some that this area will suffer in drought years because of this precedent is fueling their
struggle.

In recent days there have been court actions in the matter and a possible breakthrough on a plan to compensate TID.  Two trains are running down the track at the same time and it isn’t clear which one the board of TID will ride - but the train leaving the station.  “We’re hoping for an 11th hour deal,” says POWER leader Brian Blain who has been quietly negotiating with TID officials even as the rhetoric level has reached a fever pitch.  TID’s Jerry Hill agrees that “all we want to be in is another position” and that talks have reached the stage that he says “I think (a deal) can be done.”

Political pressure for the Bureau to cooperate is strong - it is a political year remember - and the additional weight of the Board of Supervisors looking to mediate this dispute in coming weeks, ads momentum to the alternative to talk rather than fight.

An apparent deal would involve payment by cities like Visalia - who originally fought the canal lining in court but later backed off to the dismay of canal opponents - and the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District who paid TID for the seepage losses in past years and the irate property owners who say they too are willing to pay into a fund.  The local monies added to the Bureau refund of the TID monies would be packaged together to allow the project not go forward.

The promise is to solidify the promises - to put money on the table in time for TID to call off the bulldozers.

But on the legal front, TID faces a possible call for an injunction on the project in a matter of days, the Voice has learned.  Attorney for the POWER group, Don Mooney, fresh from an apparent victory in Superior Court last week in the case where TID had sued Dr. Tom Mitts over taking water our of the canal, suggests in the case of another suit- an appeal over the EIR on the project - the group will seek an injunction.  A Sacramento judge allowed the approval of the EIR last spring and now an appeal is set - but months from now.  By then the canal project will be underway and big trees will be history.  “It would be a hollow victory” without an immediate injunction, says Mooney.

In addition, he suggests other will file a separate injunction request because of the harm the project might cause.

In the Mitts lawsuit case, TID’s manager Jerry Hill says a Visalia court will decide “does TID have the legal right to line the canal.”  While that issue could be heard by Tulare County Superior Court early next week - the lack of courtroom space (due to the mold issue) will likely put it off - possibly for months, believes Hill.

But Hill says the irrigation district will press on to attempt to meet its September schedule.  This week a company hired by TID continues to talk with property owners along the canal about the value of their right of way - some which TID will need to finish the project.  Some property owners are being cooperative and others are not, he admits.  TID will need to condemn property resulting in court action to acquire the necessary right of way.  Don Mooney suggests even though many property owners along the path have given TID an easement to run the ditch over their land. TID doesn’t have a right to line the canal - an action not contemplated when the easement was given.

In addition the issue of adjacent property owner’s water taking right is critical.  In the case of Dr. Mitts who took irrigation water out of the canal and was sued by TID, Mitts claimed and won that his 1892 property deed allowing for a take of water from the canal was not null because he had not exercised that right in years.

Dennis Keller, the engineer who came up with the structure of the compassion plans being discussed today, says the POWER group may have more clout to convince TID to accept this offer because they do have the same right to take water out of the canal.  That could add up to TID not saving water after all - the goal of the project.

Despite the negativity of the controversy Hill says all the public hoopla over the project has “raised public awareness” over the plight of the farmers irrigation district who have faced a high increase in the price of water as a result of the possible CVPI. In 1992 the district is paying about 10 times the amount it paid for water after the legislation passed.

Local water experts fear that if TID loses - does not line the canal and is not compensated - the region may lose if the irrigation district chooses not to bring the extra 100,000 acre feet of federal water annually due to its high cost.  Now that would hurt.

When you add it up almost 2/3 of Tulare County’s annual water supply comes in the form of federal irrigation water that flows here from the San Joaquin River stored behind Millerton dam above Fresno, says civil engineer Dick Schafer.  Without much of this County would dry up and blow away.

Critics of TID believe their intention is to line the canal at great expense and amortize that expense by selling water out of the district to bring urban areas who are more than willing to pay the price.  TID has said only that it doesn’t want to be proscriptive by any agreement on Kaweah water that it also receives to do just that based on private property rights. 

Kings County - This week the Kings County Board of Supervisors rescinded the permits for four new dairies proposed by the JG Boswell Company. Boswell decided to throw in the towel recently on a three- year effort to sell dairy sites in the old lakebed to relocating southern California dairymen. The Boswell company had become a big target for environmental groups that included the Center For Race, Poverty and the Environment and now the Sierra Club over the scale and impacts big dairies have.  Sources say Boswell officials became exasperated with the environmental groups insistence that despite the most thorough EIR ever done in the dairy business, it just wasn’t enough.

