Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Mendota, CA

The state has spent the past five years tracking a destructive pest to California agriculture.

The nutria is a big rodent that thrives in wetlands and wildlife areas.

Recently a big herd of nutria was detected in Fresno County.

The Mendota wildlife area is roughly 50 miles west of Fresno. Scientists knew there were nutria in the water but the amount they've trapped so far surprised them.

Nutria were first detected in Central California in 2017. They feed on vegetation and crops. The big rodent can also destroy the banks of ditches, lakes, and other bodies of water.

Greg Gerstenberg has led the nutria eradication project for State Fish and Wildlife since its beginning.

"We went down at the end of summer and worked Mendota wildlife area and pulled about 220 out of there over about a four-week period."

More trapping will take place early next year in the waterways south of Mendota. Gerstenberg says the site is under control.

"Mendota, the Fresno slough and Mendota wildlife area are surrounded by mostly ag ground so we can get those and they're not gonna go anywhere."

In the past five years, Gerstenberg's team of 30 has trapped and euthanized 3,380 nutria. The main focus has been on the wetlands north of Los Banos.

Its mission has been to keep nutria out of the San Joaquin Delta. "We have detected nutria in the Delta up on Sherman Islands, so that's not good news. That's quite a ways further north than our previous detection. There are more wetlands and difficulty in finding nutria in the Delta than an isolated wetlands."

The biggest stumbling block for the team is getting permission to trap on private property. It can take months to track down property owners who live out of the area.

"You can clean five miles of river and if you have one parcel that has a pond on it and you don't have access to it they can just keep coming and re-infect that area where you've worked."

Nutria can reproduce in a little over four months. While most have been removed from Merced County Gerstenberg says full eradication is still years away.

According to State Fish and Wildlife, nutria were brought to California for the fur trade in 1899 but it never caught on. The state believed the animal was eradicated in the 1970s.

One final note, Greg Gerstenberg is retiring Friday after 35 years with State Fish and Wildlife.

MENDOTA, Calif. (FOX26) — She’s a home cook who has amassed millions of followers with simple ingredients, simple videos, and abundant joy.

And she’s from the Central Valley.

“I have always liked cooking,” says Ana Raquel Hernandez, a housewife from Mendota.

All of her videos are in Spanish but that isn’t stopping her followers from watching as she prepares mouth-watering recipes.

In the span of three years, Hernandez has amassed 425,000 subscribers on her “Cocinando con Raquel” page on YouTube, 1.5 million followers on Facebook, and 5.7 million followers under “anaraquelhz” on TikTok.

“Yo no lo creo,” she says. “I don’t believe it.”

FOX26 News tagged along with Hernandez on a recent Saturday as she made a molcajete — a bowl made from volcanic stone-- filled with meats, cactus, cheese, and peppers.

She cooks most of her food in an outdoor kitchen -- a custom setup she designed and asked her husband to build in the backyard.

It features a sink, countertop space, and three wood-burning grills.

“Just like my mother’s,” says the El Platanal, Michoacan native.

Her husband is sometimes her taste tester.

Her son and youngest daughter try to stay out of the spotlight.

“I’m excited to see what’s gonna happen,” says Hernandez’s eldest daughter, Crystal Marquez.

Marquez records, edits, and posts the videos from her iPad.

“I’m sure we have more than 200 recorded,” she says.

Hernandez thinks her videos have resonated with such a widespread audience because of her enthusiasm.

Nostalgia also plays a big role.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘You remind me of my mom who is no longer with us.’ ‘You remind me of my aunt.. She used to cook like that.’”

She says she never sought to become a social media celebrity.

“My kids would record themselves dancing. I asked them to record me so I could post the videos on my personal Facebook page, for my friends and family to see,” Hernandez says.

She also considered it a way to preserve her recipes.

“I don’t have a recipe book. Nothing is written. It's all committed to memory,” Hernandez says.

“I was like, ‘why don’t you just post them on TikTok as well?’” Marquez said.

Hernandez’s first dish on TikTok: enchiladas.

“I asked my daughter, ‘How does this work?’ She just kept counting... 5,000, 10,000. She tells me, ‘Mom, you've got more followers than me!’” Hernandez says.

At that time, Hernandez didn't even know what followers were.

But she knew she was having fun.

“I can spend hours in the kitchen and never get bored,” Hernandez says.

She says she felt pressured by the time limits on TikTok-- just two minutes, back then-- so branched out to YouTube, as well.

It didn't take her long to reach 100-thousand subscribers.

She’s cooked everything from traditional Mexican dishes to pasta -- and even Chinese food.

“I used to work at a mall food court in Ventura,” she says, where cooks would share recipes for what they cooked.

“I learned a lot,” she says.

That diversity has translated into viewers from every corner of the world.

A viewer from Thailand commented on her buñuelos, saying his country has a similar dessert.

A viewer in Chile says she loves the storytelling behind the dishes.

Another viewer in Guatemala complimented one of her chicken recipes.

And one viewer in Russia left a comment on another dish that translated into, “I want to try it.”

Hernandez says she has the most fun making videos for YouTube, where she’s branched out to recording vlogs.

