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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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In summary

California utilities regulators are bringing down “return on equity” payments to power company shareholders. It’s the lowest profit margin in 20 years for PG&E and Southern California Edison, but will be hard to notice in your payments.

With California electric rates stuck at nearly the highest in the nation, the state’s utility regulator is poised to lower the payout shareholders can receive from California’s three large investor-owned power companies.

In a proposed decision, the California Public Utilities Commission recommended dropping the “return on equity” by 0.35% each for Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. If approved, shareholders of all three companies would see a potential return next year of just under 10%. Such returns for PG&E and Edison haven’t dipped below double digits in at least 20 years.

Utilities said the decline would affect their ability to bring in needed investment for their work. Critics of the decision said that the decline is too small to meaningfully impact ratepayers’ bills, even if it’s a step in the right direction.

“California and other [public utility commissions] authorize rates of return that are far in excess of the statutory requirement,” said Mark Ellis, former chief economist at Sempra, which owns San Diego Gas & Electric.

The California Public Utility Commission is expected to vote on the decision in December.

Californians pay the second-highest electric rates in the U.S. after Hawaii, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A number of factors go into those rates, including wildfire mitigation costs. PG&E in particular has attracted the ire of California customers for its frequent rate hikes within the last year.

Baked into those bills is the return on equity, money meant to compensate shareholders for the risk of doing business. These shareholder return rates are set by each state’s utility regulators and hover nationally around 10%. If approved, PG&E’s rate would be 9.93% (down from 10.28%), Edison would be 9.98% (down from 10.33%), and San Diego Gas & Electric would be 9.88% (down from 10.23%). These rates are not automatically guaranteed – utilities can fall short of this return if they don’t keep down costs, such as project overruns or unexpected lawsuit fees.

A small change in this rate can be a difference of millions of dollars for ratepayers. The return is a percentage of the rate base, the total value of a utility’s assets it can earn a return on; this includes projects such as building a new power plant, for example. The rate bases for California’s three large investor-owned utilities have steadily grown each year as they add new customers and projects, increasing the amount that shareholders can receive.

PG&E, for example, had a 10% shareholder return in 2023, a possible return of about $125 million. Had it been 1% lower, the potential return would have been $12.5 million less.

“The proposed cost of capital decision needs refinement to better reflect California’s unique risks and market realities,” said Edison spokesperson Jeff Monford. “Making those refinements in the final decision will enhance SCE’s ability to finance essential infrastructure projects for a more reliable, resilient and ready electric grid.”

PG&E spokesperson Jennifer Robison echoed this sentiment, saying the decision “fails to acknowledge current elevated risks to help attract the needed investment for California’s energy systems.”

Anthony Wagner, spokesperson at San Diego Gas & Electric, said, “A decision that accurately reflects these realities is essential to enabling investments that reduce wildfire risk, strengthen reliability, replace aging infrastructure and advance California’s clean energy transition for the benefit of the communities we serve.”

Utilities routinely request these rates be pushed higher because they are a key part of what goes into utilities’ credit rating, affecting the interest they pay on loans for infrastructure investments. But in recent years, experts and consumer advocates point to a mismatch – the utility industry is typically considered low-risk, but critics say the shareholder return rates don’t reflect that. Rates for U.S. 10-year treasury bonds, which are considered the benchmark for a risk-free investment, are about half of the national average for approved utility shareholder return rates. And it’s costing utility ratepayers across the country as much as $7 billion annually, according to academics.

Ellis, the former Sempra economist, said there is a way to lower shareholder returns while keeping customer bills in check and maintaining credit ratings that the commission has not yet explored – changing the balance of debt and equity each utility has.

“You really need to understand credit,” he said. “This is where they’re going to get you.”

The commission is allowed to set the debt-equity balance when it determines shareholder returns, but it left this unchanged for all three utilities in its proposed decision for 2026. Keeping shareholder return rates high as the main means for keeping credit ratings up, Ellis said, unnecessarily burdens ratepayers.

Jean Pauline Rusk-Hiler Dumas was born February 2 1937. She passed away with family by her side on November 3, 2025.

Jean was well known for her cheerful, hospitable spirit. She loved creation, camping, travel throughout the United State and Canada, and her kitties. Jean dearly loved her family and friends, always making time for them. 