Privately they say lead attorney for the Center, Luke Cole, promised to drag the Boswell name through the courts for years. ”This isn’t their fight anyway - it’s the dairy industry’s fight,” says Kings County supervisor Tony Oliveira.  The Center had sued Boswell and the County after the County approved the permits and settlement talks on resolving the issue without more court battles were underway.  “When the Sierra Club joined the suit the tone of the talks changed,” say insiders, “now they had deep pockets behind them.”  The Sierra Club has a nationwide campaign going over huge “factory farms” that they say pollute the environment.  The Boswell name has been a whipping boy for liberal groups for decades who have complained about the world’s largest farmer’s corporate subsidies and political maneuvering.  Now that big target is out of the picture.

According to sources close to the settlement discussions, the Center had escalated a series of demands including  Boswell giving money to the city of Corcoran - something the Corcoran mayor said they didn’t want - but that changed to an offer to support a training program for entry level dairy jobs; an agreement that the UFW would be able to organize all the dairies - something Boswell was not ready to do; they asked for $400,000 to be given to the Center - something Boswell officials said they would never do; and Boswell had agreed to fund research on dairy emissions along with others in the industry.  The insiders say the Sierra Club was not aware of the fact that the company had done such a thorough job on environmental factors relating to the dairies, unlike other huge animal confinement projects across the nation (Southern hog farms most notoriously) that the organization has targeted.  In some places pollution is
wandering into drinking water and lakes and streams - something that we don’t have a problem with in Kings County, says chief planner Bill Zumwalt.  “We have a tile drain system under the Chamberlain ranch that keeps any pollutants away from ground water.”  Still the Sierra Club was concerned about salt build up.  The Boswell’s reportedly offered a  closure plan that the salt would be cleaned up if that happened.

Zumwalt says a key factor in the breakoff  of talks was that the Center - who charge that air emissions from the big dairies will mean air pollution problems - wanted the new diaries to agree to specific technology to limit their emissions.  Boswell has said that a range of promising technologies would be used and best available technology as
judged by UC Davis experts would be selected.  The experts would consider the cost as well as the efficiency.  But that was not good enough.

Boswell agreed to look at limiting the number of dairy cows from the current planned 47,000 from 25% to 50% - but the Center wanted 75% herd reduction.  Finally, Boswell officials in Los Angeles said it was clear that the Center was not going to be reasonable.

That left the Board of Supervisors to decide this week what to do.  Zumwalt says the board decided to rescind the permits - meaning another applicant like a user could not apply for them.

Instead Zumwalt says the County in the next months will try to put in place a finished programed EIR that will allow diary permitees to apply.

A new twist, there will likely be a cap on the number of dairy cows in the County. Zumwalt says while the number has not been chosen, it would be 2 to 3 times the current number of 125,000 cows.  “That will enable us to estimate the cumulative impact of dairies on air, water and the rest upon build out,” he says, and come up with mitigation efforts to decrease the impacts. Zumwalt expects the latest efforts by the County are likely not enough to satisfy the Center who have said they will sue every dairy planned over 1000 cows - a number below the industry standard in the valley these days.

The issue of air emissions has been the hardest for dairy operators and regulators alike to defend since there is an apparent lack of adequate research on the subject.  “We’re relying on the Air Board to tell us,” says Zumwalt.  He notes that methane is a problem “not just out the back end of the animals but out the front - they belch.” How much is the dairyman going to be asked to spend to fix the air emission problem? The state legislature tells car owners - who spew off more pollution - that if they have to spend more than $500 to fix their car, they are exempt. How much per
cow till they’ve done enough?

A Visalia-based “alliance” of dairy industry supporters promise to fight the Center’s position in court and defend both the counties and applicant as this battle continues. Despite the characterization as “mega-dairies” the alliance points out that all the dairymen are family farmers who live on the farm, that jettisoning the Boswell name out of this controversy could benefit the effort to resolve the issue.

In Kern County last week the Board of Supervisors permitted the larger Borba dairies on more than 4600 acres but the Center and other groups are promising new suits to stop that project as well.  In Kern County unlike in Kings or Tulare there were vocal citizens constituency in the urban Bakersfield area also fighting the big dairies. Key to the resolving of this issue is quantifying the actual impact dairies have on our admittedly polluted air here (see other story). 

