Growers and water managers in the Tulare Lake area have been moving mountains of dirt to beef up levees and build entirely new ones as they brace for snowmelt this summer. 

A string of storms in March battered the region, blowing out levees and overwhelming infrastructure as flood water plowed through homes, dairies and crops. The mad scramble to move dirt is in part to repair that damage but also to fend off future damage in the face of an historic snowpack that’s already swelling valley rivers.

“It’s turning into ‘Whoever has the biggest berm wins,’” said Craig Andrew, manager for Sandridge Partners, one of the largest landowners in Kings County. 

Sandridge built a large berm around its raisin facility about a mile southeast of the tiny community of Stratford on Highway 41, he said. Other farmers are taking dirt from Sandridge to build berms around their farms and dairies. 

Berms are going up all around the Stratford area as locals fret about the South Fork of the Kings River potentially going above its current flow of 2,500 cubic feet per second. In fact, water is already standing against the levees that protect Stratford.

Growers are spending, “millions of dollars,” building berms to protect themselves, confirmed Mark Grewal, a water manager in Kings County. 

“These levees are gigantic,” said Grewal. “They’re million dollar plus levees.”

It’s mostly private companies and landowners doing the levee building, he said. 

Vahid Salehi has been building up levees to try and hold off increasing flows from the Kings River. Salehi is the president of Pistacia Global, which manages about 8,500 acres of almonds and pistachios throughout Kings, Tulare and Fresno counties. 

The problem areas have mostly been on properties next to the North Fork Kings River, said Salehi. There, multiple sections of crops have been inundated with water. Salehi and his workers have been excavating and moving dirt so they can bring in pumps to redirect the water. 

While it hasn’t cost the company millions, it’s still expensive, said Salehi. He estimates costs from roughly the last month of labor and equipment at about $50,000. 

“There’s a lot of issues and maybe budget-wise infrastructure problems,” said Salehi. “There’s just all sorts of problems.” 

Pistacia Global’s Kings River properties are within the jurisdiction of the Kings River Conservation District, which oversees river infrastructure and flood operations, among other things. 

For the most part, Salehi is able to do what he wants when it comes to moving dirt. But there have been some instances where KRCD has stopped construction, he said. 

Salehi was moving dirt on the river trying to build up some of the lower parts of the banks when KRCD told him to stop. The construction would put pressure on other parts of the river, KRCD staff told him. 

“We have a good relationship with them, we try to be friends with everybody. So we haven’t tried to challenge it so much,” said Salehi. “The river has its own rules and they try to enforce those rules.”

KRCD staff have also been moving dirt building up levees. The district manages 140 miles of levees on the Kings River that start upstream of Highway 43 and run through the main river channel, the North Fork and the South Fork down to the town of Stratford. 

Landowners are allowed to do what they want on their own property, said Charlotte Gallock, director of water resources and chief engineer for KRCD. But the district has jurisdiction on anything within 15 feet of the river levee, she said. Any work in those areas needs to be coordinated with the district and permitted by the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, she said. 

There are three locations where levees have been sloughing dirt and have had to be rebuilt, said Gallock. Two were on the main river channel near Lemoore and the third was on the South Fork, she said. 

The biggest area of concern is the South Fork, said Gallock. The district has already raised some sections of levees, in one area by about three feet and another by a foot. There will probably be more levee raising to follow. 

“We’re moving forward with those projects in those areas of concern and we anticipate those will be done pretty swiftly,” said Gallock. 

Kings County and the Office of Emergency Services have helped to get levee building materials down to the district, she said. 

KRCD has seven workers patrolling the levee system during the day and eight patrolling at night. It’s a 24 hour surveillance system, said Gallock. 

“They’ll look to see if there’s water somewhere where it shouldn’t be,” said Gallock. 

The berm building frenzy has sometimes run afoul of Kings County rules.

“Some berms have been placed in the public right of way, we are either removing the berms if they create a safety issue or if acceptable, we work with the property owner to secure an encroachment permit,” wrote a Kings County spokesperson in an email.

Meanwhile, the Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until it was drained more than 150 years ago for agriculture, continues to refill. Flood water is creeping close to Stratford and Corcoran where it’s being held back by the Corcoran levee. 

The state is paying $17 million to raise that levee. 

But managers at Westlake Farms five miles south of Stratford are taking matters into their own hands. The company hasn’t taken any water yet but workers are building a levee around its headquarters, said Ceil Howe III, COO of Westlake Farms. 

The company owns about 2,000 acres of pistachios, olives and field crops. 

The levee building is, “just a precautionary practice,” said Howe III. 

“We just have to take care of ourselves,” said Howe III. “It’s just tough times for everybody. It’s just unfortunate. Mother Nature wins and it’s just a tough deal.”

The post Battle of the berms: Farmers build maze of levees to protect land as ‘Big Melt’ heads for Tulare Lake appeared first on Fresnoland.

Gov. Greg Gianforte announced Wednesday that he had signed a bill banning Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok over concerns its data-sharing practices jeopardize user privacy and national security.

The ban, which the governor’s office said was the first of its kind in the nation, is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2024, unless it is blocked in court.

