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Tuesday, says Craft, others were trapped in an olive tree, a grapefruit tree and orange tree in someone’s front year.  The range of host plants for the pest that can carry Pierce’s disease - a killer of grape vineyards - is large.

Tulare County agricultural officials discovered an adult male and a female glassy-winged sharpshooter on Tuesday, May 16.  The insects’ identity was confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture early Wednesday morning.

“The two sharpshooters were discovered in a trap placed in an apricot tree growing in a residential area of Northern Porterville,” said  Craft.  “This represents the first time the pest has been found in Tulare County.”

The half inch long glassy-winged sharpshooter was first found in California approximately  a decade ago.  It has since led to a Pierce’s Disease epidemic in the Temecula area of Southern California that threatens the survival of the viticulture industry.

A third sharpshooter was also trapped Tuesday in an olive tree approximately one-half mile South of the earlier insect find.

This insect, in combination with the Pierce’s disease the sharpshooter spreads, poses a very serious threat to our grape industry.”

Pierce’s Disease is a bacterial infection that can destroy grape vines.  Tulare County’s 1999 grape crop was valued at $443 million, which represents around 15% of the State’s total grape production.  California’s grape crop is valued in excess of $2.8 billion.

Tulare County officials are currently deploying additional traps in the South County area to determine the extent of the insect infestation.  Staff Biologist Dennis Haines, has already surveyed the area adjacent to the first insect find and has discovered additional signs of the glassy-winged sharpshooter’s presence.

Staff biologist Dan Bingham says the County will hire an estimated 20 people in coming days that will survey the entire County for the pest to determine how big an infestation it is.  That includes urban areas like Porterville where the pest was discovered this week.

Bingham surmises that the find of an orange tree infestation that includes all life cycles of the pest means that the sharpshooter likely overwintered in Porterville from last fall.  He says a possible source for the pest’s importation could have been new plantings of landscaping foliage.  There are new subdivisions near the finds.

“This is a reproducing population,” says Bingham and once the extent is identified the County will have the job of convincing Porterville residents that they should be wiped out.  That may mean spraying with pesticides like Dursban to kill the sharpshooter.  The material is registered for home use.  Homeowners would need to give permission for the spraying.  Spraying for pests in an urban area isn’t popular with some folks as seen by the controversy in Porterville a few years ago over spraying of walnut trees in town.

Bingham says the County is adding more traps and checking them this week to see if other sharpshooters are in the area.  Ag inspectors have targeted nursery stock from southern California where the infestation is widespread, to monitor the movement of the pest.  “They can fly up to a mile,” says Craft.  The pest is already established in Temecula in San Diego County where it is feared it may wipe out the wine growing region in the next few years.

The pest is also established in Kern County near Arvin - the farthest northern migration until this week’s Tulare County find.

Craft asks that anybody who discovers an insect or egg mass they believe is a glassy-winged sharpshooter please call his office at (559) 733-6391.

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Tulare County - The CalFed “Record of Decision” is expected to include some additional surface water storage plans including a doubling of capacity on Millerton Lake - source of the Friant Kern Canal.  That’s according to Friant Water Users general manager Dick Moss who was assured at private meetings with CalFed officials last weekend that the additional storage would be included in the long awaited action plan set to be announced in the next 30 days.  “We believe the plan will include a 144 ft raising of Friant Dam,” says Moss who attended a statewide water convention that included top state and federal water officials.  Moss says many at the ACWA (Association of California Water Agencies) meeting in Monterey were expecting “an early roll out of the CalFed decision, but Moss said officials told him the state and federal agencies “are still negotiating.”

Moss says “we got a glimpse of some of the structural changes being proposed but some regulatory issues remain to be resolved.”  Of particular concern to Friant water users who help irrigate about a million acres of eastside farmland in the valley is during the time it takes to build more storage will farmers here lose even more water to the environment?  Moss says the CalFed decision will likely propose a “target environmental account” - a sum of water needed for sustenance and restoration of wildlife.  Environmentalists seek the restoring of “dead rivers” like portions of the San Joaquin near Fresno that has been drained to feed farms since the Central Valley project was built.