Tulare - U.S. Cold Storage is completing its purchase of nearly 60 acres in Tulare at Levin west of Blackstone in a deal set to close this week.  “This is the second largest land acquisition by the company in its history,” says regional manager Rod Noll.  The big cold storage firm plans to use some 14 acres for a new cold storage facility and will sell off adjoining parcels to customers who plan to utilize one of the largest cold storage facilities on the West Coast.  To facilitate development of the property the rail line will be brought across Levin onto this property - the former General Foods property.  “That will be key to developing this property,” says Noll who says the city’s redevelopment agency is part of the picture in bringing in rail.  Sources say the city wants rail clear to Bardsley on the next parcel over.

U.S. Cold Storage owns a large 300,000 sq. ft. facility on Paige in Tulare and currently lease the Land O’Lakes building for storage.  But this expansion would double the capacity of U.S. Cold Storage in town.  Surrounding the new plant will be  major dairy producers like Haagen Daz, Land O’Lakes and Stella Cheese, all within a few blocks.
The acreage being purchased was recently added into the city’s redevelopment area.

U.S. Cold Storage’s purchase should mean perhaps 6 to 12 food related companies could locate on the large vacant land in Tulare’s Industrial Park.  Already Indian River Trucking has purchased land for a new terminal at the center of Levin and Blackstone.
This week U.S. Cold Storage announced they completed an agreement with Haagen Daz to store and export to Japan for the ice cream maker.  The ice cream made in Tulare will take a 15 day voyage to Japan.

The move by U.S. Cold Storage to develop a new industrial park is big news in a county with 15% unemployment with  number one target industry - food processing.  The price of large land acquisitions is believed to be around $1.5 million.

Visalia - Visalia native Brian Kempf was up early last Saturday helping some 40 volunteers plant 47 new “street trees” on the curb side of Main St. from Willis down to Bridge.  The Davis educated head of the Urban Tree Foundation splits his
time on tree projects between cities in California, most recently in Berkeley.  But now Kempf thinks it’s time to come home.  “Visalia needs trees more than Berkeley,” says Kempf working to plant a new pistachio tree with his girlfriend Sandra Price in front of the Fox this day.

Kempf says he knows mid-summer is the wrong time to plant trees but after years of doing this and consulting the experts, he also knows it can be done if the trees cut into the sidewalk are well mulched and watered.  But 8 p.m. the same 100-plus degree day a more haggard but jubilant Brian Kempf - maybe the Johnny Appleseed of Visalia - is still working Main St. mulching and watering trees in front of Don Estes salon down by the 10-plex.

Kempf is spearheading the effort, and until he came along, it was an idea without a prime mover - to plant more trees in downtown Visalia.  With funding from the downtown property owners group the PBID/Downtown Visalians, $10,000 was earmarked to cut the sidewalk squares, plant and stake the  trees and do watering for the next two years.  City Recreation staffer Don Stone says the project had been stalled due to budget concerns because of the high cost to tear up the sidewalk to provide a drip system for trees - something Kempf says is unnecessary.  “Two years of weekly nighttime watering will get the tree going enough, he says knowing that city monies and staff are limited.

Kempf is definitely into trees.  He has patented a recyclable stake that is used in the Visalia plantings, has a 30- year life, and is completely recyclable. His, unlike other stakes, are often treated with chemicals, and in the long run, have to go to the landfill.

It’s Kempf’s “can-do” attitude and vigor that suggest that lots more trees will get planted in Visalia.  In September Kempf and volunteers plan to move back down and plant another 25 or so trees planted evenly in about 30 foot space on both sides of the street to create in the long run a consistent closed canopy of shade up and down Main - not the hodgepodge of spacing and varieties there is out there now.  “Downtown I see the need for about 500 trees and there is no reason why they can’t be planted in the next year,” says the confident arborist.

Planting trees downtown was a major theme of the vision process done last year - a move that will make the Downtown a place people want to visit.

Visalia needs to be re-leafed, says Kempf, to establish an “urban forest” of curb-side trees not just in downtown but on residential streets and even Mooney Blvd.”

Modesto has about 90,000 street trees with a city population of 180,000.  Visalia has at best about 3000 street trees with a population of 100,000.  Of course Visalia is the home of the giant oak trees that give both beauty and shade.  But Kempf says street trees evenly spaced will mean residential streets that are cooler in the summer temps - cheaper energy bills and streets that are less expensive to maintain.

