Tentative Deal on Allensworth Dairy Site

Nitrates in Water Plague a Third of Small Water Systems
Surface Water Solution?

Tulare County - Visalia-based Self Help Enterprises (SHE) doesn't just build houses. They help small farmworker communities to improve their drinking water systems. The biggest problems—high nitrates found in small and medium size community water systems throughout Tulare County—the county with perhaps the greatest number of contaminated systems in the state.

Self Help Enterprises staffer Paul Boyer, also a Farmersville city council member, has struggled to help one small colony near Exeter for years with their high nitrate levels—Tooleville. SHE helped secure a USDA grant to dig a new well for the 77 home community with hopes to finally provide clean water—safe to drink for babies and pregnant women.

Nitrates are harmful to infants and pregnant women because they keep oxygen out of the blood. This can be fatal in infants and young children, and is known as “blue baby syndrome.”

In addition, there are suspected chronic problems with long term intake of high levels of nitrates.

In recent weeks the news was bad over tests in Tooleville of the new well found salty brackish water unfit for drinking—part of an ancient sea deposit found on the valley floor right against the foothills. It's the reason why many communities don't bother to dig expensive new drinking water wells but depend on surface water for their supply in foothill places like Lindsay and Strathmore.

Now Boyer will go back to Plan B for Tooleville—hook up to Exeter's water system which doesn't have the same problem.

Larger towns with higher nitrate problems can use their size and blend water that doesn't have problems with well water that does to reduce the contaminant level—an option small systems don't generally have.

The solution now being tried in Tooleville is likely the long term solution for many of these small systems, says county environmental health staffer Susan Shaw, who oversees public drinking water systems in Tulare under 200 connections. Shaw says that she categorizes these systems by size. In the largest category of water systems—290 of them that serve 15 to 199 connections—54 of those systems have a nitrate level that is above the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for nitrates. In the smaller category there are 78 systems that serve between 5 to 14 connections and 10 of those suffer from nitrates above the maximum MCL.

Also a number of community systems have a growing MCL problem reaching at least half the 45 ppm MCL level and adding it all together Shaw figures about one-third of small public drinking water systems in the county “have problems” with nitrates.

Digging deeper often doesn't help. “We see levels as much as 100 ppm at a depth of 300 feet” in many cases Shaw shrugs.

Shaw says she has seen numerous efforts to dig new wells as they just tried in Tooleville end up with money wasted and hopes and expects larger water systems tying into the smaller communities to be the long range answer. “Consolidation is crucial” to solving the problem, she believes and notes that many of the contaminated systems are in small communities surrounded by larger towns like Porterville for example. She says the cities need an incentive to incorporate these areas in their systems.

In other cases there is no larger system to connect to—like up in Cutler-Orosi and East Orosi where the problem is big as well. There has to be other answers here, believes Shaw.

Help could be on the way with the passage of Prop 84 last year. That bill produced $110 million specially earmarked for small communities and includes provisions for grants up to $5 million. The state Department of Health Services will hold a meeting March 28 at 10 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors chamber to discuss how small systems can apply for funds to provide clean drinking water for their customers.

Boyer and Shaw agree that one major drawback Tulare County suffers under is the fact we don't get our fair share of public monies to help provide clean water despite the highest incidence of poverty in the state and the obvious high contamination. Boyer says with the passage of Prop 84 and 50, both Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District and another district on the Kings applied for funds and scored higher than other districts outside of this area likely losing based on lack of political clout. Instead in many of these cases, grant money flows to the Bay Area even though the central valley has the need is greatest, suggests Shaw.

Why do we have a nitrate problem anyway? Nitrates occur naturally and can result from point sources that include sewage treatment, fertilizer application and dairy waste, to name some sources.

Naturally Occurring?

From one perspective scientific studies have shown that at least some nitrates may be coming from bedrock in the lower Sierra and that the nitrates wash out in streams that drain into the valley depositing the residue as it hits the soil along the foothills. The rock material containing high nitrates was formerly nitrogen rich organic materials, says a UC Davis study in 1998. Excessive nitrates in streams lead to fish kills since they rid the water of oxygen.

The growth of nitrate problems also appears to coincide with the use of nitrogen based fertilizers according to a USGS sampling of 23 wells in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Lake Basin. Fertilizer use from the 1950s grew steadily until about 1980 and has fallen some since. The problem of over-fertilization by farmers gained some notoriety in the early 1980s. Even though there was a decrease in fertilizer use during this time, the nitrate contamination problem grew from 1986 to 1995 at the 23 wells sampled.