Jean lived most of her life in California, from Southern California to her home in Eureka. Jean graduated from Eureka High School and worked as a bookkeeper and proofreader for the Times-Standard newspaper.  She spent a brief time in Washington, DC, where she met the love of her life, Jack Dumas.

They were married in 1957 and moved to Eureka, where they began their family. Jack and Jean had a second home in  Salyer, where they spent many happy years entertaining friends and family, fishing, canning produce from their garden and enjoying the beauty of the Trinity River. 

Jean would say the most important accomplishment in her life was deep respect for the Bible. In 1960, through her study of the Bible, she learned God has a name, Jehovah, and shared that and the promises from him with everyone who would listen. 1965 saw her make a dedication to Jehovah and become a baptized Jehovah’s Witness. Jean proved her love for her faith, dedicating many hours to volunteer work. The family incorporated vacations with the annual Bible conventions they attended across the country and Canada. 

Jean helped with the family business as the bookkeeper and secretary. She also had a small floral business, “Heirloom Bouquets,” where she created floral bouquets for weddings and other special events. 

Jean is survived by daughters Dawn Larson (Louis Emmerik), Denise “Dee Dee” Lowery (Lyle), and DeAnne Dumas (Chris Phillips); grandchildren Brandon, Trevon, and Shiloh; great grandson Daniel; nieces, nephews, sisters in law, brothers in law, and many other family and beloved friends.

Jean is predeceased by her husband of 64 years, Jack Dumas; parents Lily Mae Rusk Hiler and John Rusk; sisters Bobbie Bayich and Margerette Smith; several nieces an nephews; sisters in law and brothers in law; dearly loved grandmother Dora Barnhill; and mother- and father-in-law Myrtle and Edward Dumas.

The family wishes to thank all those who sent cards, meals and other messages of condolence. We truly appreciate the outpouring of love. 

Thank you to all the many Doctors and caregivers who were so kind to Mom. She appreciated each one of you, and thank you to Ayres Family Cremation for helping through this difficult time.

A memorial service will be held on December 13, 2025, at 2 p.m.

Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses
4511 Campton Road
Eureka, CA 95503
Zoom login available, no passcode needed: 840 1962 9852

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Jean Rusk-Hiler Dumas’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

PREVIOUSLY

• Bridgeville Home Burns to the Ground; Recovered Remains ‘Tentatively’ ID’d as Animal

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Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

Following a detailed examination, an anthropologist has confirmed that the remains recovered from the China Mine Rd. fire that occurred on Nov. 17 in Bridgeville are human. Formal identification of the deceased is still pending; however, based on the investigation, it is likely that the remains are those of the 63-year-old male resident.

The official identification process of the deceased will be completed using DNA testing and will likely take several months to complete.

The next of kin has been updated on this development.

Further information will be released as it becomes available.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

PREVIOUSLY: State and Local Reps React to Trump Plan to Open More than 1 Billion Acres to New Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling

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The Trump Administration has announced its intention to expand offshore oil and gas development off the coast of California. The Department of the Interior released its “11th National Offshore Leasing Program,” which proposes as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales, covering approximately 1.27 billion acres, including six sales in California. The North Coast of California is home to three offshore oil and gas fields, including the Eel River Basin, Point Arena Basin, and the Bodega Basin. At this time it is unclear the degree to which oil and gas development is a true threat. In 2018, Trump issued a similar call for new offshore fossil fuel development, which resulted in new offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico, although none in California. But we believe we should approach this threat as if it is serious, as we have seen the consequences of oil spills related to offshore oil and gas development in Santa Barbara in 1969 and 2015, Port Angeles in 1985, Grays Harbor in 1988, Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989, Coos Bay in 1999, and the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Here’s what we can do as a community to minimize the threat to the North Coast.

Support Local Government Policies that Frustrate Oil and Gas Development

While there are limits to local control of oil and gas development, particularly in offshore waters, local governments can control land use associated with onshore support facilities. In 1988, Humboldt County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure B, which requires that all onshore oil and gas support facilities be approved by a vote of the people. It does not appear that the County has codified Measure B into County Code, although we believe that the prohibitions contained in the measure still stand. In 2023, the Governor signed Senate Bill 704, which ended offshore oil and gas exemptions in the Coastal Act dating back to the 1980s. The result is that it will be much more difficult to build new or expanded oil and gas facilities such as oil terminals, pipelines, or support facilities on land zoned for Coastal-Dependent Industry. These uses could still be proposed, but now they are required to comply with the Coastal Act. Furthermore, in 2025, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution in opposition to potential oil and gas development.

