Suit
filed against farm contractor over wages [Associated Press]
California
labor officials are suing a farm labor contractor for $1.6 million over
allegations the company failed to properly pay 150 farmworkers. In a suit filed
Tuesday in Monterey County Superior Court by California Labor Commissioner
Julie Su, the commissioner claims that a Greenfield farm labor contractor,
Salvador Zavala Chavez, violated the law by failing to provide minimum wage and
overtime to workers. The alleged violations happened from April 2009 to April
2012 at more than 10 work locations, most of them in Monterey County. State
officials said the workers picked lettuce and worked in grape fields over ten
hours a day without receiving overtime pay.
Six
Central Coast farms resolve violations of new ag runoff rules [San Luis Obispo
Tribune]
Six
Central Coast farms have resolved their outstanding violations of new rules
designed to reduce polluted runoff from agricultural land. The Central Coast
Regional Water Quality Control Board announced today that all of the farms in
violation of the Irrigated Lands Agricultural Order paid their overdue
cooperative monitoring fees as well as penalties to the board to cover
investigation and enforcement costs. “Most Central Coast farmers are
conscientious land stewards,” said Ken Harris, the water board’s interim
executive officer. “It’s not fair to the vast majority who work hard to stay in
compliance when others don’t.”
Op-Ed: Refreshing the
Clean Water Act [Los Angeles Times]
On
Thursday, one of the country's most effective environmental laws — the federal
Clean Water Act — will turn 40….The Clean Water Act as written can't create the
universally fishable, swimmable and drinkable (where appropriate) waters that
Congress envisioned when it passed the act 40 years ago. It hasn't been updated
in 25 years, and it desperately needs to be. Many kinds of pollution stemming
from agriculture, mining, septic systems and the timber industry are still
largely unregulated, and they are causing problems such as dead zones, hypoxic
waters and harmful algal blooms in the nation's waters.
S.J.
supes OK solar facility [Stockton Record]
The
San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to a plan
to build a 20-acre solar power facility in an eastern, rural area of the
county, overturning a decision by the county Planning Commission to deny the
project….Supervisors approved the project but said they would like to see the
county develop a more comprehensive approach to requests to build new solar and
wind power projects in the county….He also said the land for the project is not
considered prime agricultural land, nor is the land a Williamson Act
parcel….Board members also noted the county was lacking a policy specific to
large solar facilities, which have been more common in the state because of a
mandate to increase the use of sustainable sources of energy, like solar and
wind. "That just puts a bull's-eye on any vacant farmland,"
Supervisor Larry Ruhstaller said.The San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation opposed
the project, and bureau representative Katie Patterson stressed the need for
new county rules. "We're a few years behind other counties. ... We need to
sit down and go to the drawing board," she said.
Wine
experts: worst grape harvest in half century [Associated Press]
…drought,
frost and hail have combined to ravage Europe's wine grape harvest, which in
key regions this year will be the smallest in half a century, vintners say.
Thierry Coste, an expert with the European Union farmers' union, said Wednesday
that France's grape harvest is expected to slump by almost 20 percent compared
with last year. Italy's grape crop showed a 7 percent drop — on top of a
decline in 2011….France's Champagne and Burgundy regions were hard hit by
weather conditions that particularly affected the prevalent Chardonnay grape,
used to make the world's most famous sparkling wine and the luxurious whites
from those regions….also depends on Chardonnay….The European wine harvest
automatically has a global impact since it accounts for some 62 percent of the
worldwide wine production.
Editorial: Central Valley's
wildlife refuges need water, too [Sacramento Bee]
…There
is no doubt that the Bureau of Reclamation – the agency that manages water from
Lake Shasta and other federal reservoirs – has worked hard to increase water to
refuges. Still, it hasn't come close to meeting the requirements of the 1992
Central Valley Project Improvement Act….It is too soon to know if these
gyrating water deliveries are causing harm to migrating waterfowl. It should be
remembered that, in the Sacramento Valley, rice fields are beneficial to birds
and there are far more acres in rice than in refuges. Still, there is no
denying that a dry refuge is a wasted refuge, a problem the 1992 law sought to
correct….We hear a lot from Southern California these days about the need for
reliable water supplies. Refuges need that, too.
Ag
Today is distributed to county Farm Bureaus, CFBF directors and CFBF staff, for
information purposes, by the CFBF Communications/News Division, 916-561-5550; news@cfbf.com.
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