“Trees eat pollution” and in the valley, that is a big problem, he notes.  Everyone he who driven into the country from urban areas knows the cool rush of the orchard compared to concrete heat of the urban area filled with asphalt parking lots.  “There are a hundred reasons to plant more trees here and the fact is its being done all over the nation.”   Indeed Kempf says part of his “job” is finding grants to plant more trees - something he is confident he can do in Visalia.  But the city needs to do its part too.

Right now unlike many other cities Visalia does not require its new subdivisions to have street trees along the curb.   “For every dollar you spend on new trees, you get $2 back in the benefits of shade.”

Besides working with the city Kempf pant to work with CalTrans to promote a new policy in this district to do more street planting on state highways like Mooney/Court St. in town.  He actually teaches a course in Berkeley to CalTrans engineers on the subject.  On residential streets, Kempf says street trees can be on an easement jutting into private property rather than blocking the sidewalk if there is no room between sidewalk and street.  He says he will help set up the management of the community forest and he means it. 

San Joaquin Valley - OK, cow fumes stink.  But beyond that do they constitute an air pollution problem?  That’s the problem dairymen are having when they go try to get their building permit in the San Joaquin Valley - with plenty of wide open spaces after
all, and a place unlike the big city, where folks realize that chickens don’t have lips. Now a persistent environmental group has aimed to tie up new dairy permits in three counties and they are working on a fourth.  The issue is how big a stink is the dairy emission problem?

Well, you’ve got emissions coming out the back and methane coming out the front, says Kings County planning chief Bill Zumwalt.  But in what quantities remains up in the air.  It clearly depends on a lot of factors including diet.  He says measurement of air emissions from farm animals vary widely by weather or if the cow is in a barn for much of the time, for example. However, the agency acknowledges that air quality problems can’t be totally mitigated, there are overriding economic benefits from having a strong dairy industry in the central valley.

The Center For Race, Poverty and the Environment claims that large 1,000 cow plus dairies amount to a concentration big enough to be a problem. Particulate matter concentrations are a major problem cited.

“We don’t have the proper research,” says farm advocate Manuel Cunha for the Nisei Farmers league who sits on a federal panel on the subject advising Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman.   The advisory group has been meeting since 1996 sitting as the US Dept. of Agriculture Air Quality Task Force.  “We have ongoing research right now between the University of Texas and UC Davis on cow emissions.”

“Race and Poverty is using bad science to try to shoot down the dairy permits,” say Cunha.  Cunha is relying on research being done by Dr. Calvin Parnell of Texas A&M who is studying confined animal air emissions after EPA published numbers used in some court cases that are in his opinion far too high.

Parnell, who testified for Boswell at the Kings County hearing on air quality issues, is a nationally recognized expert on the subject.  Parnell says state regulators are using old numbers for the amount of PM-10 coming off a dairy by using outdated numbers on cow feedlot operations which generate far more dust and particles than dairies.  Yet regulators who have no other numbers to plug into permits use the outdated number of 70 lbs of PM-10 per 1000 head per day vs Parnell’s number of more like 4 lbs of PM-10 per 1,000 cows a day.

In other words, he believes regulators are off by a factor of nearly 20 overstating how much pollutants dairies emit.  “The result is that regulators are putting lots of cost on dairies - like sprinkler systems to knock down dust - when they don’t need to.  The Center is able to argue that the emission fumes from dairies give off 500 tons of PM-10 when it is more like 22 tons - a huge difference.   “Unless this is corrected, you are looking at driving the California dairy industry out of the state,” he worries.

Dairy supporters say the estimate of how much pollution can come off a dairy are based on other factors like the amount of wind experienced.  They believe regulators have taken the number based on a high wind velocity average that would tend to show dairies pollute more than they do.

Parnell is working with UC Davis on a memo of understanding to use each others research on air emissions in agriculture.  Parnell sits on the task force advising Ag Secretary Glickman on those issues.

That’s why Cunha and others on the Air Quality Task Force wrote 130 pages to Glickman in recent weeks laying out their problems.  “We want the research and policies to be based on good science,” says Cunha.

“I’ve actually seen EPA documents that suggest cows carry a harness on their hind quarters that catch the manure - can you imagine what that would do the dairy business?  The bottom line is people need to be realistic.” Cunha’s solution - continue with the research now underway - come up with technology that is affordable to minimize the problem - don’t expect dairymen to invest in systems in a matter of months but offer incentives to dairymen to invest in new technologies that can make the air cleaner.

Tulare County - Dr. Tom Mitts, a vocal opponent of lining the Tulare Irrigation District canal that runs adjacent to his 140-acre spread east of Visalia, has won a round in court that may prompt the irrigation district to the bargaining table.

