Kaweah Delta Leans Toward Downtown

Visalia - For the past few months a facilities task force has been meeting regularly with consultants, The Innova Group, looking at two options to expand the bed capacity at Kaweah Delta Health Care District over the next few decades. The options include a "rejuvenation of the downtown campus" and a "fresh dirt" option that could mean the hospital locates a new campus.

Now the task force, that includes the entire board, has come to some direction, at least a preference "if the logistics work", says Dr. Richard Havard, chief of medical staff for the hospital. "The Board is leaning toward staying downtown."

They want to run the plans by the medical staff, says Gary Herbst who chairs the task force. "Sometime after that the board will make a final determination," says Herbst.

Havard says proposals by the Innova Group show a possible staging of an expansion in downtown. "But it won't happen unless there is strong cooperation from the city," says Havard. He says he will see "what bias" the other physicians have over the idea. "My own bias is to stay downtown if we possibly can." He says staging expansion of the hospital downtown will require extensive planning and that the city's biggest contribution could come toward some sort of cost sharing on parking.

The Innova Group's downtown plan is believed to call for multi story buildings as high as 8 stories in the future as the hospital builds a more urban campus, moving north and west of its present site. "We realize there are lots of community benefits to staying downtown, too," says Dr. Havard who cautions that opinions of the matter "are closely divided" and that both alternatives are feasible.

The city of Visalia has been lobbying the district to stay downtown and has sought a $6 million federal grant to build a new parking garage that would serve the hospital along with Downtown.

Recently the city made it clear to the district they could not sell acreage the city owns at Akers and 198 prompting the hospital to draw up plans for new medical service on land they own at their Cypress campus including a new regional cancer center.

Because they were turned down on that idea, the hospital is now in less of a hurry to make up their mind on the long range question, say Kaweah officials. The one major expansion discussed in recent months is an expansion of the popular heart care program downtown that perhaps with a final decision on board direction can move into the planning stages.

Key to KDDH plans to upgrade seismically is the idea that most current facilities can be used for decades. Still, the growth of the district will mean they will probably need double the beds they have today.

Dr. Leland Beggs says he is concerned about expansion in the downtown when construction could get in the way of providing medical care. "I'm worried about all the hassle and disruption from remodeling that will go on adjacent an active care area." he says.

On the other hand physicians are reportedly concerned that erecting a new campus could mean they are bouncing back and forth between an even larger number of campuses to give treatment - an argument for not scattering care anymore than it is now. Already the district has four "campuses" counting Exeter.

A decision to build multi story was made at the Cypress campus on Akers recently because of the need to conserve the land they own there. Projects that were going to single story when the district figured it could get more land from the city will now be multi story - a principle that fits with the city's "smart growth" policy.

City council members had feared the hospital would lean the other way suggesting "it would be all over for downtown Visalia" if the hospital either moved or failed to invest in this as their main campus in the future.

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Visalia - Kaweah Delta District Hospital may be in the throes of planning long term for more beds for its growing population, but Dr. Leland Beggs who heads up the hospital's intensive care unit says a more critical shortage exists right now - not enough nurses.

"We have 24 critical care beds but only 14 nurses to staff them," says Dr. Beggs who says the problem is happening all over. At Kaweah he says "the patients are stacking up in our emergency room" and the decision on who to treat next "is made in a crisis atmosphere." "We really need 10 more critical care beds right now," but don't have the staff including other medical professionals.

Dr. Beggs hails the COS nursing program that is now graduation some 30 new nurses a year and wonders "where else can you get $70,000 a year for going to a two year college." He says recently increases in offering for pay has helped bring more nurses into the marketplace, but knows that the long hours - often in the middle of the night - make it harder to get the help.

Beggs says the state's mandating nurse to patient ratios "doesn't give doctors the flexibility they need" to make medical decisions. He says the high level of indigents here and low level of reimbursement by Medical remains a problem as the hospital tries to budget for its staff needs. The new KDDH budget saw a 15.5% increase in the average hourly wage.

Dr. Beggs is concerned that this month's closing of Alta Hospital will send more patients to the crowded ER and hospital from the Dinuba area. Visalia ER has been impacted by the closure of the Exeter and Lindsay ERs in recent years.

"We thought the nursing shortage would hit about 10 years from now when Baby Boomers were retiring" but it came earlier. Boosting activity at the hospital is the chock full OB rooms pushed to the limit by a Latino led baby boom in the Central Valley, he says. "We're a giant melting pot."

