Mendota: a town scraping bottom

[XemaSab]

Source: SFGate

Maria DeLourdes Oregel hasn't found work since her harvesting job petered out last year, her husband's hours at the local chicken farm have been cut by a third, and even though she feeds her children meat only once a week, she runs out of cash before the end of each month. She's one of the lucky ones. At least she has a roof and her family has some kind of paycheck.

In one dreadful year, this dusty city in the heart of the most productive agricultural region in the nation has become a desperate place where mothers wash disposable diapers for reuse, children are sleeping in cars, and the unemployed trudge door to door to beg for food.

The fact that the unemployment rate in Mendota, 38.5 percent, is the highest in California doesn't even raise an eyebrow here. The anguish, frustration and hunger are visible in every corner and on every face of this town of 7,800 people 35 miles west of Fresno - and nobody sees any relief in sight.

"I try hard not to be depressed, but the little money we do get we can't stretch enough," Oregel, 38, said in Spanish as she sat in a weekly meeting at a community center, where mothers gather to share survival tips. "It's never been this bad in my life. I even have a friend who called his family in Mexico to ask for help, which never happens. We are always the ones sending our money home, not the other way around."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/0...

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[ccharles000]

1. k/r

[KG]

2. 'i was born in the 'land of plenty', now there ain't enough'.

-Steve Earle

[xchrom]

3. i can only shake my head in sad wonder. nt

[Bluenorthwest]

4. I've been there

the entire area is in dire straights, Mendota more than others. And that is saying something. Bad News Valley. Sad stuff to see.

[snappyturtle]

5. Stop and think about it folks....all the money has been given to

those at the top so this situation is bound to happen. I heard this morning the Goldman Sachs posted a 3.8 billion dollar profit for the first quarter! We've been screwed.Nothing, nothing has been done for the common man.

I don't know if it's a new talking point or not but I've heard twice in as many days that don't ya know...everybody is saving and it's the lack of spending that's holding the economy back! Well, I don't know aabout you but we have little discretionary income and it isn't going into a savings account...that was gone a long time ago...about 2005.

[Le Taz Hot]

6. What?

Something akin to compassion for PEOPLE in a town in the San Joaquin Valley? It's only 35 miles from FRESNO. You know Fresno, land of FreeRepublic? Hayseeds? Ignorant farmers? Bunch of Oakies and Arkies and now, goddess forbid MEXICANS! These are actual comments I've seen on THIS BOARD about Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley in general.

Now, enter the usual assholes (including the OP which I had to take off ignore to read an article about Mendota), with "jokes" about Fresno. Hungry, homeless, unemployed people are a riot, ain't they, DU?

[Flaneur]

7. Kinda grumpy today, eh?

[TexasObserver]

8. Recommend

[Xithras]

9. I live in the Central Valley.

The problems are mostly isolated to the Westlands district, which is a relatively small portion of the overall valley. They're low-man on the water totem pole, so they only get water after everyone else has taken their full share. Where most of the valley was swamp or grasslands before agriculture came, the Westlands area was a genuine desert. Sitting in a rain shadow, with no natural surface water to speak of, the area should never have been farmed in the first place. Even in normal water years, it's uncommon for the Westlands area to get its "full" allotment of water.

I feel bad for the people who live there, but this was caused by greed and poor planning a half-century ago. The extended but fairly mild drought is just exacerbating the problem.

[bridgit]

11. We all around CentVal too, so many of these towns were cobbled together round...

grange halls, silos and weigh stations worker encampments - industrial dumps and process - and that was fine for a long long time cause when the editors of the SFGate go for a road trip they likely don't go to Mendota, CA; maybe to Salinas, the pennisula, Point Reyes, NYC, and *that* has contributed to the peace & quite but you're right...it's all about water. Even one dusty-beige little gentrified suburb pulls the water table a bit lower. And by the ariel:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Mendota&state=CA#a/ma...

It appears allot of the parcels round Mendota are strangely fallow. Like they're waiting for a developer's bid, construction equipment and cache so why bother planting crops

[Xithras]

12. That image was taken late winter/early spring

You can tell by the high water level in the river alongside. By late spring the waterways in that part of the state are little more than a trickle, and by early summer they are bone dry...you'd have to dig douwn a few feet in the riverbed to find soil that's even remotely damp. The fallow ground probably has to do with the time of year.

But yeah, a lot of these farmers are just praying for some developer to buy they land so they can get out of dodge. Farming in that part of the valley is a nightmare.

[bridgit]

13. Yup, dusty-dry

[XemaSab]

14. Westlands is the low man on the water totem pole?

Hardly.

Westlands OWNS half of California.

Who do you think is paying for Shasta enlargement?

[Xithras]

15. No, Sierra Pacific Lumber owns half of California

Westlands is a great example of a relatively small number of people who wield a disproportionately large amount of political power. Money-wise, most of the farms in Westlands are large corporate plots, and those corps have money to throw around.

Water rights in California are assigned by seniority (most senior holder gets their share, less senior holders divvy up the remainder), and the feds are less-senior rights-holders in virtually every watershed in the state. Shasta is one of only two or three (IIRC) reservoirs in Northern California where the Feds actually have a large share.

Westlands has been buying up land and water rights over the past decade to try and create some sort of seniority for themselves, but they are still almost entirely dependent on federal water to irrigate their fields. If Shasta is low, Westlands goes dry even if the other lakes in the state are at or above normal.

That's actually the case right now. Shasta is low so Westlands is dry, but most of the other reservoirs in California aren't unusually low. All are below their historical average because of the drought, but they're far from empty. Some, on the Tuolumne and Stanislaus watersheds, are actually at or above average right now. Westlands can't touch that water because the feds have almost no seniority on those rivers.

That's just how water politics works in this state.

[KamaAina]

10. John Steinbeck, check your inbox...