“The Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy on Americans, violate their privacy, and collect their personal, private, and sensitive information is well-documented,” Gianforte said in a statement. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The company, owned by ByteDance, and the American Civil Liberties Union have said they intend to challenge the law, Senate Bill 419, as a violation of constitutionally protected free speech.

“With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” ACLU of Montana Policy Director Keegan Medrano said in a statement.

A TikTok representative also criticized the law in a statement Wednesday.

“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok, a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of people across the state,” said TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter. “We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”

The law will bar ByteDance from allowing “the operation of tiktok by the company or users” inside Montana’s “territorial jurisdiction” as long as the platform is owned by a company based in China or another country designated a “foreign adversary” by the federal government.

The law will also make it illegal for companies like Apple and Google to let their users download the platform’s app from their respective app stores. It does not include provisions that would allow the state to prosecute individual Montanans for circumventing the ban.

The law will be enforced by the Montana Department of Justice, which has the power to levy fines of up to $10,000 a day for violations.

Gianforte, a Republican, had previously signaled he would sign the bill in an email exchange where his office suggested amendments that would have expanded the bill’s scope to to apply to all social media platforms that allow users’ personal data to be provided to nations the federal government designates as “foreign adversaries.” Those revisions were nearly identical to an amendment brought by Democrats while the bill was debated on the House floor, where they were resisted by Republican supporters of the ban who argued the changes would make the bill “unworkable.”

The governor also issued a memo Wednesday directing state agencies to ban the use of other China- and Russia-based social media apps on state devices and networks. That ban, effective June 1, will cover ByteDance apps CapCut and Lemon8 in addition to TikTok, as well as Tencent’s WeChat, Pinduoduo’s Temu and Russia-based Telegram Messenger.

“One of government’s chief responsibilities is to keep its citizens – and their personal, private, sensitive information and data – safe and secure,” Gianforte wrote in that memo. “Foreign adversaries’ collection and use of Montanans’ personal information and data from social media applications infringe on Montanans’ constitutionally guaranteed individual right to privacy.”

The post Gianforte signs TikTok ban appeared first on Montana Free Press.

West Texas voters rejected three conservative Christian candidates who sought to infuse religious values into local politics. The campaign support the candidates received from local churches has prompted calls for state and federal probes.

Listen to this story on The California Report

Allensworth, a farmworker town of about 500 people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, sits at the edge of an area called the Tulare Lake Basin, a patchwork of scrub brush and irrigated farmland that’s part of the most productive agricultural region in the nation. Last March, California’s barrage of atmospheric rivers overwhelmed the area, flooding pistachio orchards and swamping communities, and Allensworth found itself all but surrounded by a shallow sea. Residents were told to evacuate. They were also told that this flood was just the beginning.

California is fighting a slow-motion disaster, one that could become its largest flood in recent history. As the near-record snowpack in the Sierra mountains melts, the water making its way through the foothills is pooling in the basin, reviving a lake that had long disappeared. This process is expected to accelerate over the coming weeks and months, and it could take up to two years to subside. And while the return of Tulare Lake could devastate everyone in the region, historically disenfranchised communities like Allensworth are uniquely vulnerable. 

“It’s a horrific situation,” said Denise Kadara, an Allensworth community leader and the vice chair of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. “We’re here like sitting ducks, waiting for the water to come and flood us out.”

Part of Allensworth’s problem stems from the politics of water: For over a hundred years, water in the Tulare Lake Basin has been controlled and hoarded by a handful of powerful landowners, usually at the expense of everyone else. The Basin’s water management system still favors those powerful landowners, leaving the town with little recourse when floodwaters approach. 

‘I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law’

That was evident one windy night in March, when Allensworth residents Takoa Kadara and his father, Kayode, called an emergency town meeting. The goal was simple: to keep the water massing in the basin from pouring into people’s homes.

At the time, water was flowing toward town through culverts that run under railroad tracks to the east. The culverts are on private property, and the tracks that run on top of them are owned by BNSF Railway, one of the top freight transportation companies in the nation. The last time community members tried to block the culverts with rocks, gravel and plywood, a BNSF employee called the police, then removed the makeshift dam they had built. 

Now the group wanted to protect the community, but knew they might be at risk of breaking the law. Residents only saw two options: act illegally, or not at all, and they couldn’t come to an agreement.

“If you guys disagree with this solution, then let’s go home,” Kayode Kadara said.

“No, it’s not, ‘let’s go home!” his son, Takoa Kadara, said, “let’s come up with another solution.”

“I’ll just say it like it is,” said one resident, who declined to give his name. “If I’m gonna break the law, I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law [with me]. Ten minutes? We’re gone.”

Allensworth residents have tried to block the culverts legally—many, many times. But BNSF wouldn’t give them permission to do it, and so far, the town hasn’t been able to find a government agency with the power to override the corporation’s decision, or persuade it to reconsider. Their local stormwater district doesn’t have jurisdiction over the railroad’s property, and representatives from several state agencies, including Caltrans, CalFire and the Department of Water Resources, said they couldn’t do anything either, even though community members said those agencies agreed that the water spilling through the culverts is a problem. 