While these measures form an initial bulwark against onshore support facilities, we urge further action. The Board of Supervisors should ensure that the voter-approved Measure B is codified into County Code and review the Measure to ensure that it is sufficient to meet the current threat. Additionally, we urge other coastal jurisdictions, including the City of Eureka and the Humboldt Bay Harbor District to pass similar resolutions and take additional further actions.

Support Alternatives to Fossil Fuels

The threat to drill for oil and gas offshore exists because we do not have adequate renewable energy. Full stop. In addition to reducing our energy usage through improved efficiency and conservation, we need to develop more renewable energy. For the North Coast, this means taking a hard look at floating offshore wind energy generation, solar, battery storage, and other actions to generate and store renewable energy.

Fight Like Hell

Should the Trump Administration move forward with any offshore oil and gas development, your North Coast environmental organizations will stand together to fight like hell in opposition. We urge you to join in this fight.

Tom Wheeler
Executive Director, EPIC

Jennifer Kalt
Executive Director, Humboldt Waterkeeper

Alicia Hamann
Executive Director, Friends of the Eel River

Alicia Bales
Chapter Director, Sierra Club Redwood Chapter

Kathryn Wendel
President, Redwood Region Audubon Society

Dan Chandler
350 Humboldt

Wendy Ring
Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy

Sue Lee
Chair, Climate Action Campaign at Humboldt UU Fellowship

Michael Welch
Director, Redwood Alliance

Lee Dedini
Arcata Presbyterian Earth Care

Larry Glass
Northcoast Environmental Center

Joe Gillespie
President, Friends of Del Norte

Nick Joslin
Policy and Advocacy Director, Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center

Jessie Misha
Chair, Surfrider Foundation Humboldt Chapter

Suzie Fortner
Executive Director, Friends of the Dunes

Luke Ruediger
Siskiyou Crest Coalition

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Press release from Providence St. Joseph:

Eureka, Calif. — November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka is leading the way in advanced lung cancer detection and care with the addition of a groundbreaking tool to diagnose lung cancer: the Ion Robotic Bronchoscopy Platform, a new technology that’s reshaping lung biopsy procedures.

Lung cancer remains one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States. In Humboldt County, 17 percent of residents smoke, compared to the state average of 10 percent, putting them at higher risk. Fewer than one-third of people diagnosed with lung cancer survive beyond five years, but early detection through screening can save lives and give patients more options.

The Ion robot performs minimally invasive, precise biopsies of lung nodules, enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment. Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka pulmonologist Dr. Robert Young, board-certified in pulmonary critical care, leads the use of the Ion robotic bronchoscopy platform, which is improving patient outcomes.

“The Ion robot represents a major advancement in lung cancer diagnostics in our area,” said Dr. Young. “The precision allows us to safely reach and biopsy small nodules deep within the lung that were previously difficult to access. This means we can diagnose cancer earlier, reduce complications and provide patients with answers faster, which is critical in guiding treatment decisions.”

The hospital also provides annual low-dose CT scans for eligible adults. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening for adults who are 50 to 80 years of age and have a 20 pack-year smoking history, including current smokers and those who quit within the past 15 years.

Radiologists review all scan results and assign a Lung-RADS score. Suspicious findings are evaluated by a team of specialists in radiology, pulmonology, oncology and surgery. The screening coordinator tracks results and ensures patients receive timely follow-up and support.

“Early detection is the most powerful tool we have in the fight against lung cancer,” said Priscilla Lynn, director of cancer and infusion services, Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka. “The Ion robot’s advanced technology and local access to low-dose CT screening gives our patients the best chance at timely diagnosis, effective treatment and improved outcomes.”

By combining innovation with compassionate care, Providence continues to lead efforts to improve outcomes and raise awareness about lung cancer prevention and screening.

Patients who meet screening criteria are encouraged to talk with their provider or call 707719-0550, option 2 to schedule an exam.

Learn about our Cancer Program here: Cancer Program | St. Joseph Hospital Eureka | Providence 

Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services press release:

The Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services Division of Environmental Health (DEH) is reminding the community to practice safe food handling to help keep holiday meals healthy.

