Valley Solutions

Drunk and still driving in CA

Cal Matters. 15 DUIs, still driving: CA’s failure to take repeat drunk drivers off the road. 
Synopsis: Story focuses on some of the most egregious drunk-driving offenders and their deadly impacts on CA highways. The poster-boy is from Fresno who got drunk then flipped his car, killing his passenger. He’s being tried for murder, but he already had 3 open DUI cases when he crashed. At one time, CA had the toughest drunk-driving laws anywhere, but lawyers, judges and legislators turned those laws into the nation’s weakest. “California’s DUI enforcement system is broken. The toll can be counted in bodies.” There is no shortage of heartbreaking examples, mainly from the Valley. One Fresno woman has had 16 DUI convictions and still has a license. Yet, drunks keep driving.
MAD Note: Reporters Robert Lewis and Lauren Hepler are going to win awards for these stories. Whether anything changes is up to our elected leaders.

Food banks brace for cuts

Fresno Bee. Central CA Food Bank braces for SNAP cuts to impacts hundreds of thousands.
Synopsis: The Central CA Food Bank already serves 320,000 people every month in Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties. With SNAP funding ending Nov. 1, it expects thousands more will be asking for food. There are 720,000 people getting an average of $187 a month in SNAP benefits across the five counties, with 248,000 of them in Fresno County. The state will send $80 million to food banks across the state, but no one believes it will be enough to cover the gap. The woman running the food bank says it can respond “short term,” but for how long? The food bank is already supporting 1,250 federal employees, mostly in Fresno County, due to the shutdown. The Trump administration has refused to use its emergency funds to restore the SNAP benefits, though previous president has used the money for that purpose in prior shutdowns – including Trump in 2018. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson refuses to call Congress back into session so that negotiations can resume.

KSEE / CBS47. CA grape growers boosting Central Valley food bank fundraiser.
Synopsis: The CA Table Grape Commission says it will match all donations to the Central CA Food Bank through the end of the month up to $15,000. The donation comes as demand for food is expected to surge as the Trump administration refuses to use emergency funding to provide SNAP benefits to feed the poor. Growers say many of those impacted are farmworkers who have helped care for the grapevines and harvest the fruit.

Better play dates at the lake?

Merced County Times. New recreation operator sought for Lake Yosemite.
Synopsis: Merced Irrigation District is inviting vendors to submit proposals to help “refocus” future recreation and concession opportunities at Lake Yosemite. The lake is adjacent to UC Merced but is owned and operated by MID. Reviewing the proposals will be Brooke Gutierrez, who came to MID after two decades with State Parks. “I know exactly how important Lake Yosemite is to Merced,” said Gutierrez, adding “we’re absolutely excited to see what future possibilities may exist to enhance what exists today.”

Praying at Valley ICE facility

Modesto Focus. Faith leaders gather in prayer at Stockton ICE facility after dozens detained. 
Synopsis: Clergy members and the faithful from Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties gathered at the federal ICE office on San Juan Avenue in Stockton to conduct a prayer vigil in support of immigrant families whose members have been swept up in ICE raids. Last Saturday, dozens of immigrants were detained after being told to report to the center for a “check-in.” Among those outside this week is Modesto’s Griselda Rojas of Faith in the Valley, who had organized a rapid-response network to warn residents of ICE presence. The fence around the building has been festooned with marigolds, symbolic in the Mexican culture.

Warehouses get the go-ahead

Ceres Courier. Council rejects attempt to halt G3 from building two warehouses. 
Synopsis: The owners of Evins Funeral Home were unable to convince the Ceres Planning Commission to deny plans by G3 Enterprises to build two large warehouses west of Crows Landing Road north of Service. The council already voted previously to facilitate the building of two warehouses expected to total around 250,000 square feet. G3 is owned by members of the Gallo family but is not directly tied to the winery. It provides a host of business services, from transportation to packaging to warehousing. The property is part of the West Landing Specific Plan that was set aside by the city for business parks. Chris Evins is worried additional truck traffic will interfere with his funeral business. Land-use attorney Dave Romano represented G3 and brought along supporters from unions and building firms.

Composting facility protested

Modesto Bee. Stanislaus County residents opposed to composting facility city odors, dirty air.
Synopsis: A proposed 23-acre composting facility on West Main between South Carpenter and Crows Landing roads near Turlock has drawn opposition from neighbors. Machado & Sons wants to bring 160 tons of waste material a day – yard clippings, discarded food, etc. – and turn it into soil amendments for use on farmland. Some of the material will be solid-waste transfers from the county’s treatment facility, and neighbors fear that stuff will smell. Others say the roads can’t handle all the trucks. More than 200 have signed a petition in opposition. Sean Kilgrow says the company had 3 town-hall meetings and has responded to every issue. The board granted an extension to address concerns.

