Route to Recovery
A trip through the epicenters of the American recession

EL CENTRO, California - At a time when alternative energy and “green jobs” have become a significant talking point under the administration of Barack Obama, Imperial Valley is pushing to make it a reality.

The Valley –- which locals in this part of southern California also call Imperial County — already has 10 geothermal plants in operation with a combined capacity of around 330 megawatts. Geothermal energy,  extracting power from underground heat, is a constant and sustainable form of generating electricity.

“This is going to be a great opportunity for the Imperial Valley,” which has a high unemployment rate, said Mark Gran, vice president of community relations at CalEnergy. “We’re going to be the renewable energy capital of the world.”

Potential geothermal or other renewable energy projects need to go through a lengthy approval process. But Imperial County officials have streamlined that process to help companies get permits far quicker, in particular for power plants under 50 megawatts. The state of California has more say in larger projects and has a reputation for being a stickler for due process.

“Getting anything done in California is hard,” said Imperial Valley Economic Development Corporation CEO Tim Kelley. “But it is less hard to get it done here.”

Apart from 360 days of sun a year and suitable geological conditions for geothermal power, the state has mandated that 33 percent of its electricity must come from renewable sources by 2020. Kelley says  companies are falling over themselves to come to Imperial County, where they know the will be welcome.

Some 30 other renewable energy projects — geothermal, solar and wind — are in the permitting process in Imperial County. One geothermal plant has just been built and construction of another will begin next year.

“We have found the optimal way through the process,” said El Centro city manager Ruben Duran. “We recommend to companies that if they want to get approval faster they follow that path. They don’t have to follow those recommendations, but we’ve found that the system works.”

Local officials hope that renewable energy will help lower rising unemployment and help diversify the economy of this rural, largely agricultural community. But one problem Imperial County faces is transmission – getting the power to customers in major markets like San Diego, around 100 miles to the west on the Pacific coast.

“It’s one thing to produce the power, but we need to be able to deliver it to customers,” Kelly said.

The existing infrastructure can handle all of the capacity that the 30 projects currently in the pipeline would require, but not much more.

“Transmission moving forward is going to be a big concern,” Duran said.

Sue Giller, a partner at Valley Solutions Group Inc, which handles public relations for some companies in the area, including one that just opened, said far more needs to be done by California and around the United States to make renewable energy as much of a priority as it is in other countries.

“It’s amazing to me that although Germany doesn’t get much sun that the Germans lead the world in solar technology,” she said. “Something needs to be done to change that.”

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(Picture: President Barack Obama speaks about new energy in front of solar panels at the Thunderbirds Hangar at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada May 27, 2009.  REUTERS/Jason Reed)

EL CENTRO, California - During tough economic times in California’s Imperial Valley the staff members at the Center for Family Solutions, dedicated to helping domestic violence victims, have as much work as they can handle.

The center is struggling to deal with a rising number of domestic abuse cases and trying to help women – and occasionally men – escape from violent partners. Lgal services director Judith Klein-Pritchard said the surge was a direct result of rising unemployment in the area and the long recession that has battered the U.S. economy.

“Abusive people are often abusive by nature, but there has to be a trigger for them to become violent,” she said. “Perhaps it’s the tension of joblessness that triggers abusive behavior because all of a sudden they don’t know how to control themselves.”

Melinda Opperman, vice president at Springboard, a nonprofit counseling group that helps homeowners avoid foreclosure in Riverside, California – to the north of El Centro and one of hardest hit areas in the country by the housing crisis – said that there was anecdotal evidence that domestic abuse was on the rise in the area.

“We are hearing of children coming into school with bruises,” she said. “The downturn has placed a lot of strain on families.”

Mary Merrill Gutierrez (below), a volunteer who got out of her abusive marriage in 2004 with help from the center, recalled how money was a trigger for her ex-husband to become violent and said that joblessness and a lack of money were leading more men to abuse their wives and children.

“There are so many women now that are learning the depth of their husbands because there is no money coming in,” she said. “And so now a man who normally isn’t violent may become so.”