Work to come up with a statewide compromise over the Bay-Delta dates from at least 1994 involving stakeholders and both federal and state agencies to come up with permanent long term solutions to keep the Delta and the Bay healthy and improve water supply and quality south of the Delta.

Farmers hope the additional water storage will help “all of us to get better together” in California where environmental, urban and wildlife all seek additional supply of good water.  Moss says a chief ally in the plan to add more storage was Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit himself, who pushed for more storage on the San Joaquin River even though there is a movement to tear down dams nationwide.

The logic of more storage on the upper San Joaquin is to provide additional water supply for both San Joaquin River restoration, more water for the small farmers of the eastside of the Valley and possible supplies good quality water for Los Angeles and other urban interests.  Even as Babbit is apparently supporting additional water storage at Millerton, he has proposed this year a plan to “restore Yosemite Valley including ripping out Cascade Dam on the Merced.

Moss says Friant Water Users and Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles are working toward an agreement, a “statement of principles” to be completed by the end of June that will guide talks on possible cooperative efforts to pay for additional storage on Millerton.  LA is seeking good quality water as opposed to water they get through the Delta now through the California Aqueduct - high in salt and impurities.  MWD spokesman Tim Quinn says the two water agencies “want to come up with guiding principles that would work for fish, for the Friant area economy and better quality water for Metropolitan.”  Moss says a fundamental principle would be that there would be no degradation the Friant water farmers use now.

Friant Kern Canal water supplies roughly two-thirds of the overall water supply to Tulare County every year.

The timing of such an agreement could coincide with an announcement that Millerton might be enlarged to 1.1 million acre feet - a target amount announced as a possibility about a year ago.  Moss says his guess is that the cost of such an enlargement might be $.75 billion dollars and take a decade to complete.

The huge expenditure comes at a favorable time for government who on both a federal and state level find themselves with a huge surplus that in California alone amounts to $13 billion this coming fiscal year or more due to the booming economy and state collection of taxes on capital gains from the stock market.

Moss believes besides the additional storage on Millerton, the Record of Decision, is likely to include additional storage at Los Vaquerso Reservoir in Contra Costa County raising Shasta Dam and a new dam near Sacramento at Sites Reservoir.

California farm officials have been united in pressing the issue of more storage (including a big vociferous  meeting in Visalia last year) as the state/federal agencies wrestle with solutions to improve water in the Delta.  Environmental interests want the agency to stress conservation and land retirement in the Valley before adding more water storage.  Adding ground water storage appears to be less controversial with environmentalists but farmers worry that such plans don’t offer flood control benefits and have limited storage capabilities.

Ground water storage near the San Joaquin River is a controversial issue when a water trading company, Azurix, announced it wanted to purchase land to store water prompting fear of farmers who believe they may drain water from current watersheds.

Moss says additional storage on the upper San Joaquin would be paid for by the users that benefit that include federal efforts on behalf of the fish and wildlife, farmers and urban interests.  If LA could get more water south of the Delta - out of Friant for example - it would mean it would not export as much water south out of the Delta thereby benefitting the Delta.

Friant Water User agencies already pay a higher price for their water since the 1992 CVP Reform Act and pay millions into a restoration fund for ecosystems up and down the state.  But they fear a lack of a reliable source of water the for future will be devastating for an already hard pressed local economy.  No firm water supply will translate into no firm financing.  When the water becomes too dear they won’t use it to nurse on the trees and vines, but simply sell it like a commodity for more suburbs in Los Angeles.

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Tulare County - The Center On Race, Poverty and the Environment has filed suit against the new Tulare County Dairy Confinement Plan Program EIR saying it “falls far short of CEQA compliance” according to attorney for the environmental group, Caroline Farrell.  The suit filed May 10th comes just a little less than a month after the Board of Supervisors approved the EIR that will allow some 56 stalled dairy projects - representing at least 150,000 cows - to move forward on their expansion permits or in many cases, new permits.

The lawsuit could in turn stall the projects further after waiting, in some cases, more than a year.  The suit seeks an injunction against the court for issuing any Special Use permits for dairies.

The EIR was prompted by a lawsuit by the state attorney general early last year against specific plans proposed by dairy operators.  The purpose there is to set standards that all new projects can follow rather than be forced to carry out industrial environmental impact reports.  The suit says the existing herds over more than 312,000 cows already “have a host of environmental impacts on public health and the environment of Tulare County.”