Impact of Prop 50 in Valley

Merced Sun Star. Would Prop 50 really flip two Valley seats? It’s a gamble.
Synopsis: McClatchy DC reporter Nicole Nixon looks at the Valley and concludes Prop 50 might not shift the demographics enough to alter the political dynamic. It all depends on who runs against David Valadao and how hard they work, she says. The same is true in CA 13, where Adam Gray won the closest race in America last year. Prop 50 is California’s “counterpunch” to Gov. Greg Abbott’s gerrymandering to give Trump additional seats in Texas. It will make Josh Harder’s CA9 bluer but giving Gray more of San Joaquin County and less of Fresno could have only marginal impacts. He’ll still have to show voters why he can accomplish more than any Republican challenger – especially those moving to the area in hopes of buying a seat in Congress.
MAD Take: The reporter writes that Gray represents a district that produces “milk, almonds, rice and other crops,” so it makes you wonder what else she gets wrong. Rice? The word “rice” appears only 9 times in the Merced County crop report, 8 in footnotes. Rice appears only 3 times in the Stanislaus report, all three in footnotes. The same is true in Madera and Fresno. San Joaquin had 12,000 acres of rice, but all of it is in the north, far from Gray’s district. Rice acreage is about a tenth of that used to pasture cows. Perhaps the reporter is thinking of a different Valley.

Stolen electronics recovered

Modesto Bee. Deputies recover $400K in stole Amazon merch; 2 men arrested in Modesto, Turlock.
Synopsis: Stanislaus deputies recovered $400,000 in stolen electronics after serving multiple warrants in Modesto and Turlock. Bluetooth speakers, sound-systems and other equipment had been stolen from an Amazon facility. The vendor knew of the theft and found some of the items for sale on eBay, leading deputies to the suspected thieves. In all, Ravinder Singh and Nepal Singh had 25 pallets of wrapped goods in their warehouses. Deputy Raj Singh, no relation, says there are likely other bad actors out there since “your average person isn’t going to be able to coordinate taking an entire semi-truck full of cargo.”

Where will we get the water?

SJV Water. Appellate court tanks injunction that had halted state groundwater intervention in Kings.
Synopsis: Dual appellate court opinions issued Wednesday confirmed the validity of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and will have three impacts: 1) Farmers will have to start reporting how much they pump and paying fees to pump it. 2) The state will resume negotiations with water districts to establish better plans. 3) The lawsuit will continue. The rulings came out of the Fifth Court of Appeals in Fresno, which said Superior Court judge Kathy Ciuffini erred in not summarily dismissing the motions from Kings County farmers. Kings Farm Bureau CEO Dusty Ference said he remains optimistic because the appeals court did not reject the Bureau’s contention the water board exceeded its authority in imposing sanctions. The appeals court also ruled the judge was right in saying the water board should have dealt with each district individually, and not all lumped together.

Maven’s Notebook. Large-scale desalination could transform California. 
Synopsis: Edward Ring of the California Policy Center writes about the importance of desalination. He crunches the cost of electricity and concludes we could desalinate 1-million acre feet of water by increasing our power use by another 1% -- far less than is being planned for AI server farms. “That’s not much, and it’s comparable to the energy needed to pump water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the Los Angeles Basin,” he writes. Ring notes that’s about the same cost as recycling wastewater. Those costs, BTW, will go down not up as power gets cheaper. The need for water, however, will never go down. He points out the short-sighted dismissal of the Huntington Beach desal plant last year that could have produced 56,000-acre feet of fresh water every year.

Insurance will pinch farmers

Successful Farming. Farmers, ranchers brace for increases in healthcare premiums. 
Synopsis: Already navigating a weak ag economy, farmers are now seeing bills for next year’s health insurance – and they’re anywhere from 25% to 250% higher than last year. “We’re going to get whacked hard,” said Montana Farmers Union president Walter Schweitzer. He estimates his bill will be 4x last year’s bill for the same coverage. He is being treated for leukemia, so going without is not an option. It is estimated 27% of all farmers get insurance through the Affordable Care Act, which the One Big Beautiful Budget Bill is making unaffordable. 

This year’s Almond Champion

CA Ag Net. Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo awarded Almond Champion of the year. 
Synopsis: The Almond Alliance has chosen Alexandra Macedo, R-Tulare, as the top legislator of the year. Her efforts on water and ag stand out. Past recipients include Adam Gray, Connie Conway, Carlos Villapudua, Heath Flora and Juan Alanis. She will be introduced at PAC fundraiser at Del Rio Country Club in Modesto on Nov. 5.

Bats: Partners in the sky

Modesto Bee. Friends, not foes: Central Valley bats can reveal much about our region. 
Synopsis: Maria Figueroa writes about one of nature’s most misunderstood creatures – bats. There are 1,500 species worldwide, with 16 species found in Stanislaus County. River Partners and the CA Wildlife Conservation Board have been studying the creatures at Dos Rios State Park, and find they are essential in keeping down insect numbers. As one researcher put it, “They’re super important for pest control and agriculture, and they’re also the No. 1 predator of nocturnal insects.”