DEH Supervising Environmental Health Specialist Benjamin Dolf said, “Practicing proper food handling can help prevent easily avoidable illnesses.”

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) says bacteria including Clostridium perfringens can grow in cooked foods left at room temperature and that many outbreaks have been linked to foods commonly served during the holidays, such as turkey and roast beef.

DEH along with the CDPH recommend following four simple steps to lessen the chance of foodborne illness: Clean, separate, cook and chill.

Clean your hands with warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds before and after handling food. Thoroughly wash all surfaces, utensils and dishes with hot, soapy water and rinse with hot water before and after each use. Wash fruits and vegetables under cool, running water to prevent the spread of bacteria, even if you plan to peel them.

Separate raw and cooked foods to avoid cross contamination. Keep fruits and vegetables away from raw meat, poultry, eggs and seafood. Also, keep raw animal products separate from each other. Frozen turkeys and other meat should be thawed in the refrigerator, in a sink with cool water that is changed every 30 minutes or in the microwave.

Cook food to proper temperatures. Set the oven temperature no lower than 325 F, and be sure turkey and other meats are completely thawed before cooking. Using a food thermometer, make sure that the internal temperature of the turkey is at least 165 F at the thickest part, including the stuffing if it’s cooked inside the bird. Cooking times will vary.

Chill turkey and other perishable foods in the refrigerator within two hours of being cooked, and do not eat leftover meat, stuffing or gravy that has been refrigerated for longer than three-to-four days.

For more information about food safety, call the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition’s Safe Food Information Line at 1-888-723-3366 or the U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-674-6854.

Holiday food safety tips are also available at www.foodsafety.gov.

Trailing in the shade of a tractor-pulled harvester, a small huddle of people in broad hats trawl the ochre rows of a green field. Every six or so feet, someone squats down and pulls into the morning sunlight a bright, spotted watermelon.

Walking a dozen yards behind this crew of pickers is their supervisor, Raul. He has done this for 21 years, since he was 18.

He, better than anybody, knows that perfectly ripe watermelons aren’t just pulled off the vine, they’re chosen. And the choosing still relies, as it ever has, on workers who are delicate with the fruit and severe with the choice. The job requires years of repetition: seeing the right melon, bending to heft it, cutting its root and placing it carefully on the harvester bed or a bag hanging off the back.

Rookies have trouble. They pick a melon before it’s ready, or they fumble the blades and cut themselves, or their bodies simply inform them after a day or a week of bending and lifting and bending and lifting that they will not be getting out of bed that morning.

Raul knows this land. He raised his kids in the farmland around the town of Firebaugh, 38 miles west of Fresno.

He points to a grove of full-grown almond trees near the Del Bosque melon farm where he works.

“We were putting in those trees when they were young, my first year,” Raul said in Spanish.

For the last two decades, Raul would drive north when the melon harvest ends to work in the vineyards and then the apple and cherry orchards.

But this year is different, and Raul, who didn’t want his last name used in this story because he is in the country illegally, is not sure how much longer he can stay in the United States.

As this year’s harvest ends, the small Central Valley towns that rely on migrant or undocumented labor to survive are themselves forced to imagine the end of a way of life.

The worry here is the workers might not return next year, at least not in the numbers that sustain local economies and power the state’s $60 billion agricultural industry, which grows three-fourths of the fruits and nuts consumed in the U.S.

The second Trump administration has pledged to carry out the largest deportation program in American history. They have, so far, mostly left the agricultural industry alone. But Trump and his advisers have wavered on whether to protect farms from immigration raids, so the seasonal workers and their employers will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, what connects tiny truck stop towns and big cities of this part of the valley is fear: of tightened water allocations, of market turbulence and, this year, of immigration agents.

Small farm towns in the Central Valley are similar in their seasonal economics to a beach town on the East Coast: Both swell in summer with a population boom, then dig in for a slow winter. Firebaugh City Manager Ben Gallegos said the town of 4,000 grows to 8,000 people in the summer, then empties out after the harvest.

The story plays out in the numbers, but already this year’s numbers tell a different tale.

In the second quarter of the year, which runs from April 1 to June 30, total taxable transactions in Firebaugh were down 29% from the same quarter last year, according to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. In nearby Chowchilla, total taxable receipts are down 21% in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.

People don’t want to shop or go out to eat, Gallegos said. The city of Firebaugh is staring down cuts to its police force, its parks and its senior center. In September, the appearance of county probation officers dressed in green fatigues caused waves of panicked Whatsapp texts. Some people went into hiding.

