![]() ![]() The farmers feel their way of life is being upended. “They don’t know what a walnut tree is,” Tos said. When the rail authority wanted a strip of his land for a temporary construction easement, an agent suggested that Tos transfer his mature walnut trees to pots for five years and then put them back in the ground. Tos, the farmer who is waging a legal fight against the project, said that state agents during negotiations had shown a surprising lack of knowledge about agriculture. There are interagency tensions,” Wasser said. The legal negotiations are handled by attorneys on loan from the California Department of Transportation, spread throughout the state. ![]() The state relies on outside contractors to provide land agents, appraisers and surveyors, along with many other crucial functions necessary to buy farmland. ![]() California farmers grow more than half of the fresh peaches and almost all of the canned peaches that Americans eat. “They shouldn’t have run this through the breadbasket of the state,” Wasser said, echoing a sentiment of the rail system’s critics that the state should have aligned the route adjacent to Interstate 5 and not through the nation’s richest agricultural belt. And other examples abound in just the first 119 miles of the route. A cold packing house had to be relocated in Fresno. A possible redesign to avoid an oil terminal in Kern County could cause a $19-million delay. A multimillion-dollar rendering plant is being rebuilt in Kings County. Some of these direct costs could have been avoided if the rail planners had paid closer attention a decade ago to what lay in the path of the planned rail route. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |