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Is John Vidovich planning to sell off the valley’s lifeblood? Or is he just the newest water baron on the block?

• by Lois Henry
When you first meet John Vidovich, everything from his ball cap to his dirty boots tells you he’s a farmer. He certainly looks the part in his well-worn jeans and checkered shirts. But this outwardly unassuming multimillionaire has become a lightning rod of controversy. Because, while he does farm thousands of acres of pistachios, almonds…
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How water from Kern grows sprawl in Madera

• by Lois Henry
So, a pile of water banked in Kern County is being used to support a massive urban development in Madera County. Before you try and wrap your head around how that’s geographically possible, there’s the whole question of whether the banked water (and other water slated for the project) even can be used for that purpose. Then…
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Water, water everywhere, but can we keep it?

• by Lois Henry
Will we get the water? That’s the question everyone’s been asking. (And by everyone, I mean the other five or six people I know who are as weirdly interested in water as I am.) Storms are dumping, rivers are rising and lakes are filling — finally. Will we be able to squirrel that water away…
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Water odds and ends

• by Lois Henry
It’s all about water. At least this column will be. If you haven’t read the big, giant water bill that had Sen. Barbara Boxer’s panties in a big, giant twist, I encourage you to give it a skim. That bill has everything in it. Sure, it has provisions that will authorize some operational changes in the Sacramento-San…
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One more try for federal fixes to California’s water woes

• by Lois Henry
Local water folks are hopeful, but not holding their breath, that the latest congressional effort to move a little more water down the pike from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will actually succeed. Even if it does, I’m sure environmental activists already have their lawyers prepped and ready for launch. But it’s the holidays, so who…
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Local water districts feel cheated by ‘exchange’

• by Lois Henry
Oh, the fascinating stuff our protracted drought is revealing. I’m not talking about tires and old town foundations at the bottom of California’s reservoirs. This drought is also putting long-held assumptions about water rights under intense scrutiny. In this instance, a dispute over how the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has administered a contract spanning more…
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Survey says! We got a boatload of water coming soon

• by Lois Henry
The numbers are in and they are good. Amazing, actually. The April 1 manual snowpack survey for the Kern River basin shows we are at an overall 215 percent of average, according to the Department of Water Resources. (See side box for particulars.) The basin was at 49 percent of average last year and that…
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Little Poso Creek causing big problems for farmers in northern Kern

• by Lois Henry
Poso Creek wreaked havoc on a number of northern Kern County farms in recent weeks, flooding thousands of acres. Farmers were busy patching levees and pumping remnants of the flood water off their lands Thursday. But even as berms were rebuilt and their fields dried, farmers eyed the giant Sierra snowpack and warned, “It’s not…
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Pollution plumes stopped by drought but how much longer for cleanup?

• by Lois Henry
The good news is that more than 40 million pounds of petroleum hydrocarbons have been sucked — literally — out of the ground around the former Shell Oil (now Alon) refinery on Rosedale Highway. And the really good news is that toxic plume, which had been creeping toward the Kern River bed and several drinking-water…
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