The food bank in Firebaugh used to serve about 50 families. Today, at weekly distributions behind city hall, that number is up to 150. When it’s over, volunteers take the remaining food boxes to families who are too afraid to leave their homes.

“We need those individuals to drive our community,” Gallegos said. “They’re the ones that eat at our local restaurants, they’re the ones that shop at our local stores. Without them, what do we do?

“They’re scared to come out because of the color of their skin.”

Raul and his crew of six pickers will have to choose, too. Will they come back?

“My clients say this country’s not for them anymore,” said Fresno immigration attorney Jesus Ibañez, who works with farmworkers. “They feel like they’re on borrowed time here. That sentiment is not one I heard a lot one year ago.”

The choices to stay or self-deport come down to money, but also the futures those farmworkers want for their children born in the United States, Ibañez said.

Sometimes the choice is more complicated – the U.S. isn’t as safe for them as it was, but its school districts still offer things like mental health care and physical therapy that migrant workers fear they won’t get in their home countries. Balanced against that is the possibility of one or both parents being deported, leaving the children with no legal guardians in this country.

Statistically, it’s difficult to even know the number of farmworkers employed today, let alone how much the fear of deportation is affecting employment in the industry. In late October, Ag Alert, a publication of the California Farm Bureau, broke the news that both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Labor canceled annual farmworker labor surveys. That means that, for the first time since the late 1980s, there is no federal documentation of farmworker hours, wages or demographics. Historically, about 40% of farmworkers in the last decade were undocumented.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that more immigrants left the country or were deported this year than the number who arrived. If the trend holds until the end of the year, 2025 will be the first year since the 1960s that the population of immigrants in the U.S. falls.

For Raul, the question of returning is simple. He will need to earn money so he can support his kids, so he plans on coming back.

“Que quisiera un padre? Raul said. “Quiere que sea lo mejor para los hijos.”

What would a father want? He wants what’s best for his children.

The road into Firebaugh rolls up and over a wash, next to the spot where Andrew Firebaugh founded a ferry across the San Joaquin River that became an important stop on stagecoach routes. The river has always been what kept this town alive, first as an obstacle around which they built a settlement and later as the lifeblood of its farms and fields.

Just outside of town, the pavement has fractured and buckled. The street signs are tiny and faded on the broad grid of roads bounded by fields that push right up to the street. You orient yourself with both cardinal directions and crops.

Prunus amygdalus, also called almond trees, look like they’re raising their arms. Pistacia vera, the pistachio tree, look like they’re shrugging. Uncovered truck bed bins spill ripe red tomatoes on tight turns. Tractors with their tillers raised trundle slowly down the highway. On the side of the road bobs of lettuce heads peek out of the ground, followed by a massive pile of unhulled almonds, and then a series of palm trees, some very tall and some a little squat.

At the corner of one of these roads, just before it meets the interstate, is the melon farm owned by Joe Del Bosque, Raul’s employer of 21 years. And the first thing people inclined to these kinds of questions will ask Del Bosque is why he hires undocumented labor.

He begins explaining his trouble hiring people on the federal H-2A visa, which permits employers to hire foreign seasonal workers. It’s not just that he has to pay them $3 more per hour, Del Bosque said. It’s that he must also pay for their transportation to and from the farm every day. He must pay for the rooms where they sleep and the food they eat. It is, he said, economically impossible to rely on the visa program.

The next suggestion is hiring local people. Del Bosque laughed and said he tried that. The locals made it a week, at the most, and then found some other way to make money that didn’t leave them sore all over.

He knows that one day soon, he’ll likely have to turn over operations to the only family member active in the business, his son-in-law. But that’s only if there’s still a farm to hand over.

“I don’t have a lot of confidence that the future of our farm and a lot of farms is looking very good right now,” Del Bosque said.

The U.S. Department of Labor is already sounding the alarm on losing farmworkers and the threat that poses to the nation’s food supply in a notice in the Federal Register in October.

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers,” the department said in a rule-making proposal that would allow employers to pay H-2A workers less than they are paying now.

“Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow,” the notice said, citing the likelihood of enhanced immigration enforcement under the budget bill Trump signed earlier this year.

Those longer-term consequences in the labor market won’t be felt evenly.

