KVPR News Podcast

For more than two decades the small Tulare County community of Tooleville has been without a secure supply of safe drinking water. The simplest solution would be to connect the town’s water system to that of its neighbor, the City of Exeter. It would take less than a mile of pipe to get it done. But years of red tape and failed negotiations have kept the consolidation from taking place. Now the state has stepped in with a new law, SB 403, which could bring safe drinking water to Tooleville and hundreds of communities like it throughout the Central Valley. To learn more, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke to Michael Claiborne, directing attorney for the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability.

The tricolored blackbird, native almost exclusively to Central California, gained protection under the state’s Endangered Species Act in 2018. Since then, the most at-risk colonies have successfully been protected, thanks in large part to San Joaquin Valley dairies.

The California Reporting Project has been gathering police misconduct files from departments around the state, including Bakersfield. The collaboration, which includes dozens of newsrooms including KVPR, is developing a web tool that will allow community members to explore misconduct files. They are also seeking feedback from the public to enhance that tool. To learn more about the project, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with Lezla Gooden, a reporter and engagement producer for the California Reporting Project.

The physical and emotional toll of treating COVID-19 patients is driving many nurses to leave the profession, and it's raising alarms about the state’s capacity to educate their replacements. To learn more about why nursing programs are so impacted, and how to fix them, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with Catherine Kennedy, a registered nurse and a president of the California Nurses Association, Ashley A. Smith, a reporter with EdSource, and Keisha Lewis Nesbitt, director of nursing at Fresno City College.

Photojournalist Ryan Christopher Jones spent five years documenting one Fresno family’s transition from poverty into the middle class. His images were recently published in “The Atlantic.” Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke to Jones about how the project evolved from its initial concept of exploring the growing tech scene in Fresno, into an examination of social mobility.

The first thing you notice in the livestock pavilion at the Big Fresno Fair is the sound. There are the animals, of course: The cows and goats being steered to their enclosures, the squeals of hogs less than excited about being bathed, and the blow dryers fluffing up freshly shorn sheep.

If there’s one thing Leland Decker will teach you, it’s this. People who love to be around horses, they really love to be around horses. There’s no gray area.

Drought and climate change are presenting big challenges to California farmers.

While working as an elementary school teacher in the Central Valley, Marie Casao was disturbed by how her fellow educators taught indengous history to their students. So after earning a master’s degree in education from Fresno State, she curated a curriculum of resources for teachers looking to challenge stereotypes about Native Americans in their classrooms. Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with Casao about the project.

Since 1989, October has been designated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. But misperceptions about domestic violence continue to permeate our culture. To learn more, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with Tracey Salisbury, assistant professor of interdisciplinary and ethnic studies at California State University, Bakersfield.