BNSF did not respond to requests for comment, but in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, a company spokesperson claimed that blocking the culverts could damage their tracks.

When Allensworth was put under a mandatory evacuation order back in March, the Kadaras and most of their neighbors refused to leave. Who would defend their town if they did?

“The water flowing is natural,” said Denise Kadara. But added it’s also determined by men who say “‘This is where they want the water to go.’”

The history behind today’s water politics

To understand the power dynamics in the Tulare Lake Basin—and how Allensworth ended up on the losing side of it—we have to go back to when the town was founded and Tulare Lake was still alive. In 1908, Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth was a formerly enslaved person who had become the highest ranking Black military officer of his time. As Jim Crow tightened its grip throughout the South, he moved to California to create what he hoped would become the “Tuskegee of the West,” a thriving Black community and college town. Founded by a dream team of Black doctors, professors and farmers, the community of Allensworth became the first town in California to be founded, financed and governed by Black Americans.

Allensworth picked a spot near Tulare Lake, which used to be the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Accounts from the late 1800s describe it as shallow, thick with tule reeds, and ringed by marshland. Herds of elk waded through the shallows, and millions of migratory birds flocked to its shores every year.

But by the time Lt. Col. Allensworth got there, the lake was rapidly disappearing—it had been for years.

“Geologists call that end of the San Joaquin Valley one of the most engineered landscapes in human history,” said Mark Arax, a journalist and expert in the Central Valley’s history and water politics. “[The] human hand has altered that land in a way that few places have been altered.”

Allensworth’s residents weren’t the only people who’d settled along Tulare Lake. A group of white landowners had settled there, too—some of them descending from slave-owning families.

“Many of them were Southerners who’d come from the Confederate states,” said Arax. “They arrived here and they started grabbing the snow melt out of those rivers, and then diverting that onto their farmland.”

In the 1920s, two particularly bold landowner families, the Boswells and the Salyers, made a move on the lakebed itself. The soil at the bottom was dark and unusually rich; it’d be the perfect place for a farm, if the lake wasn’t in the way. So they drained it and diverted the water for irrigation. According to Arax, those diversions ended up drying up the lake completely.

Meanwhile, Allensworth couldn’t get enough water to sustain itself, no matter how hard the community tried. White farmers diverted a river they relied on. A white-owned company refused to dig the community’s wells, but it was more than happy to dig wells for a white town nearby. By the 1920s, a lot of Allensworth’s original settlers had moved away. And by the 1940s, the white landowners in the Tulare Lake Basin had become some of the most powerful farmers in the country, and had successfully seized control of the water for themselves.

Those long-established power dynamics are still at work in the region. Today, Allensworth is a farmworker town where the tap water isn’t safe to drink. Many of its neighbors are large corporations and wealthy farmers, and they control many local agencies—like water and reclamation districts—which make decisions about who gets water in dry years and what to do when the floods come.

“You have these quasi-government agencies, but they’re controlled by the biggest landowners,” says Arax. “It’s a no man’s land in a lot of ways, and that’s the way it’s operated. It resorts to its own devices all the time.”

The Tulare Lake Basin also has a long history of levee sabotage. Historically, when the basin has flooded, some farmers cut levees and blocked canals to protect their land, but it also threatened the town with flooding. This is still happening today. Denise Kadara remembers getting the news from their local stormwater manager in March that a levy on the west side of town had been intentionally breached, prompting calls to evacuate.

As communities like Allensworth brace for the snowmelt this spring—and the floods they know are coming—this history of water theft, sabotage, and discrimination is always in the backs of their minds. 

Although residents at that March meeting decided against blocking the railroad culverts, they haven’t stayed quiet. Allensworth’s community leaders have been calling every government official they can think of, trying to find someone who can help them. And in the past few weeks, Takoa and his family say some politicians and government agencies have started to respond.

CalFire’s emergency response team blocked the levee that was allegedly sabotaged, as well as other breaches, and saved the town from flooding. California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the community in April and promised to send more resources. Allensworth residents are used to the system in this basin working against them, but they hope that’s finally changing. How state agencies act may be the only thing standing between Allensworth and catastrophic flooding.

“We need all the help we can get, from every agency, and every person that wants to help and believes in communities like ours,” Denise Kadara said.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed into law a bill that bars the state from considering climate impacts in its analysis of large projects such as coal mines and power plants. 

House Bill 971 was among the most controversial energy- and environment-related proposals before the Legislature this session, drawing more than 1,000 comments, 95% of which expressed opposition to the measure. HB 971 bars state regulators like the Montana Department of Environmental Quality from including analyses of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts, both within and outside Montana’s borders, when conducting comprehensive reviews of large projects. It builds off of a decade-old law barring the state from including “actual or potential impacts that are regional, national, or global in nature” in environmental reviews. 

Gianforte signed HB 971 into law May 10 over opposition from climate and environmental groups that had argued that the measure hinders the state’s ability to respond to the crisis of our time: the atmosphere-warming emissions of greenhouse gases that are shrinking the state’s snowpack, reducing summer and fall streamflows, and contributing to catastrophic flooding and longer, more intense wildfire seasons. Opponents had also argued that the majority of Montanans believe in human-caused climate change and want meaningful climate action. 