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Manure That Doesn't Stink?

"Resource productivity on the farm - the first principle of natural capitalism, and the easiest to apply - comes from many small simple applications of farmer's native inventiveness." Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkins.

Tulare County - Managing dairy cow manure has turned out to be the big issue in the Central Valley with fears that an expansion in the industry here will lead to more pollution of our ground water and the air and a stink that wafts in the wind around many urban areas that takes some real getting used to.

Critics argue that the growth of the dairy herds may be a factor in global warming because of all the methane released in the process. Some have called the pollution a "witches brew of toxins" that being released by so-called "factory farms" urging they be stopped in their tracks.

Today, hundreds of new dairy projects - all family farmers by the way - are in regulatory limbo because this issue hasn't been satisfactorily resolved. The latest impact could be upcoming regulation of farmers by the Air District.

Tulare County, for example, must address the "cumulative impact" on the valley air of the dairy industry as part of a settlement agreement with Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) - the group that has legally stalled projects throughout the valley over this waste management issue and the impacts it could have on our environment. The logic is as you add more cows to the valley, the manure problem and its impact on land, water, air and our noses will only get worse. But maybe that isn't necessarily true.

"The idea that we have a lot more cows that we used to is just wrong," says dairyman Devin Nunes now a USDA official under the Bush administration. "We have 10% the number of cows we had back in 1900" but they were tied up at every house back then instead of concentrated in lots. Still Nunes is aware that concentrating dairy cows makes managing the large volume of manure over a small area a more complicated task.

That's where Kingsburg dairyman Richard Dias caught the eyes of USDA officials in the past year. Dais who milks 860 cows said he "had all the problems most dairymen have" with the standard approach of dumping manure in lagoons, the lagoons filling with solids that are full of nutrients that slowly decompose creating the distinct foul odor we are all familiar with, then spreading the wet matter on his farm sometimes over applying and hurting his crop, worrying about the high nitrate levels in ground water and wishing the dairy didn't have all the off-site impacts like smells that drift over to a nearby school and the big county park. In a few words Dias says "I wanted to make my dairy a better place."

Dias redesigned the separator he was using to remove some of the solids from the liquid waste. Older dairies were ineffective with single screen separators removing as little as 15% of the solids in a 1997 UC Davis study. "My contribution was simple asking if a single separator can take part of the solids out, why not have a second separator with a finer screen."

Dias had noticed that machines like his tractor used two filters to get the fuel clean and two filters for the oil. The idea sunk in two might be better than one. Dias says his fundamental insight was that instead of dealing with a build-up of solids after they are in the lagoon he needed to separate them out while they were still - well - fresh. Green waste they call it.

USDA officials touring his farm to look at how his lagoon worked back in January noticed Richard's dual separators and asked if they could test the impact of the unique system.

As the cows feed, their manure is flushed down to a central basin where it is pumped through the first separator that removes the large solids. The resulting liquid is sent over a second finer meshed screen. The screens are filtered with fine water sprinklers that "seem to suction off the solids," says Devin Nunes who is in enthused about the approach.

"For a dairyman visiting this place that doesn't smell it's an eye opener," he says.

The dual separator approach takes 97.5% of the solids out of the waste water returning essentially pure water to the lagoon, a USDA study about to be published says. Dr. Byron Duffy, a USDA scientist, carried out the study this spring. Now USDA has funded a $500,000 study to see if the system also cuts air impacts as one might expect. This "second phase" will be followed by a third phase that will do other measurements of materials in water to see if all is pure as it seems.

Dias says the secret is to handle the recent deposits "green waste" flushed with water soon after it is deposited removing the solids quickly. Collecting the solids in the separator leaves dry matter high in nutrients " that tests higher in value than poultry manure" on of the best fertilizers around.

For some reason the nutrients stick with the solids and don't go into the lagoon researchers have confirmed.

In lagoons the nutrients don't go into the air to become methane pollution problem. After being removed by the dual separators "there is a huge upside potential" for this product agrees Nunes and Dias. Besides compost or fertilizer, the product could be hauled away to waste to energy generator to make electricity, says Dias.

On another savings of the closed-loop system - Dias doesn't need as much lagoon space saving the cost of construction, pumping and maintenance as well.

Instead of buying nitrogen to fertilize his field Dias has a ready source, saving up to $100 per acre. Because he now washes his pens less he washes his cows less as well and they spend more time eating, producing more milk.