Opponents of the plan to concrete line about 10 miles of the now earthen canal are working on both the legal front to oppose the project and sitting across the table trying to come up with a compromise with the irrigation district.  (See other story)

Mitts attorney, Don Mooney who also represents the POWER group of property owners, says that after Mitts took on and won the TID’s original EIR on the lining project the irrigation district sued Mitts for taking out water from the canal.

Mooney defended Mitts action as allowed by an 1892 deed on the property that lets the adjacent user  use water on the property to be taken from the canal.  TID attorneys had argues that the right in the deed was now obsolete since Mitts had not used the right.

July 27th Superior Court Judge Paul Vortmann agreed with Mitts that the right to take water wasn’t terminated, says Mooney, although TID will still argue in a full trial that the amount should be limited to the historical amount the property has taken over the years - very little.  Mitts claims the right to take about 500 acre feet annually.

Mooney believes other property owners who have given an easement to TID also have rights to take water out - a fact disputed by TID.

The issue is critical because instead of saving water by lining the canal TID has stirred up a hornets nest of adjacent property owners who may seek to withdraw water, which is maybe their right.  That gives them some new bargaining power, some believe.
Despite losing on a number of points in the pre-trial hearing, TID’s general manager Gerald Hill has his own spin on the results noting that the court said Mitts had not established a prescriptive right to the water.

Still Judge Vortmann approved nine motions in Mitts favor and only four in TID’s favor in the suit/counter suit.

But public agency believes they do have the right to line the canal - a matter the court will hear when they can get an open courtroom.  The mold controversy has meant cases, including this one, face delays.  Hill believes it could be as long as 2 to 4 months before this key issues can be heard.

But property owner Mitts himself says the pre-trial rulings by Judge Vortmann “shows that the lining of the canal is not unpopular, but now it’s clear that it is illegal.”

Also in September, the court will hear the matter of whether the canal is really an historical creek - a natural waterway as is being argued by civil engineer Dick Schafer employed by Mooney.  Another expert is working on an analysis of the water loss when the seepage of the canal can no longer take place.  The canal receives Kaweah water along with federal canal water brought in on the Friant Kern Canal.

Besides this suit and a counter suit by Mitts, the POWER group with Mooney’s help has filed an appeal to the CEQA-EIR issue that will be heard some months down the road.  But Mooney points out they are seeking an injunction against TID canal lining project because if they wait six to nine months “213 mature oaks will be gone,” he says.  “It would be kind of a hollow victory.”  The court decision on an injunction could come in the next few weeks, he says.

TID wants to begin lining the canal in September but have the daunting task of beginning condemnation procedures on property along the canal because in some cases they don’t have enough right of way to complete the project.  Property owners are likely to challenge the lining based on the idea that the lining will harm their property.

Visalia - The sale of the Visalia Holiday Inn is scheduled to be completed by the end of August, says the hotel manager, Al Hunter.  Hunter said he could not reveal the name of the buyer but that they plan “to put $4 to 5 million into the property very shortly.”  He says the management company he works for, Outrigger, would no longer run day-to-day operations at the 257-room hotel.  It would remain a Holiday Inn, he says.  The buyer is reportedly required by Holiday Inn to upgrade the property to keep the franchise.

Tulare - Office Depot has filed plans for a new 20,000 sq. ft. store in Tulare just east of WalMart.  The project being proposed by a developer was brought to the city site plan review committee in late July.  Property owner Fred Lagomarsino says the developer has been working on the project for some time and expects the project could break ground within a month if finalized.  “It will be a nice addition for Tulare,” says Lagomarsino.  Office Depot is the number one office discount store with almost 1000 store locations nationwide and has an outlet in Visalia.

Besides the new store to the east of WalMart, Lagomarsino says he is working with another developer on other portions of the some 30 acres remaining to be developed there.

A rival developer is working on the corner across the street, reportedly with Ralphs.

Tulare - Fresno-based Harris Construction will build the proposed Tulare cheese and whey plants.  The plant could finally break ground in about a month, say reliable sources.  Land O’Lakes has reportedly secured financing for the big project that has been years in the making.

Already Harris has work going on the site putting in a pond basin and preparing the site for construction.  Land O’Lakes is still awaiting legislation that could come next month that gives the big co-op the same tax breaks a private company might get for making a $140 million investment.

The company is also completing negotiations with the city of Tulare on help from the development agency over the infrastructure costs, says Kevin Northcraft, city manager.  “We expect there will be an announcement soon,” he says.