Results from a 2022 “Conservation in the West” poll of 416 registered voters in Montana bear this out. Three-fifths of those polled said there is enough evidence of climate change to support action and called for a transition to renewable energy.  

Anne Hedges with the Montana Environmental Information Center said the Legislature is “hiding its head in the sand” by passing bills like HB 971, and she anticipates it will be the subject of a constitutional lawsuit.

“Climate change is real, it matters, the climate is part of our environment, and we cannot ignore the changes that are occurring. Ignoring it doesn’t make it better. It will only make things worse and make it more difficult and expensive to deal with later.”

Anne Hedges, Montana Environmental Information Center’s director of policy and legislative affairs

“Climate change is real, it matters, the climate is part of our environment, and we cannot ignore the changes that are occurring,” Hedges said. “Ignoring it doesn’t make it better. It will only make things worse and make it more difficult and expensive to deal with later.”

“Our families are already suffering from an increase in the number of sweltering summer days, longer wildfire and smoke seasons, and historic drought,” Winona Bateman, executive director of Families for a Livable Climate, wrote in an email to Montana Free Press. “I am not sure how Gov. Gianforte imagines we will do our part to address these growing impacts, or pay for them, if we’re not working to eliminate the root cause. Why would we wait for federal regulations to be part of the solution?”

Proponents of the measure, including its sponsor, Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, argued that by pushing back on a recent ruling revoking a NorthWestern Energy gas plant permit, HB 971 underscores that it’s lawmakers, not judges, who set policy. Other proponents, including the Treasure State Resources Association and the Montana Petroleum Association, asserted that HB 971 protects state agencies from an “unworkable” mandate to measure greenhouse gas emissions and that any such regulation properly belongs under federal regulatory frameworks such as the Clean Air Act.

Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price echoed this assessment in a statement to Montana Free Press.

“House Bill 971 re-established the longstanding, bipartisan policy that analysis conducted pursuant to the Montana Environmental Policy Act does not include analysis of greenhouse gas emissions,” Price said. “The bill would allow evaluation of GHGs if it is required under federal law or if Congress amends the Clean Air Act to include carbon dioxide as a regulated pollutant.”

During a committee hearing on the bill last month, Sen. Jen Gross, D-Billings, asked Kassmier if he believes humans cause climate change.

“House Bill 971 re-established the longstanding, bipartisan policy that analysis conducted pursuant to the Montana Environmental Policy Act does not include analysis of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Gov. Greg Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price

“I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to answer that,” he replied.

For his part, Gianforte told Montana Free Press in a 2021 interview that he does believe in human-caused climate change. He said “American ingenuity” can help mitigate it and argued for the government to remove friction in the marketplace.. 

The bill also comes as a Helena judge is weighing a case brought by 16 youth plaintiffs asking the judicial branch to require the state to measure and regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That lawsuit, Held vs. Montana, is set for a 10-day hearing that will start June 12.

It also comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers a rule that would expand regulations dealing with power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses. If passed, the rule would require power plants like the coal-fired plant in Colstrip to capture 90% of its carbon emissions by 2038.

The post Gianforte signs bill banning state agencies from analyzing climate impacts  appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Four days after HyLife Foods filed its bankruptcy paperwork, workers anxiously awaited answers from management about its plans for the pork processing plant.

The employees gathered in the plant’s cafeteria before their shifts on May 1 to listen to an executive read a list of what appeared to be frequently asked questions and corresponding answers about the company’s financial situation. 

HyLife announced in early April that if it can’t sell the plant, it anticipated laying off the 1,007-person workforce by June 2. An end date has not been set, the company told Investigate Midwest on May 10.

About half of the plant’s workers are employed through a temporary visa program, and if the plant closes, they will have few options outside of immediate return to their home countries.

Many want to continue living and working in the U.S. in order to support families in their home countries, where wages are much lower.

If the company is successful in selling the plant, the buyer could choose to retain the current workforce, the executive explained during the staff meeting, according to four HyLife employees who were in attendance that day. 

Around 500 HyLife workers are employed through the H-2B visa program, which allows companies to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis when there aren’t enough Americans to fill the company’s needs, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

H-2B visas are valid for one year at a time but can be renewed annually for up to three years. The employees interviewed by Investigate Midwest all said HyLife promised to employ them for three years.

The employees requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by HyLife and to protect their future job prospects.

HyLife currently employs more H-2B workers than any other meatpacking plant in the country — twice as many as the next-biggest H-2B employer in the industry, according to the DOL data.

If the plant closes, the visas will be immediately terminated and HyLife will have 10 days to return the hundreds of H-2B workers to their home countries.

“We acknowledge this is a challenging situation for our employees and the Windom community,” HyLife CEO Grant Lazaruk said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “In an effort to be transparent, we have shared numerous updates with our team on the plant sale process. Our goal remains to find a buyer so that operations may continue under new ownership.”

H-2B visas cannot be transferred to another employer. Few options exist that would allow the workers to stay in the U.S. legally, and each of the potential legal paths come with strict eligibility requirements and some downsides. 

