‘A lot of people are scared’: Groups work to educate California farmworkers about COVID-19 vaccine [Palm Springs Desert Sun]
… Efforts to prioritize agricultural workers for vaccination will likely fall flat unless accompanied by targeted outreach and education campaigns. Like many Americans, farmworkers have concerns about the vaccine, including about its safety and potential side effects. Those fears are compounded by concerns that getting vaccinated could jeopardize their status in the country, advocates say. … Convincing agricultural workers of the vaccine’s safety and efficacy could be a massive task.
Here’s why few farmworkers isolate in California’s free COVID-19 hotel rooms [CalMatters/Salinas Californian]
… A joint investigation by the Documenting COVID-19 project at the Brown Institute, CalMatters and The Salinas Californian reveals just around 80 of the state’s over 800,000 farmworkers have quarantined or isolated in hotel rooms for agricultural workers since the program was announced in July. In interviews with nearly 20 farmworkers, advocates and administrators, as well as a review of internal county emails obtained through record requests, reporters found a potent cocktail of fear, testing barriers and miscalculations have hobbled the statewide hotel isolation and quarantine program even as the virus spreads faster in California’s vast farmworker population than in the general public.
Amid a crushing pandemic, this party van is a lifeline for California farmworkers [Los Angeles Times]
… A party van helps when trying to reach farmworkers in dark pandemic times. … Once he ditched his organization’s old white van — which screamed “feds” and alarmed workers and farmers alike — he found a warmer welcome. … At the beginning, his goal was to deliver 50,000 masks provided through a state grant. But being in the fields, he can start conversations, looking for how best to help. … Most workers have coats; socks and gloves wear out faster. When Castorena conducted a survey asking workers about their needs, the top answer was toothbrush and toothpaste, followed by a toy for their children.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/party-van-gives-covid-19-masks-food-farmworkers
Forty years from the UFW heyday, unionized farmworkers are sparse in Napa Valley [Napa Valley Register]
… For a winegrowing region that in 1985 hosted labor advocate Cesar Chavez as he marched through its streets, the recent voices of unions in Napa Valley have been muted.
That’s not to say the region’s farmworkers haven’t benefited from union advocacy. Napa Valley has long had a reputation for paying its vineyard workers high wages. … Even at the UFW’s peak in the late 1970s, there were only about a half a dozen or so wineries with unionized vineyard workforces in Napa Valley, according to Philip L. Martin, farm labor specialist and professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis.
Temperance Flat Dam returns $171 million to state. Still, backers swear it’s ‘not dead’ [Fresno Bee]
Backers of a $3 billion project to construct the tallest dam in California swear the project isn’t dead, despite the Temperance Flat Reservoir Authority returning money and canceling applications. … The Temperance Flat Reservoir Authority in October requested the California Water Commission use the funds elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley for other storage projects, which Fukuda said could include groundwater recharge. The funds aren’t guaranteed to stay in the San Joaquin Valley, but at its Dec. 16 meeting, the California Water Commission voted to open a process to accept new water storage proposals that could be funded by the $171 million previously designated for Temperance Flat.
https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/article247954390.html
Changes caused by worsening wildfires in California forests will last centuries [Los Angeles Times]
… As California takes stock of its worst wildfire season on record, experts say that increasingly large and devastating fires have already altered the state’s iconic forests for centuries to come. Exacerbated by a warming climate and decades of aggressive fire suppression efforts — which left large areas of wilderness overgrown — these fires will continue to alter the landscape and, in some cases, will leave it more susceptible to wildfire than ever before, they say. In other cases, the flames were likely to restore patches of wildland to their original state.
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