Farrell says the EIR falls short on a number of levels.  “It failed to look at cumulative water impacts and failed to properly mitigate impacts on air quality and mosquito control,” she says.  Farrell says the Delano-based group that also filed a lawsuit May 2nd against the Boswell dairy approval, believes that like in Kings County, Tulare County could do more in these three areas.  “For example, in air quality issue the Tulare County plan could require a lagoon cover, anaerobic or aerobic digesters to reduce emissions or require flaring to reduce ammonia emissions.”  Regarding cumulative water impacts, Tulare County could have imposed a tougher standard on lagoon lining content that would reduce groundwater seepage, she believes.  Regarding mosquitos, Farrell believes the plan could have called for a mosquito control plan.

The suit alleges that the Tulare Diary Plan admits that the emission of air pollutants associated with dairies are significant even with mitigation in air basins which already seriously violates health - protective ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act.

Regarding the groundwater problem, the suit points to taxpayer funded clean up bills of $8.8 million in the impacted Chino Valley.  Now those dairymen are coming to Tulare County, says the suit.  The suit recounts the history of Tulare County stepped up regulation of its number one industry including concerns voiced by the Grand Jury over the issue in 1998.

Dairy supporters say the wide open spaces of Tulare County with new density rules in place and the high level of cleanness in state-of-the-art dairy design mean the environmentalists have little to worry about.  However, the Boswell project may have set a high standard some believe than the Tulare EIR mandates if for example, the 4 big dairies to be sold by Boswell, will incorporate anaerobic digesters to reduce air emissions.  But costs for these projects can make dairying here uneconomical some worry.

Regarding cumulative impacts on ground water the EIR failed to consider that ground water contamination could come from both lagoons or farm manure spreading and from dairy corrals.
CRPE alleges the County failed “to require all feasible migration measures to avoid adverse air quality impacts, water contaminations and mosquito control.”

Planners with the County say they are constrained from talking about the issue since it is in litigation although they defend what they say was a through EIR.  “I’d hope we would have crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s,” says supervisor Steve Worthley.  But he says that a complaint “can always argue that you could have done more.”

The County EIR points out that air quality issues are largely regulated by the San Joaquin Valley Air Board but that dairies are exempt from permit regulations from that agency.

It will be up to a Tulare County judge to decide if the permit process should be stopped pending legal ruling.  Farrell says they will ask for an injunction to stop the permitting process still under way with the County.  “We’re processing applications even though they have filed suit,” says a planner.  It’s possible County judges could disqualify themselves since many know or may have an interest in dairying.  In the Kings County case now pending, the judge recently excused himself.

During the hearing process on the new dairy plan, CRPE reports objected to the measures but says in the suit their suggestions were ignored.

No word on just when either the Kings County or Tulare County suits will be heard.  This week the Board of Supervisors took up the issue in closed session.

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Corcoran - Yet another large cheese plant is being proposed for the Tulare Lake basin.  A start-up company, California Natural Cheese Corp, announced last week they would build a new cheese manufacturing facility on land owned by JG Boswell - the site where the big farming concern is selling 4 new dairy sites and is the subject of litigation by an environmental group.

The cheese plant is to be sited on 100 acres of pasture land next to one of the Boswell dairy sites, would boost employment in Kings County by adding 300 jobs, says CEO Baxter Gilton of Crowes’ Landing.  Boswell has donated the land to the company as an incentive to lure the company to the site.  Gilton says the company hopes to break ground as soon as July or August and be in operation by early 2002.

The announcement of the new project comes as an environmental group, the Center On Race, Poverty and the Environment, filed a new legal challenge to the Boswell plan after it carried out an extensive EIR and was approved to proceed on sales of the Lakebed land for dairies by the Kings County Board of Supervisors.  The announcement of the big cheese plant reinforces the notion that the dairies bring jobs to a part of California with the highest unemployment in the state.  However, the project has been in the planning process for three years, says Gilton, and some 6 months ago was the subject of a story in the Valley Voice quoting the company’s engineer.