Employees told Investigate Midwest they’re worried about what will happen if the plant closes. In addition to supporting themselves in Minnesota, many send money home to their families. 

“Many of us are paying off cars, or we signed leases” in the U.S., an employee said in Spanish. “We don’t know what will happen with the company. We can’t call the bank and say, ‘Wait for me because the company is out of money.’”

One employee said he came to the U.S. to support his daughter through university. Another said he started working at HyLife in order to purchase a house for his family back home. 

HyLife, based in Manitoba, Canada, is Canada’s largest pork producer, according to the company’s website. Charoen Pokphand Group, a Thai holding company, has held a majority stake in HyLife since 2019. 

HyLife purchased a majority interest in the Prime Pork plant in Windom in May 2020. The company also owns a pork plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, where many H-2B workers were employed before moving to the Windom plant.

Fewer than 5,000 people live in Windom, located in the southwest corner of Minnesota.

When the executive finished reading the prepared statements — including an announcement of reduced hours — to the group of employees in the cafeteria, he left, the four attendees said. Some workers protested, saying they still had unanswered questions, workers told Investigate Midwest. Most stayed in the cafeteria instead of leaving to prepare for their shifts.

The executive returned to the cafeteria. One employee started recording, sensing the rising tensions in the room, he said.

The executive told employees to get to work immediately or be fired. If the H2-B workers didn’t go to their shifts, he said, they would be sent home.

In a video clip reviewed by Investigate Midwest, the executive’s interpreter repeated his words in Spanish. 

“…they’re going to fire you,” the interpreter said. “Those with H-2B, what does that mean? Return to Mexico.”

The crowd grew noisy in response. Some workers shouted and some whistled. Others quickly headed for the door.

“That’s a threat,” multiple women said in Spanish in the background of the video.

The employee who recorded the video requested that it not be published because it could identify him and put his job at risk. Investigate Midwest provided HyLife a detailed description of the events of the May 1 meeting based on the video and interviews with four employees who were in attendance. 

In statements provided to Investigate Midwest, HyLife did not answer questions about the May 1 meeting.

“As you can appreciate, having full context matters, and it is difficult to comment on a video Investigate Midwest refuses to share,” the company said in a May 10 statement.

The four attendees said they left the meeting with unanswered questions. 

“People were a little angry because they aren’t sticking to the hours they promised us,” one employee told Investigate Midwest in Spanish. “And to talk to the people like that…it was like we were animals or something. It’s like they were making a threat against us.”

Few options for those wanting to remain in U.S.

In a church basement in downtown Mankato on May 7, HyLife workers with H-2B visas gathered to learn about the immigration options available to them. 

Organizers had estimated around 100 people would attend. By the end of the meeting, more than 250 sat in folding chairs, leaned against the walls or watched through open doorways. Several tended to infants during the three-hour gathering.

HyLife employees organized the meeting with support from Unidos MN, a nonprofit organization advocating for social and economic equity for Latinx families in Minnesota.

Over Zoom, an immigration lawyer answered questions and outlined the paths available to the employees, if they wanted to continue living and working in the U.S. in the event that the plant closes.

“You could feel the tension, you could feel the desperation,” said Rayito Hernandez, lead organizer of Unidos MN, who participated in the meeting. “They were like, ‘We want an answer.’”

Some workers also addressed Minnesota State Rep. Luke Frederick, a member of the state’s Democratic party, and whose district includes the city of Mankato, where many workers live.

Frederick told Investigate Midwest that some of the current state legislature’s initiatives, such as issuing driver’s licenses regardless of an individual’s immigration status and expanding paid family leave, benefit H-2B workers in Minnesota. 

But the core issue is one of federal immigration law.

“What can we do at the state?” Frederick said. “That’s the question I’ve been asking.”

HyLife said it is following Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service frameworks.

“If the plant closes before our H-2B work authorization ends, we are prepared to help (H-2B workers) identify possible employment options,” the company said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “If opportunities are unavailable, HyLife will provide transportation for a safe return home.”

If the plant closes but the employees want to continue working in the U.S. on an H-2B visa, they may need to return to their home country and reapply for the program, according to federal immigration law.

There is a possibility for workers to obtain another H-2B job in the U.S. without returning to their home countries, said attorney Erin Schutte Wadzinski, co-owner of Kivu Immigration Law Firm in Worthington, Minnesota, which hosted a separate legal clinic for HyLife workers on April 29. The prospective employer would need to already have a Temporary Employment Certification from the Department of Homeland Security, have open H-2B positions and submit the new employee’s H-2B paperwork before the existing visa expires. 

“There is no obvious pathway that is available for everyone,” Schutte Wadzinski said. “Some individuals might be eligible for family petitions. Other individuals are genuinely fearful of returning to their home country and wish to seek asylum in the United States.”

Being granted asylum would permit an individual to live and work in the U.S. In order to qualify for asylum, the person must prove that they are subject to persecution in their home country due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a specific social group. 

During the asylum application process, and after asylum is granted, petitioners can’t visit their home countries. (H-2B visas allow the workers to travel internationally. Hourly HyLife employees employed for less than five years receive 15 vacation and personal days, according to a 2022 copy of the plant’s employee handbook.)

