June 30, 2017
CapitalPress.com
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11
California
4-H, FFA members gear up for state fair
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — 4-H
and FFA members throughout
the Golden State are gearing
up to face big-league competi-
tion at the California State Fair
on July 14-30.
Entrants at the Sacramento
County Fair over the Memori-
al Day weekend were offered
the added benefit of doing a
dry run at the facility where the
state fair is held — Cal Expo.
FFA member Joshua Var-
gas of Elk Grove, Calif., said
he knew of a few students at
the county event who planned
to go on to the state fair. For
them, the competitions at the
smaller gathering were an op-
portunity to know where to
improve.
“The judges will tell you
what to work on and what they
want to see more of,” he said.
More than 4,000 animals
are entered in youth and local
divisions at the state fair each
year. Exhibits in the fair’s live-
stock building and adjacent
shaded stalls are shown in
Hanna Parker of Liberty Ranch
FFA in Galt, Calif., walks with
her pig at the Sacramento
County Fair at the Cal Expo
fairgrounds in late May. The
fairgrounds will host the Califor-
nia State Fair July 14-30.
Photos by Tim Hearden/Capital Press
FFA members Joshua Vargas, left, and Mariah McBride of Elk Grove, Calif., walk with a market goat at
the Sacramento County Fair at the Cal Expo fairgrounds in late May.
shifts, and the fair offers show-
manship awards and prizes in
different classes for youths.
Agriculture will again take
center stage at the 164th state
fair, whose theme this year is
“Come One, Come All!”
One of the most popular
Clean
Water Act
case set
for trial
Director who led water agency
through dam crisis set to retire
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — A
California farmer is in set-
tlement talks with officials
of President Donald Trump’s
administration as a lawsuit to
enforce $2.8 million in fines
against him is set to go to trial
in August, his attorney said.
The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers claims Modesto,
Calif., nursery owner John
Duarte illegally filled wet-
lands while planting a wheat
field in Tehama County, Calif.
The agency ordered him to
stop work in the field in 2013.
In a pretrial hearing June
16, U.S. District Judge Kim-
berly Mueller set a trial date
of Aug. 15, denying Duarte’s
motion to move it to next
spring so that the judge could
visit his wheat farm at the
same time of year as it was
inspected, said Tony Francois,
senior attorney for Pacific Le-
gal Foundation, which is rep-
resenting Duarte.
In the meantime, Duarte’s
attorneys have had meetings
with senior Justice Depart-
ment officials to urge them to
intervene, Francois said.
“We’re still hoping to hear
whether and to what extent
they are willing to either ac-
cept our view of the case or
… agree that this $2.8 million
penalty as well as mitigation
is simply unjustifiable and
instead agree to resolve the
penalty for something much
closer to nominal,” Francois
told the Capital Press.
Justice Department of-
destinations for attendees is
the 34-year-old farm, where a
local chef will offer cooking
demonstrations with locally
grown produce. Other farm
features will include a daily
farmers’ market, an aquacul-
ture exhibit, a hydroponic
greenhouse and an insect pa-
vilion.
In addition, an exhibit
called Farmyard Follies will
feature goats, sheep, llamas
and a spotted donkey from the
Great American Petting Zoo,
offering fairgoers a chance to
learn about animals and see
them up close.
Fair-related
festivities
kicked off June 22 with the
State Fair Gala at Cal Expo,
which raises funds for the
Friends of the California State
Fair Student Scholarship Fund.
Fair officials presented
this year’s Agriculturalist of
the Year award to Tom Nas-
sif, chief executive officer of
Western Growers, for high-
lighting the need for immigra-
tion reform and pushing for a
new specialty-crop title in the
Farm Bill.
Among other ag-related
honorees, Paul Draper of the
Cupertino-based Ridge Vine-
yards received the Wine Life-
time Achievement Award and
Dutton Ranch Vineyards in
Sebastopol received the Vine-
yard of the Year Award.
That morning, fair chief ex-
ecutive officer Rick Pickering
and local dignitaries honored
the Best of Show winners for
the Commercial Wine, Cheese,
Extra Virgin Olive Oil and
Commercial Beer competition
in front of the state Capitol.
Courtesy Pacific Legal Foundation
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Tony Francois, left, stands with
John Duarte, president of Duarte Nursery. A federal lawsuit to
enforce $2.8 million in fines imposed on Duarte for work he did in
a wheat field in Tehama County, Calif., is set to go to trial in August.
ficials did not immediately
respond to Capital Press re-
quests for comment.
The talks come as Duarte
has asked Mueller to recon-
sider her ruling last year that
he should have obtained a
Clean Water Act permit to run
shanks through wetlands at a
depth of 4 to 6 inches, creat-
ing furrows before planting
wheat in a 450-acre pasture.
Because the judge hasn’t
yet determined a penalty for
Duarte, the litigation isn’t fin-
ished, so he couldn’t appeal to
the 9th Circuit Court of Ap-
peals without her permission.
Duarte maintains he hired
a consultant in 2012 to iden-
tify wetlands on the property
off Paskenta Road south of
Red Bluff and that no plowing
took place in those areas.
The PLF contends that ar-
eas where plowing occurred
do not meet tests the U.S. Su-
preme Court has set for wet-
lands subject to Clean Water
Act oversight. Francois has
argued the Corps relied on a
wetlands map created in 1994,
when the legal definition of
a wetland was much more
widely applied.