Gilton says his background is as a cheese seller for the past 20 years.  Gilton says the company will start off with a milk volume of 6 million lbs. a day and ramp up to double that amount in 3 years.  The project would be a 400,000 sq. ft. facility located on Ave. 10 ½ near Nevada Ave. a few miles from Corcoran.  Gilton put the value of the project at $225 million.  Unlike its sister plants being planned in urban areas with sewer facilities, the plant will produce clean enough waste water to spread onto farm land, says Gilton.  “This will be state-of-the-art,” says the company CEO.
The products will include both natural cheese and processed cheese along with whey powder.
Gilton says the market for processed cheese is “huge” and plans to sell this type of cooked cheese to fast food chains and big food service companies.  “We expect to be the country’s largest manufacturer of processed cheese,” he says.  Despite the company’s name, California Natural Cheese Corp., the key product uses natural cheese like cheddar as an ingredient of processed cheese - like those familiar American slices we see on our hamburgers.  Gilton says they will make both natural and processed cheese but the focus will be on the later.

Regarding the location in the middle of the country, Gilton says it isn’t unusual for a dairy processing plant to be located in pastures, citing the Gallo Cheese facility.

The big project will be financed by CFG Financial - a subsidiary of Contractor’s Funding Group of Sacramento.  David Sherr with CFG says the firm is an “independent affiliate” of privately held Associated Leasing based in Florida.  Sherr says the project has been approved for funding on a preliminary basis and a letter of intent should be forthcoming in the next week.

Sherr says the lender is impressed with the project because “it appears to have low risk located in the heart of the milk supply, but with state-of-the-art equipment and design, partnering with a prestigious company like JG Boswell, and plans to run the operation so efficiently - 6 days a week on a 24 hour basis,” he says.  “We expect their sale of products to go world wide,” he notes.  The U.S. dairy industry has only recently expanded dairy exports from their usual emphasis on sales to the domestic market.  Sherr says the start-up cheese maker already has significant contracts to provide product.

The new Corcoran area plant would be the third large cheese maker to announce projects each over $140 million.  In Lemoore Leprino announced a new facility now under construction, in Tulare Land O’ Lakes is planning both a major cheese making and separate whey manufacturing plant likely to be formally announced within a few weeks.

Assembly member Sarah Reyes is carrying legislation that would give LOL - a co-op - the same tax breaks a private company would get on sales tax exemptions when they purchase property for the plant.  City manager Kevin Northcraft says word on the legislative rider may be available soon.
In yet another cheese plant possibility, an English company that has looked in the past year may be getting closer to electing a site for a smaller boutique cheese making plant.  The company is reportedly considering Visalia and Tulare.

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Visalia - There will be a test on this.  Visalia has nearly 9,000 acres developed within the city’s urban development boundary.  The boundary has slightly over 4,000 acres that remain undeveloped.  But building interests are arguing that it is time to expand the city’s boundary to allow the next ring of development and add more vacant acreage to the city to keep real estate prices in check.

This week at a city council meeting representatives of the building industry argued to the council that a staff plan to hold the line was not consistent with the city’s general plan.

To open the next development boundary the city must make the finding that certain thresholds have been met including a population (98,700) and time (10 years) threshold that indeed has been met since the 1990 plan was put in place.  So far no argument there.  There isn’t even much debate about the amount of acres available for development within the current boundary.  Instead the debate is over whether you follow the doctrine of new math or old math.

The council was put in a difficult position of having to do at least 8th grade math.  Allen Group engineer, Jim Robinson who represents a land owner who would allow the Allen Group to build a subdivision there, argues that the threshold of a 30% vacancy factor has clearly been met by simple arithmetic.  In a nut shell, the staff says 8,868 acres within the city’s urban development boundary have been developed as of January 1, 2000.  That leaves 4164 acres undeveloped.  What the building interests slide rule says is that ratio amounts to close to 30% vacancy factor as outlined in the city’s 2020 growth plan and thus the next ring of developable residential land should be allowed to be developed.