“A man who has worked his whole life and has always been working for 45, 60 hours a week is home sitting on the couch and basically feeling worthless is going to eventually strike out, verbally, emotionally, physically,” she added. “I’ve heard women who have been married 25 yrs to a wonderful man and a year after he has lost his job they’re here.”

Klein-Pritchard said the center has also been affected by the downturn, as budget constraints in the state of California have meant a 50 percent decrease in funding. The center’s staff has been cut to two from five while the number of people who need help keeps going up.

The center’s shelter for abused women is full and has been for much of the past three to six months and is issuing double the number of restraining orders that it was before the recession – eight a day now compared to four before.

“We find ourselves having to prioritize and trying to work out whether a woman’s life is endangered,” she said. “Everyone needs our help, but we have to start with the most urgent cases first.”

Photos by Lucy Nicholson

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CALEXICO, California - The American Dream’s promise of prosperity for hard work has long drawn illegal immigrants, but that pull appears to have faded during the long, deep U.S. recession.

The number of people apprehended while attempting to illegally cross the U.S. border from Mexico fell to 800,000 in 2008, down more than half from an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2000.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, attributes the decline to increased manpower, surveillance cameras, sensors and fences along the 2,000 mile border the country shares with Mexico.

“It’s a question of deterrence,” said Adrian Corona, a supervisory patrol agent standing beneath a camera-topped tower just over a mile from the Mexican border. “We’ve caught people who pay up to $3,000 to smugglers to get them across the border. When they see and hear about the operations we have in place here, they think twice about attempting it.”

But James Smith, senior economist at the Rand Corporation, said that the downturn in the United States had undoubtedly played a role.

“It’s clear that one of the characteristics of the labor market for undocumented workers is that it is extremely flexible,” he said. “It comes when it’s needed and stays away when it’s not.”

“If there is less for illegal immigrants, then it is easier for them to stay in a lower cost environment like Mexico,” he added.

The total number of Mexican-born people in the United States has not changed much through the boom and bust, according to a July report from the Pew Hispanic Institute, holding steady at about 11.5 million.

Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said increased security may have persuaded many illegal immigrants to stay in America rather than risk going home.

“But when it comes to the fall in people trying to enter the country, it would not surprise me if the largest factor was the economy,” he said. “It’s almost entirely responsible for the slowdown in illegal immigration.”

Even in November It is scorching hot in the desert outside Calexico, but summer temperatures can be lethal, making the crossing dangerous for both illegal immigrants and the border agents who pursue them. There are 1,100 agents in this sector that covers around 70 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. Apprehensions this year are down about 18 percent.

“It’s tough work, but the extra technology we have in place has made my job a lot easier,” Corona said.

Billy Whitford, U.S. Customs and Border Protection port director at the border crossing in Calexico, said that illegal immigrants still try to make it past his agents “on a daily basis” using false documents and that many of them were headed far from the border.

“A lot of the people who come through here illegally are heading for big markets like Los Angeles to find work,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kelly Ivahnenko also attributed the falling numbers to improved security measures and increased agent numbers.

“Our job is to prevent people crossing the border illegally, not to speculate on whether the economy is playing any role,” she said.

If you’re looking for ground zero in America’s longest and deepest recession, El Centro in southern California appears on first glance to fit the bill.

The unemployment rate here and for the whole of Imperial County hit 30.1 percent in September, the highest rate in the United States. Locals say there is no denying that El Centro has suffered as a result of the recession and that jobs are more scarce in an area where agriculture is the backbone of the community and forms 25 percent of the local economy.

“We’ve always had high unemployment, but nothing like this,” said Judith Klein-Pritchard, director of the Center for Family Solutions of Imperial Valley, which provides intervention for domestic violence and shelter services in the area.

However, officials like El Centro city manager Ruben Duran say the jobless numbers don’t tell the full story.

Duran points to the fact that back in March 2006 unemployment in Imperial County fell to 12.2 percent and the number of employed people in this county of around 160,000 totaled 54,057.

But when unemployment hit 30.1 percent – well over double the rate in March 2006 — the number of employed workers slid less than 1 percent, to 53,734. City revenue from taxes is only down about 10 percent this year, Duran said, which also does not tally with the sharp rise in the jobless rate.