Tests done at the Dias ranch over multiple days found some 97.5% of solids were removed with the process. At a second dairy in Hanford the results were somewhat less - 87% of solids removed. In tests on the lagoon water after being flushed through the separators, nitrogen in the lagoon was close to being the same level as drinking water from a nearby well.

"I'm excited that we will have scientific data to show the system really works", says Dias who has applied for a patent on the system. Already two companies including Structures Plus in Tulare are selling the design and today some six dairies are using the system or installing it right now.

"I think dairymen will have the choice in the future to use this system or the methane digesters that produce energy from the lagoons to handle the problem - maybe some combination," says Tony Oliveira a Kings County dairyman. Nunes says the Dias system will be attractive to dairymen since it can be installed for about $150,000 compared to 10 times that number for some methane digesters who recover their expense by making electricity, Unlike the methane digester "this is simple technology" says Nunes that can used on an average 1000 cow dairy with a flush system.

Nunes believes if the air tests show low methane + ammonia emissions from this new system, the issue of air impacts will be met head on. Nunes argues the expansion of the dairy industry here may be one way valley farmers can keep farming here since the dairy cows need local feed - alfalfa hay, and corn silage that can be grown locally competing profitably with imported feed. With record low commodity prices for cotton and other commodities, "it's tough for westside farmers right now," says Nunes whose Alpaugh area ranch "just lost two wells" because of the declining water table.

If the dairy industry can successfully make the argument it can generate dollars on the farm - providing a local market for feed and in town at the processing plants and suppliers along with the bourgeoning whey and cheese industry here without the environmental degradation of our air and water - then just about everybody is going to wear a milk mustache. Even CRPE?

Farmers laughed at an apparently serious idea a few years ago that cows in the future would have to wear little diapers to catch the poop before it can do environmental damage. Now in a more practical way, Dias is showing that a waste problem can be turned into a profitable dry product that may help rejuvenate valley soils, power up our farms and allow dairymen to go back to the milk barn and get out of the courtroom.

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Inspector General Says They Are Under Criminal Investigation

Lindsay - Food company president Mort Console got his good news/bad news quotient in the past few days.

On Friday, August 10th, Console heard the company had won the right to appeal a negative USDA decision to deny the company a new guaranteed loan. The company wants to reopen a frozen foods plant in Lindsay that has sat idle for the past two years.

The company has 30 days to file the appeal and the agency has 45 days to set a hearing on the matter. Console got a $7.9 million guaranteed loan in 1999 but defaulted on it. Although they were approved for $10 million the rural development loan guarantee was reduced leaving the company not fully capitalized, Console claims.

Console and supporters who have mobilized here recently, say that USDA's rigid oversite of the last loan forced the default. Console had applied for a new loan but was turned down by USDA Rural Development Program who also ruled Console could not appeal that decision. But now they can appeal it as a result of an independent appeals decision. It doesn't mean however that the company has been funded "but it's a big first step" says supporter Rick Shannon.

The bad news for the company this week discovered only Wed. August 15th is that Console's former loan proceeds "is the subject of a criminal investigation" that is "not yet complete" by the USDA office of inspector general, says David Dickson, special agent in charge of the Western Region. Dickson says the investigation "began recently" and the matter could be referred to the Department of Justice. Dickson says he could not go into any details but that the investigation concerned Console's old USDA guaranteed loan. Dickson says the parties may not be aware of the investigation.

"That's ridiculous," says Console who believes it should be the other way around. "It's the decision makers at the USDA that should be investigated." Console says the timing of the announcement by a sister agency - the office of the inspector general - "Just when we got news we won our appeal" is suspicious.

Console says he had tried to get USDA to re-look at the process for the past year - to reopen the case and bring out what happened "not to try to hide from it." Console says "all disbursements were handled through the lender," Hibernia Bank, who "monitored every penny" of the loan guarantee. He wondered "are they investigating the bank?"

"This is pretty strange in that we are the ones who have been asking for the investigation for the past two years," says Console. He says the fact is the principals haven't been told about any investigation until informed this week by the Valley Voice.

The US Inspector General is Roger Viadero who has been on the job for 6 and ½ years. The agency reports directly to the US Congress.