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Fresno County and the rest of the Central Valley went for Trump in the 2024 election. Del Bosque calls himself a conservative, though he donates to both parties – Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former President Barack Obama have both made public visits to his acreage.

Next to his farm – right up on the property line where everyone will see it – is a massive Trump 2024 sign, erected by his neighbor. No one driving to the Del Bosque Farm will miss it. Del Bosque laughs about it, but it’s also a reflection of how their differing crops help define their politics.

Del Bosque grows melons, which are labor intensive and require lots of people to work long hours. He supports an easier path to employment for undocumented workers. Next door, his neighbor grows almonds. They only require one person to drive a “shaker” to get the nuts out of the trees and another to operate the basket that catches them as they fall. His neighbor, whom CalMatters was unable to contact, doesn’t require much labor at all.

“Here’s the thing, not all farms are the same, not all farmers are the same,” Del Bosque said. “I’m concerned about these people. (The neighbor) is not concerned about that, because he has almonds. He manages his almonds with just him and one or two more people.

“He can do his whole farm with two, three people. So this immigration (enforcement) does not affect him at all.”

Author and Central Valley farmer David Mas Masumoto wrote about neighborly tension in his 1995 “Epitaph for a Peach.”

We depend on labor from Mexico, part of a seasonal flow of men and families. Many come here for the summer, return to Mexico during the slow winter months, and return the following year. They’re predominantly young men with the faces of boys. We’re dependent on their strong backs and quick hands. And they are hungry for work.…

This September, farmers drive down the road staring straight ahead, steering clear of a chance meeting with a competitor who was once a neighbor. Eyes avoid eyes, hands hesitate and refrain from waving. It’s an ugly September.

Politics out here can make it a whole ugly season.

What if they don’t come back?

“We don’t have a precedent for trying to understand that major of a disruption to our state’s economy and demographics,” said Liz Carlisle, an associate professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara.

Something is changing in one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions. Wine grapes are going unharvested, rotting in the fields, as exports to Canada collapsed under new tariffs and younger consumers started shying away from alcohol. Land values are cratering in places with limited water, leaving farmers in multi-million dollar debt. Water costs are skyrocketing in part because of a 2014 conservation law that seeks to regulate years of agricultural over-pumping.

“I do think we’re looking at the potential of really big and rapid change to California’s agricultural sector and all of the workers and everything that touches the economy,” Carlisle said. “It’s kind of a perfect storm because you have major shifts in trade policy at the same time as you have major shifts in the workforce at the same time you have major shifts in climate and potential regulatory responses to those climate impacts.

“So that’s a lot of huge transformations for people in the agricultural sector to try to manage at once.”

This year, the problems were the usual problems: Five or six big storms clobbered the Central Valley with rain and hail, hitting young crops just as they were approaching maturity. But larger battles loom.

During the first Trump administration, the labor market for Central Valley farmers tightened significantly, said California Fresh Fruits Association president Daniel Hartwig, when migration numbers plummeted and farms would lose workers to a neighboring operation that offered an extra 25 cents per hour.

During this second go-round with Trump as president, those concerns seem almost archaic. Now, Hartwig said, he’ll spend a couple hours every week running down rumors of immigration enforcement: an unmarked white van in Madera County that turned out to belong to a carpet cleaning business; a cluster of cars outside a health clinic that turned out to be a local police operation; a shaky TikTok of unknown provenance showing men in green fatigues that sent farmworkers rushing back to their homes.

“If you did let your imagination run wild, especially if you were undocumented, everywhere you look, around the corner, is somebody that’s you’re fearful is going to try and get you and deport you,” Hartwig said.

Now these towns in the lower basin of the Central Valley hunker down for an anxious winter, on the farms, at the food bank, in Firebaugh’s City Hall.

They are dependent on so many factors out of their own control. Executive impulses in the White House. Cloud formations and wind speeds. Commodity prices set globally. Water prices set locally. And in the winter there is time to think and there is time to ask questions.

Will the federal government increase immigration enforcement at farms? Will it rain enough early in the season? Will it rain too much when the fruit is in the fields? Could there be a repeat of last year’s heat wave? Or this year’s storms? What if the water gets costlier? What if the commodities get cheaper?

And a question perhaps more crucial than any other: What if they don’t come back?

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Editor’s note: Author David Mas Masumoto is a member of the CalMatters board of directors.