“Yes, there has been hardship and suffering here,” Duran said. “But where did all those extra unemployed people come from if the number of people in work has barely fallen?”

Tim Kelley, head of the Imperial Valley Development Corporation – a pubic private partnership set up to diversify the local economy — said some of the rise in the unemployment rate comes from El Centro residents scattered about the country who have lost their jobs because of the recession and have come home to stay with relatives. Or that some of them are Mexican immigrants who have lost their jobs in the United States, have returned home and are claiming unemployment benefits in El Centro because it is a stone’s throw from the border.

“There are people who are working the system and that affects our unemployment figures,” Kelley said.

Drive around El Centro, a city of some 48,000, and it does not feel like some of America’s long-suffering communities like Flint, Michigan, where collapsing auto sales amid the recession have led to an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent. Whereas Flint is dealing with shuttered businesses and abandoned homes, relatively few stores have closed in El Centro.

Duran said the key to understanding the local economy and El Centro’s high jobless rate lies just across the border in the city of Mexicali, a city of more than 1 million people.

“The border bleeds both ways,” he said. “Many people who live here work in Mexicali. The trouble with the statistics is they stop at the border and don’t take into account the role a major city across the border plays in our economy.”

Photos by Lucy Nicholson

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If you head east to El Centro from San Diego, Interstate 8 takes you through arid scenery, climbing to 4,000 feet through barren mountains so fast that your ears pop. Then comes the oasis.

As you head down rapidly out of the mountains once more toward El Centro you hit a sign that tells you that you have reached sea level. Green fields and palm trees, stacks of hay drying in the fierce sun — 90 degrees Fahrenheit even in November — surrounded on all sides by rocky hills and the desert.

We knew before coming here that this was an agricultural region, but the lush greenery amid such a scorched landscape took us by surprise. This is where much of America’s lettuce, spinach and other vegetables come from in the winter. There are also large cattle feed lots here too, which launch a frontal assault on your olfactory system long before you see them.

But you don’t have to wander far from the fields to find the desert and its fine reddish, beige sand and realise just how incongruous the lush green fields are. Particularly when you feel the sun beating down on you when much of the northern hemisphere is already feeling the first cold of winter.

This is all made possible by water rights this area has from the Colorado River. As this part of the desert is below sea level in some parts, the water flows downhill and an irrigation system delivers it to 500,000 acres of farmland.

Without this water the fields would no doubt revert to desert in short order.

Some 97 percent of the water diverted to the area around El Centro goes toward farming and city manager Ruben Duran says the city is looking at ways to conserve water in a place where “mild dehydration is a natural state for most people.”

But while people here talk in terms of conservation and wise use of water, they can also remind you that water rights in El Centro and Imperial County have been upheld twice by the Supreme Court and that no one can take them away.

“Water is always a concern,” said Tim Kelley, head of the Imperial Valley Development Corporation, a public private partnership set up to diversify the local economy. “But those water rights belong to us. And if you don’t like it, you can take us to court.”

Photos by Lucy Nicholson

When planning for a trip across America that would both take in a broad swath of territory and also highlight some of the worst and best spots in the U.S. economy today, El Centro in southern California was a no-brainer.

Not only is El Centro located in one of the states worst affected by the housing crisis and the recession – California faces a major fiscal crisis and was reduced earlier this year to paying its bills with IOUs – but it is in Imperial County, which has the country’s highest unemployment rate.

As of September, the jobless rate in this county down by the Mexican border stood at 30.1 percent. Even taking into account the fact that much of the workforce here is seasonally employed in the agricultural sector, that is an astounding number.

We’re here to find out what else has driven this county’s unemployment rate to such crazy levels and see what impact this has had on the local people. With the Mexican border just a stone’s throw away and illegal immigration such a contentious issue in American national politics, we also want to swing by the local state border patrol and get their take on falling immigration numbers.

One question for them and for the locals on our travels hereabouts: has “El Norte” lost any of its appeal amid the downturn?