Last year the state surveyed domestic wells throughout Tulare County for the presence of nitrates and mapped them (see map). The map shows contaminations above the MCL of 10 mg/L and as you can see most of that contamination is east of 99 closer to the foothills and higher.

Ms. Shaw says her mapping of small contaminated systems matches this closely noting that the foothill area includes Cutler-Orosi, Woodlake, Lindsay and Porterville where the majority of systems are.

The area corresponds to the citrus belt in Tulare County. The voluntary private well testing in Tulare County found that two out of five private wells tested had high nitrates.

In the past, state officials has pushed the citrus industry to reduce the volume of fertilizers applied on the grove because there was a history of high fertilizer application—the citrus industry's “past practices” may be part of the cause, says a Department of Health Services official, Richard Haberman. Another study suggests 40 percent of almond growing area wells have high nitrate levels.

Ms. Shaw says she believes the levels of contamination of the aquifer along the foothills happened some time ago and says talks with a geologist convinced her that fertilizer use along the rock outcrops of the hills acts like a conduit that takes pollution to the deeper levels than on the valley floor. The practice of flooding fields in the orange belt some years ago may have contributed to the problem. In addition, the geology of the east side makes wells shallower than west side wells. Today best fertilizer practices are followed most closely by citrus farmers.

Another source of contamination is private wells, many shallow with septic systems nearby that can take human waste down to groundwater levels or animal waste if animals are grazing nearby.

As of a year and a half ago, Shaw says any new private well requires testing to see if there are problems. That doesn't apply to ag wells however.

Of course some groups have been pushing the opinion that diaries are the major cause of nitrates in drinking water in Tulare County. The dairy industry enjoys a larger concentration west of Highway 99 while the high nitrate levels appear to cluster to the east.

In some cases SHE is able to help small towns wholesale like Plainview in south central Tulare County where HUD approved a new water system for the farmworker community and a second grant enables private property owners to hook up to the new system. The project is in the design stage. Tulare County supervisors have approved a plan for new development around several Highway 99 farmworker towns in Tulare County including Traver, Earlimart and Goshen in part to help provide a new tax base to spur modern water systems that will enable to help communities to hook up to new water and sewer systems they argue.

More Surface Water Use Requested Even as Supply to be Cut

As groundwater along the foothills becomes more contaminated and there is less of it, more communities are opting to use treated surface water suggests civil engineer Dennis Keller. “Look at all the towns that once used groundwater but now use surface water,” says Keller noting that Orange Cove, Lindsay, Strathmore and Terra Bella also use surface water for their communities—not groundwater.

Consolidation in some cases may be part of the answer but a new source of water is needed as well, he believes.

Indeed, Keller is advising the city of Porterville this month on a plan to join up with a local irrigation district to provide treated surface water for Porterville for the first time.

As for the Tooleville situation, Keller who lives in Exeter, says the community of Exeter has recently drilled several expensive wells and only one of them has turned out to be a good one in terms of volume and questions whether the city may want to take on supplying Tooleville just east of Spruce. “The answer here may be surface water too—the answer for a second small east side village—Tonyville who gets treated surface water from Lindsay Strathmore Irrigation District.

Just to add another worry to this scenario—the surface water delivered to all these mostly impoverished communities is subject to the settlement over the San Joaquin River that everybody is concerned about.

Local officials led by supervisor Alan Ishida have testified in Congress that Tulare County needs mitigation of water it will lose in the settlement. Losing that water could deal a one-two punch to those poor communities putting their hoped for new water source in jeopardy while insuring the groundwater becomes more contaminated because groundwater levels will be lowered even more.

In a letter to supervisor Ishida February 26, CEO for SHE, Peter Carey wrote that some 20,000 families depend on small systems that SHE works with and that the settlement will reduce surface water and lead to more groundwater pumping. “There are many communities that already cannot provide safe drinking water and many are on the verge of losing safe drinking water.”

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Industrial Annexation Issue Before Council March 19

Visalia - The Visalia Economic Development Corporation (VEDC) is urging its membership to attend a March 19 city council meeting to support the annexation of some 480 acres into the city's industrial park. The VEDC along with the chamber board adopted a position in support of the annexation, says Glenn Morris, VEDC executive director.