As a result of the order
to stop, Duarte Nursery lost
the $50,000 it cost to plant
the wheat and has lost the
ability to farm the proper-
ty, Francois said. The PLF
filed suit on Duarte’s behalf
in 2013, disputing the Corps’
allegations and arguing the
government violated the busi-
ness’ due-process right in
not allowing it to answer the
charge. The Corps responded
with a counterclaim alleging
the Clean Water Act violation.
The PLF’s hopes for a res-
olution were raised in Febru-
ary, when Trump issued an
executive order directing the
EPA to review the “Waters of
the United States” rule. The
rule was withdrawn this week.
As it now stands, in ad-
dition to the $2.8 million in
fines, the government wants
Duarte to purchase up to 132
acres of wetland mitigation
credits, which could cost tens
of millions of dollars, he said.
“One of the things the gov-
ernment said … is the reason
they want mitigation credits
is that’s what the Corps of
Engineers would require any
farmer to get as part of a per-
mit to plow their property,”
the attorney said. “That’s just
a complete misreading of the
Clean Water Act.
“We do think it would be a
wise move for the administra-
tion to look at the legal issues
and the facts of this case.”
SACRAMENTO — Bill
Croyle, who as acting direc-
tor shepherded the state De-
partment of Water Resources
through the near-failure of
the Oroville Dam last winter,
is retiring effective July 1, the
agency announced.
“I’m very proud of the
work we have accomplished
over the years bringing Cali-
fornia through drought, flood
and most recently, through
the Oroville Spillway inci-
dent,” Croyle, 59, said in a
statement. “And now I’m
looking forward to picking
up my retirement plans where
they left off six months ago.”
A former chief of flood
operations and drought emer-
gency operations manager
for the DWR, Croyle put off
his retirement at Gov. Jerry
Brown’s request to take the
reins in January from retiring
director Mark Cowin.
In February, spillway rup-
tures at the Oroville Dam led
to the two-day evacuation of
about 188,000 area residents
and threatened a large portion
of the Eastern Sacramento
Valley’s $1.5 billion agricul-
tural industry, including rice
and tree crops and several
processors along the High-
way 99 corridor between
Chico and Yuba City.
As it was, some fruit and
nut orchards planted inside
levees were flooded as Feath-
er River waters rose, and
fluctuations in water levels as
officials closed and reopened
the Oroville Dam’s spillway
caused erosion that led to the
flooding of orchards outside
the levees.
In April, the DWR award-
ed a $275.4 million contract
to the Omaha, Neb.-based
Kiewit Infrastructure West
Co. for permanent repair
work on the Oroville Dam’s
spillways, which is expected
to continue through the sum-
mer.
Amid the crisis, Croyle
sometimes faced criticism,
as when the agency initial-
ly rebuffed the Sacramento
Bee in its effort to gain ac-
cess to records the newspa-
per argued would show how
Brown’s office handled the
crisis. Croyle later said the
state would release some re-
cords.
Farm groups, meanwhile,
criticized the DWR for be-
ing slow in increasing State
Water Project allocations de-
spite record precipitation in
many areas last winter. Lake
Oroville is the SWP’s chief
reservoir.
“California is extremely
fortunate to have had Bill at
the helm of DWR this year,
especially during the Oro-
ville emergency,” state Natu-
ral Resources Agency secre-
tary John Laird.
Cindy Messer, the DWR’s
chief deputy director, will
serve as acting director until
a new director is appointed.
As competition grows, California
prunes seek to fill high-end niche
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — As the
global prune market becomes
more competitive, the Califor-
nia Dried Plum Board plans to
target higher-end consumers
who are willing to pay more
for better quality.
The industry’s strategy will
be to highlight prunes’ use as
a value-added ingredient in
culinary circles and pitch Cal-
ifornia prunes as a more nu-
tritious alternative in nations
with stronger economies, said
Donn Zea, the board’s execu-
tive director.
“It’s a great thing to be
able to grow and process the
world’s greatest prunes,” Zea
said. “We’re in search of mar-
kets that are consistently will-
ing and able to pay for those.”
One of those key markets is
Japan, where the plum board is
stepping up its promotional ef-
forts in the run-up to the 2020
summer Olympics in Tokyo.
The number of foreign visi-
tors to Japan has been increas-
ing at a rapid rate, reaching 24
million in 2016, and restau-
rants are scrambling to meet
their special dietary needs,
Rachel Nelson, director of the
U.S. Agricultural Trade Office
in Tokyo, said in a recent re-
port.
California prunes are rec-
ommended as an ingredient
for special menus in a guide-
book that Nelson presented to
more than 250 Japanese food
and hospitality professionals
at a recent seminar. The board
is also using sports dietitians
to tout prunes’ nutritional val-
ue to athletes training for the
2020 games.
The efforts come as the
global marketplace has been
flooded with smaller, cheaper
prunes from Chile and Argen-
tina, which has put downward
pressure on prices.
Last year’s weather-affect-
ed short crop further eroded
California’s share of the mar-
ket. Shipments of the 2016
crop to overseas destinations
are down 26 percent from
2015, while domestic ship-
ments have risen 4 percent,
Zea said.
The shortage prompted
some handlers in the Golden
State to obtain foreign prunes
to send to trading customers to
meet their orders, Zea said.
While industry leaders
won’t say they’re willing to
cede markets to competitors,
they note it’s difficult to com-
pete head-to-head with the
cheaper prunes.
For instance, while the
European Union remains Cal-
ifornia prunes’ largest export
market, valued at nearly $60
million in 2015-16, the fruit
faces a nearly 10 percent tariff
from which Chilean prunes are
exempt as well as competitive
challenges from a strong dol-
lar, leaders say.
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