Family visas require sponsorship by an immediate relative, like a parent, spouse or adult child who is a citizen of the U.S.

There are other visas available — for victims of human trafficking or crimes that take place in the U.S. Applicants have to weigh the pros against the cost, processing times and international travel restrictions of each option.

Nonresidents who can prove they were victims of or witnesses to violations of labor rights can also request deferred action from the DHS. Deferred action allows non-resident immigrants to temporarily live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

Tensions rise as potential plant closure looms

On April 10, in compliance with federal regulations, HyLife Foods sent a letter to the state government informing officials — and its employees — that the company would have to lay off its workforce if the company didn’t find a buyer. 

Two and a half weeks later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

“On April 27, 2023, Windom entered Chapter 11, a formal court-supervised process, for our production plant in Minnesota,” HyLife president and CEO Lazaruk said in an April 27 statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “This helps us to move forward with our restructuring plan while we pursue a potential sale, so that the plant can continue under new ownership.”

The executive reiterated that the company was still seeking a buyer at the May 1 employee meeting, four workers told Investigate Midwest.

“We are still actively seeking a buyer,” HyLife said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest on May 10. “An end date for Windom has not been set. We continue communicating with our team and will give additional updates as more details become available.”

As of May 12, the company had not announced a sale.

HyLife said it has reduced the scheduled work hours for employees by 25%, the maximum allowable under H-2B visa regulations, because the plant is processing fewer hogs.

“We understand this personally impacts our employees and have shared additional Minnesota Unemployment Insurance resources to help support individuals exploring top-up options,” the company said in its statement.

Many non-H-2B employees have already left for other jobs, employees said, leaving the rest of the workforce short-staffed. Work has become more difficult in recent weeks due to the departures, they said.

One employee said he’d had to move to different positions in the plant multiple times recently, including working in the slaughter area for the first time, where the smell of the pig blood and excrement makes him nauseous, he said.

Conflicts are increasing among coworkers and between workers and their supervisors, the employee said.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said in Spanish.

Because their visas aren’t transferable to other workplaces, and they don’t have jobs lined up in their home countries, three employees who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they plan to work at HyLife until their visas expire.

“Life must go on,” one employee said. “Until the last day of the plant, we will still be here and we will still continue to work.”

The post In bankruptcy’s wake, a Minnesota meatpacking plant’s visa workers face an uncertain future appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

After receiving a presentation May 9 from Graham Kraus, CEO of the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), the San Benito County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to endorse CSAC’s Accountability, Transparency, Housing, Outreach, Mitigation & Economic Opportunity (AT HOME) plan.

Graham described the creation of AT HOME as the “first comprehensive program to address homelessness in the state of California.”

“The most basic thing about government is to clarify who’s supposed to be doing what,” he said, “and in homelessness that doesn’t exist in California, and it doesn’t exist in any other state in the country. Given the crisis level that this issue is at in California, that needs to change.”

Graham said California’s inability to define who does what is “leading to confusion on the part of the public, and there is no real accountability within the state government.”

“Money is flowing in one direction to counties and cities and the work that is being done is completely disconnected from that flow of dollars,” he said. 

Graham added that in coming up with the program, CSAC analyzed years’ worth of investments, policy changes and work done at the local and the statewide levels. In addition, he said CSAC got input from counties on what works, what doesn’t and the challenges to making progress.

Graham said the AT HOME plan aims to streamline the process to focus on homelessness with local accountability, which he said is the uniqueness of the plan because no one with the state is held accountable.  

The plan includes a single, locally developed, countywide plan with one “fiscal agent where the dollars flow through” that aligns responsibilities for who is doing what with the dollars to address local homelessness issues. The county would have the unique authority to address the overall approach to homelessness, he said.

He said the county’s and cities’ responsibilities would have to be clearly defined.

“We’re recommending a framework that would include cities being responsible for citing, standing up, and funding homeless shelters and transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and doing encampment cleanup and sanitation where there are encampments in incorporated areas,” he said. “If these issues exist in the unincorporated area, then the county would be responsible.”

If the county were to adopt that framework, it would significantly change the process in San Benito County as the county is the lead in operating the homeless shelter on San Felipe Road, providing transitional housing and offering other programs aimed at addressing homelessness. 

BenitoLink reached out to Enrique Arreola, Deputy Director at the county’s Community Services and Workforce Development agency to ask how this framework could change services within the county but at the time of publication he had not returned the call. 

Graham added another change CSAC is advocating for is ongoing funding from the state rather than the current one-time grants process.

He said rural counties “need to have maximum flexibility because your infrastructure is different” and “there needs to be flexibility so you can put something in place that makes sense for your community.”

Graham said CSAC has been working with the governor and state legislature, and has held meetings with the White House and other federal entities to advocate for the program.

A bill was drafted and released May 9, and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom in an effort to replace the language in the governor’s current homelessness accountability bill (AB 799).

By endorsing AT HOME, he said the county would add its voice to the coalition, giving it the strength and unity to address homelessness statewide.

“This is certainly not perfect, but it is the only comprehensive plan that is on the table to address homelessness in California,” he said.

Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki said it is important that CSAC take the lead to bring about a “consistency from county to county.” He said, however, the problem is more than a shelter issue.

“The biggest issue here is a drug addiction issue,” he said. “This is a mental health issue. And yes, it’s an economic issue to a certain extent, but it’s largely a drug addiction and a mental health issue and that’s where the focus of any plan on homelessness should be.”

Supervisor Bea Gonzales said the CSAC plan would give the county “teeth to address more in terms of public services, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, mental illness, we’ll be able to allocate how and where the funds need to be put so we can address our own individual problems.”

While Supervisor Angela Curro agreed that drug addiction factors into the homelessness problem, she pointed out that many homeless individuals are not willing to seek help or go into homeless shelters or obey the laws of the community.

“The only way we’re going to address homelessness is with nonprofits, with individuals that have the ability to connect with people and transition them out,” she said. “But how do we help fund that? That would be through the AT HOME program, in my opinion.”

Resident Elia Salinas said that while the government has been unsuccessful in dealing with homelessness and has only assured job security for those in charge of programs, there is a local organization that is delivering results.

“We have a nonprofit here in town with Linda Lampe and Our Father’s House who actually takes people off the streets and helps them.”

  We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. It is expensive to produce local news and community support is what keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service, nonprofit news.

The post San Benito County endorses ‘comprehensive program’ to address homelessness appeared first on BenitoLink.

Given that Montana’s top two industries are agriculture and recreation, it should come as no surprise that Montanans are quick to engage with policies seeking changes to the water and open space that are foundational to both. 

How proposals to change water rights, stream access and conservation funding were received by policymakers the past four months illuminates entrenched sources of tension — between developer and agricultural interests, between federal and state wildlife managers, and even between Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, and members of his own party. Here are three takeaways from the 2023 legislative session informed by bills that passed, bills that failed and funding fights that remain unresolved.

PROPOSALS SEEKING TO CHANGE STREAM ACCESS, PERMANENT CONSERVATION EASEMENTS AND EXEMPT WELLS FLOUNDER

Three proposals seeking to change what might be euphemistically called “sensitive pieces of code” failed to find favor this session, suggesting Montanans’ continued — and impassioned — engagement with public land access and water rights issues.

One failed measure, Senate Bill 357, sought to prohibit the state from acquiring permanent easements, which the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks use to support wildlife habitat and public access initiatives. After garnering opposition from a diverse set of stakeholders, ranging from timber companies and agricultural associations to conservation organizations and hunting advocacy groups, the Senate Fish and Game Committee tabled the bill over the wishes of its chair (and SB 357 sponsor), Steve Hinebauche, R-Wibaux, who had argued that “forever is a long time” and that a proliferation of perpetual easements could impede the construction of infrastructure such as roads and transmission lines. Opponents of SB 357 countered that those who enter into easement agreements do so willingly and that conservation easements support the wildlife, recreational opportunities and open spaces many Montanans treasure.

Another proposal to change Montana law dealing with easements — in this instance, rights of way that have been historically used by the public, but never codified on a deed — had a swift rise and an equally swift fall this session. With little in the way of public notice, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on and passed Senate Bill 497, which sought to do two things: establish that a landowner can use the presence of government signs over a five-year period to void prescriptive easement claims, and prevent groups who sue over easement issues from recovering attorneys fees.

In the midst of the transmittal break crunch, SB 497 failed in the Senate, 14-36. Sen. Jeff Welborn, R-Dillon, argued that it doesn’t work well to meddle with a “sensitive piece of code” like Montana’s Stream Access Law without bringing stakeholders along, especially in the “11th hour.” 

Finally, a real estate- and building industry-backed proposal to expand a loophole in water law dealing with groundwater wells failed to overcome an outpouring of opposition. Agricultural groups leery of House Bill 642’s potential to reduce other users’ access to water opposed the measure, as did environmental groups concerned about its capacity to degrade water quality and facilitate residential sprawl. Proponents had argued the revisions would help expand the state’s tight housing supply and introduce more clarity and lawmaker input to the Montana Water Use Act, which has been subject to judicial scrutiny in recent years.

Given the makeup of this Legislature, lawmakers probably could have passed a more moderate proposal, some onlookers suggested.

“Proponents of that bill probably could have passed something, but I think they went way too far,” Montana Environmental Information Center Deputy Director Derf Johson said. “House Natural Resources is probably the most pro-development committee in the Legislature [and even they] wouldn’t let that move forward.”

LAWMAKERS TANGO WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVER GRIZZLY MANAGEMENT

In the natural resource realm, nothing seems to spotlight the tension between federal and state regulations as brightly as endangered species management. Threatened or endangered  species are subject to federal protections that limit states’ ability to set population targets, establish hunting seasons and permit habitat-altering timber sales or mining projects. During the 2023 session, lawmakers engaged in a careful dance with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is taking a close look at the recovery of grizzly bears and Montana wildlife laws as it considers removing federal protections. 

In February, USFWS Director Martha Williams wrote a letter to FWP Director Henry Worsech highlighting state laws that might work counter to Montana’s efforts to assume control over grizzlies. She wrote that the 2023 legislative session “presents a good opportunity” to address those concerns.