The issue has been simmering for more than a year after council gave an initial OK to the idea to accommodate large industrial clients. That idea was moving forward but one of the property owners objected to restrictions that limited the sale of land to 40 acres or larger. That property owner, Russ Doe, withdrew his application leaving a second property owner, the Vargas family, who own land on both sides of Plaza north of Riggin working with the city. That family has made a deal with a Newport Beach developer, MSJ Partners who is seeking the meeting with the city to work out what is expected to be a compromise plan that could allow the development of the land with fewer restrictions than the city originally planned.

The issue of land availability in the existing industrial park remains contested with developer Richard Allen pointing out that there is plenty of land in the park yet to be developed. The Allen Group's David Hernandez says the park still has some 574 vacant acres out of the 972 acres in the park, meaning that some 59 percent of the park is still available. The Allen Group figures on average just 44 acres at the park is developed each year meaning there is at least 13 years of acreage still available. The Allen Group typically does leasing and build-to-suit deals. The Allen Group owns 236 acres itself followed by Butch Oldfield with 76 acres, as the two largest land holders.

But the consultant that did a draft report for the city last year, A Plescia and Co., pointed to the fact that no parcels larger than 5 acres are currently marketed for sale in the entire park and that a substantial portion of buyers look to purchase rather than lease property.

But Hernandez says Allen has sold in the past and will in the future.

A city memo released in the past week talks about the possibility of an unnamed large user needing a portion of the potential annexation. MSJ Partners say they need to move on their plan now because it takes two years until a new company can open their doors. The consultant's report said on average ten to twelve prospects are searching for large size buildings. Some 47 percent of the prospects want to buy not lease, the report noted.

Council is mindful that opening too much land for industrial development may have an effect on the developers doing business in the park now, but must weigh that impact to the need for more industrial land the city has to offer to prospects when they shop the valley for locations.

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River Mitigation Issue Comes to a Boil
Compromise Language Offered by Ishida

Tulare County - Tulare County could be the biggest loser in the San Joaquin River settlement, worries chair of the Board of Supervisors, Allen Ishida. Mr. Ishida took the county's concerns and those of all the incorporated cities to Washington worried that restoration of the San Joaquin River will come at our expense considering that's where about half the Friant Kern Canal water goes now.

Ishida offered testimony at a March 1 Congressional hearing on a bill authoring funds for the settlement, telling the congressmen that the local concern is how do we get that water back. Ishida like others, fear increased pumping, groundwater overdraft and loss of our economic base if at least some water delivered to the restoration of the river is not earmarked to be returned by congressional action.

“Any changes to water deliveries from Friant Dam, absent mitigation, will undermine the very foundation of economic success and prosperity in the central valley,” Ishida said in a prepared statement he made to the Water and Power Subcommittee.

“A promise to mitigate the loss of surface water from the San Joaquin River settlement is not adequate for my constituents,” Ishida said in the statement. “We are asking for concrete mitigation language in the implementation legislation.”

Congressman Nunes told the Voice this week that he is asking that the current bill be amended or that a companion bill offering mitigation move “simultaneously with the river restoration bill.”

That puts Senator Dianne Feinstein on the hot seat on how to deal with issues concerning an amendment to the bill possibly requiring consent of the NRDC who settled the 18 year old lawsuit with Friant Water Users last year.

In that agreement the “water supply mitigation goal is right up there with river restoration,” says Friant representative Dennis Keller.

Sounding like an approach that may go over with both Feinstein and Nunes, Ishida told the Voice this week at deadline (Tuesday, March 6) that instead of mandating mitigation in the bill he would call for “authority given to the Secretary of Interior to mitigate water losses” that result from the settlement and river restoration project. That language, or something close, would be added to the existing bill, says Ishida, a stance he will now work at to get support from all eight cities in the county as well as the Board of Supervisors of Kern, Kings, Tulare, Madera and Fresno counties. Ishida says “we don't specify just how the mitigation will take place but simply that authority is given to the top officials to mitigate the losses.” This language may be a compromise both Feinstein and Nunes can live with, suggests Ishida.

Realizing that the issue of mitigation was not going to go away, Feinstein asked Friant Water Users for a laundry list of ideas that potentially could work getting more water back to the district even if the loss is 200,000 acre feet in an average year.