But the city staff is using a different calculator.  Their arithmetic argues that the threshold for development is 1157 acres short using the formula outlined and utilized in the 1990 2020 plan of multiplying the developable land by 130% as was used in the original 1990 plan.  The city staff formula means it would take another 3 to 5 years to reach the next ring of development despite the fact the growth rings were based on roughly a 10 year increment and trigger population thresholds of 98,500.  “The last 10 years were slow years,” says mayor Don Landers who says he has not made up his mind on how to vote on the issue over expanding our boundary.  “Things are moving a lot faster now.”  Indeed, acreage on the city’s northwest and along Caldwell are booming today with new subdivisions sprouting on land that only a few years ago had only gophers.

Still, city staff figures that in an average year only 200 to 300 acres are developed for new homes meaning that it would take up to 20 years to develop the remaining acreage left in the area of development allowed today.  “The vacant land available to the community can be measured in square miles,” says city planner Phyllis Coring.

Robinson says the math in the plan seems simple.  If you multiply the available 13,013 acres by 70 it shows that the city’s vacancy rate is near 30% - a threshold for moving to the next development boundary.

Former planning commissioner and civil engineer Mike Lane says all the time hew was on the planning commission he never assumed the 2020 general growth plan said anything different from a “30% vacancy factor” not an “additional 30% fudge factor.”  Lane says that leaving the boundary for infill land too tight restricts the residential land to only a few developers who already have land under contract even though the city assumes the land is vacant and available.  “It’s in the best interest of the community to promote competition “in fact the number of home builders - particularly the small independent builder has gone down to a handful in Visalia,” says Mike Knopf of Quad Knopf.
Indeed in the city industrial park the city already has the larger amount of dairy land available for development in the Valley, but is considering adding more to keep land prices competitive.
Still, opening the boundary now would mean not just 4000-plus acres of land is available, but additional 9000 acres.

Adding 9000 acres of additional residential land to the 4,000 acres available today would mean builders would have some 13,000 acres of land available for new subdivisions - some 30% larger than the developed land in the city of Visalia today.  In fact some realtors have argued too many new subdivisions in the community in the past decade has hurt the investment in the existing stock of homes - namely that resale prices have not appreciated in Visalia as they have over most of California because people can buy new homes here for less than in existing neighborhoods.  People who depend on their home as an investment in the future might appreciate some appreciation.

A critical factor for the city council is that it is current home owners who vote - not the next wave of newcomers to town.  Another factor - existing infrastructure for new subdivisions typically costs the city more than it brings back in revenue.  The “smart growth” advocates suggest infill growth “back to the core” and redoing rundown neighborhoods that are not figured in any “vacancy factor.”
Now it will be up to the city council to weigh the pluses and minuses considering the following:
Opening new development land puts pressure on city infrastructure and services to service that area.

The city has a vested interest to keep city land affordable and opening more appears to favor that notion.  On the other hand the city wants to see the value of existing homes and subdivisions up supporting the investment that has already been made by the city and its citizens in land and projects.
Opening new land will mean build out in areas that according to the general plan are in all quadrants of the community.  Robinson points out that his client - Sherman Land and Cattle Co. has a development boundary on Caldwell - a hot market - only one quarter mile in depth and “most of the new development that comes in the next ring will be in the city’s southeast quadrant.”  On the other hand the city wants to protect development in areas it already needs to add infrastructure in like in the city’s northwest where a new sewer system needs to be put in at considerable cost.  Opening land away from that area might mean slower utilization of this infrastructure.

“It’s a balancing act,” says Robinson.  Still, building interest folks like consultant Randy Zeeb, say opening new land will allow for “choice” now the city has reached 100,000.  “The time to move to the next urban development boundary is now,” says Zeeb to the council.  Besides the vacancy factor dispute, the builders argue that some of the land the city considers undeveloped is earmarked for schools and cemeteries and never will be developed into more housing. Then there are tracts of land within the boundary that the owner just won’t sell, says Robinson.

On the other hand Coring notes that keeping development boundaries tight helps save ag land and promotes concentric growth - two long time city policies.

The matter could go to the city’s planning commission and on to the council in the next few months.  To be developed - if the council agrees to open the boundary “prematurely” it could necessitate a new environmental impact report - says city staff but development interests don’t think it’s premature.

The city will have another debate soon on meeting the thresholds - but this will be over allowing regional retail uses beyond Packwood Creek - an issue that includes the vacancy factor as well.

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The above stories are the property of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit permission in writing from the publisher. 

May 17, 2000