The Legislature took Williams’ recommendation to heart. Though lawmakers ultimately decided to shelve a proposal titled “require management of delisted grizzly bears at sustainable levels,” they did pass Senate Bill 295, “Revising Laws to Accommodate Grizzly Delisting.” That bill directs the state to “manage grizzly bear populations at levels necessary to maintain delisted status,” by sticking to an established mortality threshold. SB 295 critics note that it makes it legal, post-delisting, for a rancher to obtain a permit to kill a bear “threatening” livestock without specifying the behavior that constitutes “threatening.”

Mindful of Williams’ recommendations — and Gov. Greg Gianforte’s explicit desire to resume state management of grizzlies — the Legislature balked at passing predator hunting measures sponsored by Rep. Paul Fielder, R-Thompson Falls. Fielder had attempted to write seasons for trapping wolves and pursuing black bears with hounds into state law. He also sought to override the Fish and Wildlife Commission’s ability to disallow neck snares. All three proposals narrowly failed the GOP-supermajority in the House, largely due to concerns that they would lead to preventable grizzly bear deaths.

THE  FIGHT OVER HABITAT MONTANA FUNDING IS ONGOING 

One of the Legislature’s biggest fights concerning land management —  where marijuana tax revenues should be allocated — remains unresolved. Gianforte and backers of a bill that garnered the approval of 86% of lawmakers remain locked in a tense separation-of-powers tussle over a bill that would establish a fund to support habitat and conservation initiatives.

Marijuana tax allocation had been a long-simmering fight this session, but it hit a fever pitch during the Legislature’s final week. 

A variety of different visions for the marijuana taxes emerged this session as policymakers garnered clarity on just how much money is at stake: more than $50 million annually. Some legislators, such as Rep. Marta Bergtolio, R-Montana City, suggested that the Legislature should cut the allocations for conservation and recreation programs codified in law last session and funnel more money toward law enforcement and the Department of Justice. Others, such as Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, and House Appropriations Chair Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, called for the bulk of collections to go toward the General Fund so lawmakers have an opportunity to allocate the funds toward the state’s most pressing needs on a session-by-session basis. But Senate Bill 442, the proposal that garnered the most support among both lawmakers and public commenters, seeks to divide those revenues between county road construction and maintenance, conservation and recreation initiatives, and programming for addiction treatment and veterans. A sizable chunk would go toward the General Fund as well.

That proposal might have garnered widespread support from the legislative branch, but it didn’t align with the priorities of the governor, who has argued that funding for wildlife habitat is in good shape while other state responsibilities remain underfunded. The Bertoglio bill Gianforte favored died somewhat early, and an attempt to reincorporate much of it in a late-session “generally revise marijuana laws” bill floundered. Then, the day after the Senate issued its final vote on SB 442, Gianforte made good on his pledge to Republican leadership to veto it, rejecting the proposal with a swiftness that Sen. Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, described as “curious.”

Now there’s a question as to whether lawmakers should have a final opportunity to weigh in on SB 442 by voting to override the veto. That question hinges on whether the Legislature was technically in session — the governor’s office maintains the veto was issued before the Senate moved to adjourn — and whether lawmakers were given sufficient notice of the veto. In letters and petitions to Jacobsen and Gianforte, Lang and other SB 442 backers such as the Montana Association of Counties, Wild Montana and Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, have argued a veto override poll is justified by the circumstances since the governor’s veto was not clear when the Senate voted to adjourn. 

On May 10, Wild Montana sent a letter to Gianforte urging his cooperation with the veto override process. In it, they argue that the constitution and state law make “crystal-clear” that the Legislature should have the final say in this instance and there is no legal support for stripping that power from the Legislature with “creative timing.”

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen appears to be disinclined to get into the middle of the debate. In an email to Montana Free Press, Secretary of State spokesperson Richie Melby said his office “plays a ministerial role only” for the executive and legislative branches and “bills vetoed during the legislative session are not returned to the Secretary of State’s Office.”

“I have lots of questions,” Sen. Lang told MTFP. “I still question whether it was legally vetoed.”

The post Three takeaways from lawmakers’ approach to natural resources management appeared first on Montana Free Press.

More than 90% of Americans access drinking water through public water systems, which are regulated at the state and local level, according to the government-standardized data portal USA FACTS.

During 2021, there were 153,501 total water quality violations across all U.S. states and territories. Of the total violations, more than 63% were found because of issues with monitoring and reporting by regulatory agencies. 

The high proportion of monitoring, reporting and public notification violations raises questions about how well tens of thousands of public water supply systems test for and report potential health violations to EPA and the public, according to a USA FACTS report released in November 2022.

While the total number of violations in 2021 is lower than the 10-year average, the frequency of drinking water violations does not appear to be decreasing over time, according to the report.

In states such as Iowa and other big agricultural states — with extensive crop production and livestock farming, which involves the use of fertilizer, pesticides and manure — runoff from these activities contributes to water pollution. 

These pollutants, particularly nitrates and phosphates, can enter water bodies, causing problems such as harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion and degradation of aquatic ecosystems.

The post Most water quality violations are from monitoring and reporting issues appeared first on Investigate Midwest.