Trans Valley Canal

Friant's list offers several supply recirculation concepts that could be pumped back to Tulare County through a proposed new canal called the Trans Valley Canal similar to the Cross Valley Canal in Kern County in that it would connect to the westside California Aqueduct with the Friant Kern Canal in this case roughly along the alignment of the Tule River coming back to the eastside of the valley around Pixley. The canal would take recirculated San Joaquin River water that had been sent down the river to help both the fishery and wildlife and return it through the state canal system pumping it over to the eastside Friant districts like TID and Pixley ID. The 1000 cfs capacity canal could cost $359 million.

Another project is to add new capacity to the Friant Kern Canal enabling more spring runoff water to be groundwater banked. Currently the small size of the Millerton Reservoir and reduced capacity of the canal built in 1949, means the system doesn't have the capacity to recharge larger quantities of groundwater in wet times. One proposal says $440 million could help expand the Friant Kern Canal. Individual districts also offered their ideas a total of 25 projects that could be funded according to the cost/benefit.

Nunes says he hopes some of those proposals could be funded and that these ideas may actually accomplish mitigation to the tune of 100,000 acre feet in an average year about half of what is needed he figures.

The second 100,000 acre feet could potentially come from a deal with the Department of Interior who has just agreed with Westlands Water District over long time drainage issues there. The agreement calls for Westlands to give up an average yield of 100,000 acre feet of a CVP contract a year water that could be pledged by the interior now for mitigation of the water lost in the eastside of the valley through the restoration process.

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175,000-SQUARE-FOOT MCDERMONT FIELDHOUSE
Lindsay Plans Ambitious Community Activity Center

By Steve Pastis

Lindsay - The new McDermont Fieldhouse, currently under renovation on Sweetbriar Avenue in Lindsay, will be a huge state-of-the-art facility providing a wide range of opportunities for area residents to play a variety of sports and enjoy other social activities.

The McDermont Fieldhouse and the old packing house nextdoor are currently being converted into a 175,000-square-foot center that will house four indoor basketball/volleyball courts, three indoor soccer courts, a complete laser tag facility, a Flow Rider simulated surf machine for boogie boarding, a complete fitness center with a weightlifting room, a boxing ring arena, an arcade, a laser tag area, a dance studio, an indoor running track and four eateries. There will also be a grove with seven sequoia trees, one a giant sequoia that will feature a treehouse.

“It's for people from 0 to 99, maybe even 105 or 110,” said Scot B. Townsend, Lindsay City Manager. “It's designed for all people to come in and compete in all different sporting events. We designed a series of catwalks throughout the building where you can walk around and look in on any area and not interfere with that area. So it creates a different social dynamic.”

The facility will host special events, according to Townsend, including tournaments and birthday parties.

Funding for the project came from several sources including the city's redevelopment agency, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, community block grants, work force housing money and an Urban Development Action Grant.

Currently, the City of Lindsay sponsors “Kidz Zone,” a youth center in the former Edison building on Sweetbriar Avenue and Hermosa Street. The facility was opened in 1992 through the cooperation of the city and the Lindsay School District to provide latchkey kids with a place to go after school. The center will be closed when the McDermont Fieldhouse opens.

“It's served its purpose,” Townsend said. “The McDermont Fieldhouse will include youth activities, but on a scale of 1 to 10, the existing place is a 1 and the new place is a 10. It's just a massive project that will include youth activities.”

The Cardinal Zone was another city-sponsored “youth hangout.” Situated across the street from the Friday Night Market on Sweetbriar Avenue, it provided a place for young people to play video games and have pizza while their parents were at the Friday Night Market.

“We converted that to a freeze relief center,” Townsend said. “The city owns the building and we just used it temporarily as a video center.”

“Since the freeze, we set that up as kind of a headquarters where people to go to get help and sign up for work with the city, or get their yellow card that shows they're entitled to go to the coordinating council and get food,” explained Lindsay Mayor Ed Murray. So far, 1,500 people have visited the Cardinal Zone to sign up for jobs or other help.

The city's decision to undertake the ambitious McDermont Fieldhouse project is consistent with their efforts to sponsor youth activity centers and provide assistance for people hurt by the recent freeze.

“It's because of the quality of life that we want to have here in the community,” Townsend explained. “We're trying to make every effort to be family-oriented in the community.”

The McDermont Fieldhouse is expected to open sometime between September 2007 and March 2008. The ambitious nature of the project is the reason why the city has given itself “a lot of leeway” on the opening date.