In recent months Console along with Rick Shannon and truck company owner Jim Shopshire have sought community support for the new application that would reopen the shuttered plant that has been closed since 1999. The plant remains fully equipped to process frozen vegetables. Console had sought a new application with the Clinton administration and last January appeared close to getting it approved based on the fact that he had a new lender in place to fund it. The promise in the community of Lindsay is that the plant could reopen and provide at least 500 jobs or more those attending a series of meetings were told.

Rick Shannon - a former Shopshire trucking employee who says he isn't being paid for his work - says the organizing effort "has resulted in at least 10,000 signatures" to appeal to the politicians to pressure USDA into granting a new financing plan. Volunteers have been going door to door collecting signatures for support.

Shopshire is owed $400,000 to 500,000 by Console according to Rick Shannon. But Shannon says "Jim would be doing this anyway for the good of the community." Shopshire says he has made no secret out of the fact that he is a creditor "but I'm also a home town boy." He says of course he is interested in the jobs and work this could bring to the community that would be good for the town and his firm.

With the County and the city of Lindsay suffering under double digit unemployment, the issue of whether to allow a new guaranteed loan to go to this operator is a tough one. Indeed the new USDA California director Devin Nunes has recused himself from this issue saying he is too close to the players. Some say privately that Console operated the plant for only 60 days and didn't demonstrate he could turn a profit. But Console brings out a letter from his former lender pleading with USDA to be more flexible on use of the money they had guaranteed. Console was sued by farmers when they weren't paid for their product forcing the company to sell inventory at cents on the dollar to pay them off. Complicating the picture is a pending lawsuit between Console and his former lender Hibernia over what went wrong. Console has proposed that if a new loan guarantee is approved however, that lawsuit will go away and at least some of the creditors will get paid.

Console says he hopes to have the appeal hearing this fall, likely in California. "We hope to have subpoena power" to try to "get at the truth," says Console.

The group is lobbying Congressman Bill Thomas to play a stronger role in convincing USDA to take a fresh look at the application. Console says the USDA loan officer Chuck Clendenen was biased against him and says he is asking for a new loan officer to look at the loan application. In fact he says Clendenen approved "every check" on the old loan - one more reason he can't understand any "criminal investigation."

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Visalia - Visalia Rotarian Phil Hornburg is working with at least six other south valley Rotary groups - and that number is growing - to improve Highway 41, the popular single lane highway that connects the Central Valley with the Coast. The effort comes after the death in a car accident of Rotarian Rita Hill on 41 west of Stratford whose car overturned when another car made an unsafe passing maneuver.

"The road had no shoulder or passing lanes," says Hornburg as does much of this stretch through Kings County from 198 to Highway 5. Hornburg says the death of a Kingsburg Rotarian also weigh heavy as do strong perception in the public eye the road is a "blood alley."

Hornburg says while CalTrans has plans to improve the road with passing lanes and 4 lanes there, Kings County doesn't have their share to make improvements and the Rotarians want to galvanize government to help make the improvements sooner rather than later.

He says focusing on the bad stretch of road could help and the Rotarians plan to organize a letter writing campaign and political push to get new players like the federal government who is growing NAS Lemoore. Rotarians in Kern, Kings, Fresno and Tulare counties are being asked to join together and the club's district governor has agreed to make the project a priority.

The group, Rotarians Interested in Safety for All (RISA) is modeled after VISA - Visalians Interested in Safety For All - the grass roots group started by Visalia Rotarians that resulted in the construction of the new Juvenile Hall in Tulare County after the tragic killing of Kelly Scott.

Hornburg says the thing that CalTrans could do including designate the road for Lights On because of the accident history there on the single land highway that goes through the old lakebed land of the westside with miles of narrow road with irrigation ditches and no room for passing. Traffic engineer Charlie Clouse is working on the committee as well.

If money can't be found, Hornburg says the group may look at a sales tax. Hornburg says when people get behind an issue they can make things happen and points to improvements made to Highway 46 from Chalome to Highway 101 through San Luis Obispo County that now includes miles of divided highway today - work carried out only in the past few years.

State Senator Jack O'Connell wrote Hornburg recently that the group should contact local legislators to increase funding for Highway 41 and that he had been successful in recent years in getting funding for 41/46 within his jurisdiction in San Luis Obispo County.

State figures show although the highway appears to be a dangerous stretch with horrific accidents, its actual accident rate is lower than other state highways with similar profiles. "We are looking at congestion problems and lack of shoulders," says Charlie Clouse. Clouse was able to get CalTrans plans to do improvement along the highway that do call for funding of widened shoulders over nearly a 10 mile stretch to be completed in 2006. "We're trying to take a multi regional approach," says Clouse in inviting Rotarians from all over the area. "You can make the argument that improving 41 - the main artery to the Coast and to the Valley - will have major economic benefits to the region," says Clouse with the movement of goods and truck traffic. Currently trucks and cars must make a slow crawl to and fro because there is not better route.

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Tulare County - Two groups looking to bring more jobs to the rural parts of the south valley are close to merging what would otherwise be competing applications for a Department of Agriculture Rural Empowerment Zone designation that will be announced January 1.

Only two regions nationwide will be selected and a local zone has a very good chance of being picked, say sources. "We think we have a winning application," says Gary Shultz the general manager of the Tulare AgriCenter and one of the members of a non profit group putting together the Southern San Joaquin Valley Empowerment Zone application. The proposed zone covers some 800 miles from north of Tipton nearly to Bakersfield along both sides of Highway 99.

Confident that merging the Southern San Joaquin Valley application with their own Champion Communities application made up of the Tulare County towns of Cutler-Orosi, Goshen, Tipton, Pixley, Woodville and Earlimart CSET director Carolyn Rose believes a united application "could be even stronger" if some sort of a compromise is worked out. The towns won Champion Community status some years ago allowing the towns to be eligible for other grants. But the Empowerment Zone status is a much bigger catch. "We're very close," to an agreement, she says.

Making a joint application more difficult are regulations that the zone's population must fall below 30,000. Rose says the compromise application would leave out Orosi, include Goshen and Cutler - two of the poorest towns in the County and otherwise include all the county towns that are in the other's application. "They would have to leave some towns out too," she says.

Although the city of Tulare is outside the zone application, the south part of the city would benefit in a big way from the zone designation because regulations allow some 2000 acres outside the zone to be included as "developable sites" eligible for funding as if they were in the zone. Of the 2000 acres in this category, 1500 of them are in south Tulare including the Farm Show site and lands on the other side of 99 owned by the Tulare Industrial Site Foundation and Manuel Faria. Besides that, the Tulare areas (see map) include land new COS campus that will help to bring in infrastructure to the site. An area around the UC Veterinary Center is also included for the same reason. Shultz pointed out that Tulare is running out of plant capacity at the wastewater treatment facility and putting another sewer line through town will help keep open capacity. "We can't attract new jobs without sewer capacity."

Carolyn Rose says a merged application could still include those acres and that this is not a point of contention "because development of the Farm Show area would benefit the whole county." The AgriCenter is working on a master plan to attract farm related agencies, companies and development may well mean lots of jobs for the region if only even half the plans pan out.

Looking to qualify due to the strict guidelines, both applications work to map their proposed district to include the least population and the most poverty - something that is easy to do in Tulare County. Both proposed districts have about 33% poverty and an average unemployment rate over some 20% or more.

With the designation come a promise of $2 million a year for the next 10 years, tax incentives for businesses who set up in the zone or developable area and other funds including training and education funds both applications seek to maximize.

In order to merge the district, Rose says they would leave Orosi out of the new joint application while Cutler would remain as would Goshen.

Sitting on the steering committee for the south valley application are Shultz, farmer Lori Cardoza, Dr. Kim Badrkhan president of COS, Richard Allen local industrial developer with a major industrial park in Shafter and Shafter city manager John Guinn. The including of Shafter as a "developable site" outside the zone may be critical for the South Valley zone making any merged zone stretch to meet guidelines. It can be as large as 1000 sq. miles.

Still, the attraction of merged application is clear since the Board of Supervisors as soon as early next month, must recommend to the state what applications to support.

California USDA Rural Development director Devin Nunes doesn't want to pick sides and says "I must support all California applications." But he notes this part of the Valley is the poorest in the country next to rural parts of Mississippi and Louisiana. Nunes, an Alpaugh farmer and COS trustee, alerted the group that applications for this year's round were pending.

Whether the merged application will happen will be known in the next few days considering the short time lines.

In Fresno they are looking to catch an urban empowerment zone in the poorer part of the city around China Town.

Economic Development experts say designating a zone "puts you on the map" for site selectors for companies who are relocating or expanding and often gravitate to the place with the most incentives. Those incentives include job credits for hiring people and tax savings on plant and equipment.

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