Radio War Nerd EP #495 — Pistachio Wars, feat. Yasha Levine & Rowan Wernham
Guests: Yasha Levine & Rowan Wernham
Recorded: January 21, 2025
We talk to Yasha Levine & Rowan Wernham about the release of their documentary "Pistachio Wars" on water politics, oligarchy & the death of California.
Watch Pistachio Wars here.
*The Central Valley
*Central Valley view from the windshield
*later days, water...
Total time: 1:24:57
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (46)
not to be a railroad foamer but I'm pretty sure Victorville got its start as the last rail yard before entering LA
that also explains the warehouses
Additionally id like to stress how amazing this episode is. A too great majority of the population has no concept of how public utilities work and take it for granted. It vexes me that a century of corp ag and other water vampires (Mark’s term) have bulldozed what any sensible water resource engineer or environmental scientist has identified as the most unsustainable development in the US (possibly the world). Southern California should be one of the last places where a titanic city like LA settles.
What John is discussing around 35:00 is a source of many stream problems all in the US. I am a civil engineer in the southeast US and we do many stream restoration projects on army corps’ dredged channels. These channels are deep and narrow, as to convey water away from an floodplain quickly, but 80-100 years later we can see the adverse effects. Not only does it prevent significant habitation (no pools or slow moving areas for plants and other wildlife to develop), but most of the channel banks have extreme erosion problems. Remember that streams carry not only water, but also sediment (dirt) so what we have are these high speed sediment highways that cost a lot to rehabilitate.
Kudos for talking about exclusion of agriculture workers from National Labor Relations Act. This is something that haunts us today and is applied to new industries as well (most workers in cannabis farms and manufacturing facilities are now classified as ag workers and thus unable to unionize)
You’re doing great! Keep it up! 👏
Memphis rapper Pooh Shiesty is currently serving time in USP Victorville
Love california episodes!
This story has reaaalllly strong parallels with the development of south Florida. New-deal-inaugurated federal water management projects on behalf of real estate speculators/scammers, lowering of the water table, saltwater intrusions into aquifers. And big agricultural interests driving the most aggressive water management, except there it’s sugar firms run by Cuban exiles. Main difference is that it’s all on top of the Everglades! Would love to hear an ep or a story linking the two together
Perky Pat mentioned!
I’m from the straits in Contra Costa that John is talking about. Pure WWII infrastructure, Mare Island, the Maritime Academy, the abandoned brick factory. Now it’s all oil refineries
Also I spent time in the Central Valley as an outsider, and boy do I know the feeling of when you’re done with that place for life
I always wondered why nobody mentions Turkish pistachios in this story? Turkey is the second or third producer country, I think, and obviously not sanctioned? Here in Europe, pistachios usually come from Turkey, less frequently from Iran, definitely not from the US afaik...
John, you got the direction of flow of the Conta Costa canal backwards. It Central Valley water used by CC cities and industry.
California is currently number 2 in new arrivals, has the 5th biggest economy in the world, and the most beautiful geography of any single state. A funeral notice seems premature.
Speaking of rough, desert LA exurbs, who else is bumping this after listening to this episode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dxHOD33VJU
Pistachios are on their way out in the southern Central Valley, almonds too. Prices have been in decline all decade. I don’t know about Paramount/Wonderful specifically , but farmers are tearing out orchards and going back to basic foodstuffs. Not sure what that does to the Resnick’s policy toward Iran.
I moved to CA for the nature and I’m planning on staying anyway. Brilliant ep, gonna try to go to the screening of the doc in LA
Dang a cubic kilometer of water is so much. 1 trillion kilograms. 100 TRILLION kg of groundwater lost for some nuts.
My copy of Erdogan Pizza just arrived
It's a fun one, I enjoyed it
Make some "I ♥ Victorville" t-shirts you cowards
For anyone interested in water issues in the American West, the ur-text remains "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner, first published in 1986, revised in 1993 and new forward in 2017. The West has been living in a make-believe world, best exemplified by the Colorado River Compact, which allocated water to western states based on historically high flows. Now, as drought and higher temperatures become the reality of climate change, the Compact is being "re-negotiated." As for the sinking of the Central Valley being the largest man-made ecological disaster, I have not researched the square miles of both, but I think the USSR gave us real competition with the destruction of the Aral Sea. Talk about a race to the bottom. As for California being dead, yes, it does have enormous problems. It also has vast, highly concentrated wealth. Dinosaurs take a long time to die.
The Great Salt Lake is on track to become the America Aral Sea. Another issue is increasing soil salinity caused by irrigation.
The king of California https://g.co/kgs/VQft5vd
This is an awesome book that tells the story of the Boswell family commandeering the 640 square mile inland estuary known as Tulare Lake.
I was listening to Yasha on another show while doing my job as a postman, and got stopped by a boomer who wanted to deny climate change at me about and after 5 minutes of trying to talk gently talk old mate down he starts on "the Jewish couple that took all LAs water"
Great episode. L.A. county does have a decent plan approved to remove pavement in order to restore groundwater… whether or not the projects will be accomplished as another story, but it is an interesting element to look at and it can be found on the city planning website
Sous les pavés, le....lac?
Is this the sequel to east of eden?
(In a similar vein the pacific northwest militia episode is an excellent sequel to my favorite american novel Sometimes a Great Notion, and the years of lead series a great companion to the neapolitan novels)
I don’t want to fight and die in the california water wars 😭
You won’t, incarcerated people and undocumented workers are who are currently fighting the water wars for you
What I’m getting from this is that California has been on the leading edge of “capitalism” and it is the canary in the coal mine for what the rest of us should expect
Each state is so different, and has different issues. For example Texans are content to not even pretend to care about public infrastructure so the population has been preparing in completely different ways for climate catastrophe with private generators and wells at a larger scale than Cali — what will happen is your groceries will get even more drastically expensive considering most of your food comes from Cali
Make this free
You always have the option of using the MP3 link my guy
Just listened to Yasha and Rowan on Chapo. They're making the media rounds.
Victorville looks insane on a map. It’s in the desert, it’s some developed areas, and then there’s miles and miles of shitty desert plots with dirt roads and lonely houses up to the mountain ridge.
Didn't listen yet, so sorry if it's in there. But we're fiending for a Ukraine update! Maybe just waiting for the shit to truly collapse before you do? Which is fair
Always a joy to hear from Yasha. Gonna be watching his and Rowan’s doc this weekend.
I feel like stalin’s prescription for the Nazi party (un-alive the top 50,000 members of the party) would be a great start to rectifying the American oligarchy. Just spitballing. App ra Poe of nothing
He un-alived the top 50,000 members of his communist party first.
The daily mail as a beacon for good journalism….. How far we have fallen
National propaganda rag (NPR) claims that the rezniks are not to blame.
Look at their donors