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What's New

By a 2 to 1 vote, Visalia city council gave the green light to a new 25,000 square foot Fresno Pacific University building on three acres—part of a large office park planned along both sides of Plaza Dr. north of 198. The vote came after council member Bob Link stepped down because his wife works for the college. Also Mayor Jesus Gamboa was ill, leaving a quorum but a small one. Council member Collins voted against the project saying it set a precedent for other major office uses in the area when the goal of the city was to bring more office use Downtown. Both council members Landers and Kirkpatrick agreed it was an appropriate use of the zoning Business Research Park—the first time any developer has submitted plans for the zoning. College officials said they were in a hurry to open more space here since they had outgrown their 9800 square foot building off Akers. Council appeared to allow the college move forward but said they would wait to approve plans of the whole project that would add up to about 300,000 square feet of office and mixed use space. Plaza Dr. is scheduled for a widening beginning in 2008 using Measure R funds.

The latest operator of the Wagon Wheel Restaurant on Willis has closed their doors leaving the local investment group that owns the building looking for a new tenant for the landmark eatery.

A promising start to the new year in the resale market in Visalia has turned quiet, reports several realtors, while home builders appear to be slowing their appetite for construction of new homes in Visalia at least until they reduce their existing inventory. The total value of all building permits so far this year in Visalia has dropped by 53 percent from the same two month period in 2006, reports the city of Visalia. The slowdown is seen not just in new home permits, but new commercial as well. So far this year homebuilders have taken out permits for 134 new homes compared to 246 the first two months of 2006.

Hispanic home buyers. A Centex official says that some 50 percent of new buyers of an entry level new home subdivision in Tulare are Hispanics who speak no English.

More travelers are using the Visalia to Las Vegas airline connection to fly on to other destinations, reports Mario Cifuentez, Visalia airport manager. “New figures show 15 percent of all passengers are using the Mesa Airline connection to Las Vegas to travel to other destinations,” says Cifuentez, compared to just 2 percent who used the former airline, Scenic, to catch connecting flights. But so far passenger traffic is still about the same overall. The company is offering a March special $148 round trip special that flies out of Visalia with four flights a day on most days.

The movement to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley now a water source for the Bay Area is gaining momentum with a proposal by the Bush administration to fund a restoration study for the Yosemite area valley to the tune of $7 million. Still, it's a long way from the expected cost of $10 billion to do the restoration itself.

Boost for renewable energy in California will be seen driving the over Tehachapis in the future when the number and power output of the existing wind turbines in the area is expected to double when it comes online after 2010—the date when utilities are to have 20 percent of their portfolio in renewable energy sources. The power will be sold to Edison. The $3 billion wind farm would be the nation's largest. PG and E is studying power from wave action at two sites off the Mendocino Coast and the company is spending $3 million to study the plan's feasibility according to a filing with the federal agency. Such wave power projects are being constructed in Europe.

Someone said that all the ethanol plants in the state will one day have the symbol of familiar oil companies on them in the end. Now, Shell Oil is investing in synthetic biodiesel using plant materials in Europe as well as one of the first ethanol plants using the cellulose process in Idaho that just got a grant from USDA. Also receiving a grant was a company who will make cellulose ethanol based in a landfill in Riverside, California. Blue Fire Ethanol has Waste Management Co. as a partner.

City of Visalia is negotiating with property owners on the south side of Mill Creek who own property along Center St. between Tipton and Burke streets. The property owners own to the north side of Mill Creek but the creek bed is of no use to them. The city has a grant to relocate the creek and property owners stand to gain useful land on the south side of the parcels once the creek is moved away from the buildings. The city is working on the design of the new linear park that will be the showpiece of the new Civic Center area and sources say the park may be in before the buildings. The creek would feature water all year round with the help of a recirculation system. “Things are moving pretty fast,” says advisory committee member Brian Kempf, talking about the design of the new creekside park. Also the city is serious about building a new mixed use building at Tipton and Oak streets that could accommodate some city offices but be available for retail as well that could be built in the next year or so. The city acquired land from the Gas Co. a few months ago. The first major building to be built as part of the Civic Center is expected to be a public safety building.

Why go to the farmers market? How about to improve your social life. Studies show that people at farmers markets have as many as 10 times more conversations, greeting and other social interactions than people in supermarkets, says the Worldwatch Institute.

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