Two big battles are unfolding right now in the ongoing Central Valley Water Wars. Last Thursday, a Kings County judge again ruled in favor of the Kings County Farm Bureau in its lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). The judge extended an injunction issued in July that halted costly and difficult-to-implement probationary […]
The first really big wildfires of 2024 broke out in California last month. At the start of June, two firefighters were injured, a home went up in flames and parts of Tracy were evacuated as more than 14,000 acres burned in the Corral Fire in San Joaquin County. That was June 1. Two weeks later, […]
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux and State Assemblymember Vince Fong are both leading in the special election to fill the remainder of former Representative Kevin McCarthy’s term, but no candidate has received over 50% of the vote as of publication time. If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote, there will be a May […]
Raw emotion and charged commentary filled the room at 210 Café Tuesday, February 13, when Tulare County Voices’ held a Prop 1 mental health and housing forum. Proposition 1 on the voter guide says, “Authorizes $6.38 billion in bonds to build mental health treatment facilities for those with mental health and substance use challenges; provides housing […]
Most voters see the Assembly District 33 race as a battle between two Democrats and two Republicans, but after a candidates’ forum last Friday, it looked more like a contest between two generations: Boomers and Millennials. And — before Lindsay Mayor Hipolito Cerros stepped back from the race — a Gen Z candidate was […]
Editors note: This article was updated 12/23/23 at 12:15pm to reflect a statement by Assembly member Devon Mathis With no term limits in Congress, and State Assembly term limits set at 12 years, open seats in Sacramento and Washington DC are a rare commodity. But for the upcoming 2024 election, Tulare and Kern County voters […]
State and local authorities are preparing for massive flooding of the Tulare Lake Basin. Record amounts of snow blanket the watershed, and now a record spring runoff is being driven by a wave of unseasonably high temperatures. Officials – bearing the worst-case scenarios in mind – are imagining valley cities around the lake flooding, and […]
Rep. Connie Conway (CA-22) today introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to open up the Hetch Hetchy reservoir to recreational activities and to force the City of San Francisco to pay a fair price for its access to the reservoir’s water and power. Cosponsored by Representatives David Valadao (CA-21) and Tom McClintock (CA-4), […]
Do your eyes glaze over every time a campaign ad flashes across your screen about Proposition 27 or 26? Both sides have spent a combined $320 million to get your vote, but their ads don’t always paint an accurate or complete picture. Here is a more realistic synopsis. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized […]
It isn’t obvious to the naked eye, but the San Joaquin Valley is sinking, and it’s slowly destroying key parts of the agricultural infrastructure as it goes. Each year, as farmers and ranchers pump water from the aquifer underlying the Valley to supply their crops, the water they remove leaves gaps in the miles-deep, sponge-like […]