She posted two recent vlogs, taking along subscribers as she visited Mexico last Christmas.

She cooked on her mother’s patio, took viewers to the market, stopped by roadside vendors to try their food, and went to a lakeside park.

And, she met fans.

A lot of them.

In markets.

On the street.

Everywhere.

“It was crazy the number of people who knew her,” Marquez says.

Hernandez says she has no plans to slow down—and even accepts requests from her followers, like the molcajete she was preparing on our visit.

She sometimes prepares large quantities— and often tells friends and family members to bring over their pots, so she can share.

“They took home pozole,” she says. “It was too hot outside to eat it together.”

So far, Hernandez says YouTube is the only platform that has compensated her for her content.

She’s open to collaborating with companies.

“My daughter is learning about all that stuff,” she says.

Marquez beams with pride.

“I’d like to see her keep growing. I feel she deserves it. She has been working her whole life,” Marquez says, looking at her mom.

Regardless of the recipe, Hernandez says her favorite ingredient that is readily available is immeasurable.

“If you cook with joy, it will taste better,” she says.

Energy production is nothing new to the Central Valley.

Oil production in the San Joaquin Valley boomed after the discovery of “black gold” on the Kern River in 1899. In 2018, the City of Fresno was recognized in a report by the Environment California Research & Policy Center as the U.S. city with the second-highest solar power generating capacity per person.

According to the report, the city’s total solar power generation capacity ranked fourth among the state’s big cities ahead of Sacramento, San Francisco and Riverside.

Around 10 years ago, there were proposals from a French company — partnered with California businessmen and farmers — to build a nuclear power plant in Fresno. Those plans eventually fell through.

An innovative energy company has announced it will expand to the West Coast with the construction of a new, state-of-the-art hydrogen production facility in Fresno County.

Plug Power Inc., headquartered in New York, is a provider of hydrogen fuel cell turnkey solutions. Plug Power plans to build the largest green hydrogen production plant on the West Coast in Mendota.

The facility will use a 300-megawatt, zero-carbon solar farm to power equipment that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen through an electro-chemical process.

When fully built, the plant will produce 30 metric tons of liquid green hydrogen, able to service customers from San Diego to Vancouver.

In a press release from Plug Power released in late September, local officials including Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco and Lee Ann Eager, president and CEO of Fresno County Economic Development Corporation, praised Plug Power’s expansion to the area.

“Green hydrogen represents the energy of the future and with this major announcement, Fresno County will soon plant its flag as the strategic center for California’s hydrogen economy,” Eager said. “This project is poetic justice for our region, which has struggled with persistent poor air quality, and will produce the zero-emission fuel needed to support the state’s renewable energy goals.”

Andy Marsh, president and CEO of Plug Power, joined the company in 2008 and is a prominent voice in the hydrogen and fuel cell industry.

Marsh said the company made a commitment to be the first company to build a green hydrogen generation network across the U.S., and with California having one of the highest populations in the state — and with its aggressive environmental policies — it made sense to build here.

Plug Power’s California plant will join the company’s network of plants in New York, Tennessee and Georgia that will supply 500 tons per day of liquid green hydrogen by 2025.

The plant in Mendota will cover about 20 acres. The plant will eventually expand beyond those 20 acres.

“The solar farms want the plants to use their solar, and in an area like California there is going to be a lot of solar farms,” Marsh said. “In an area like the Central Valley with lots of solar, we are not going to be the only company to wants to come in and build a hydrogen plant. There will be other companies that follow us.”

Once the plant is constructed, Marsh said the company will be looking to provide hydrogen for trucks, fuel cells for forklift trucks, industrial applications, and putting hydrogen into natural gas pipelines.

While there is discussion for the application of hydrogen fuel in the ag industry, Marsh said the technology is not as applicable in that arena yet.

Currently, Marsh said places such as distribution centers, airports, seaports and other places where there a lot of vehicles going back and forth will be using a lot of hydrogen.

The environmental review for the plant is expected to be approved by the early 2023, with construction starting then. It is expected to be up and running in early 2024.

The project will include construction of a new tertiary wastewater treatment plant in the City of Mendota, providing water for the community and supplying the full needs of the hydrogen plant.

Once in operations, there will be around 60 to 75 employees to start with, with those numbers eventually ramping up. Some of the jobs will include a plant manager, engineers, facility technicians, and truck drivers.

“Hydrogen is part of California’s and the world’s efforts to reduce Co2 emissions, Plug Power has been doing it for 25 years and we are building out the first green hydrogen network for the United States and we are thrilled to be in the Central Valley,” Marsh said.

MENDOTA, Calif. (KFSN) -- Getting through high school is a challenge on its own - but imagine adding college courses, a global pandemic, and a full-time job.

That's exactly what Antonio Cruz did.

Last week, Cruz graduated from West Hills College with an Associate's degree in agriculture science, and on Thursday night he's graduating from Mendota High School.

"I am graduating with my associates before I even get my high school diploma and being able to say that is very amazing," he says.

As a freshman, he enrolled in Wonderful Education's Agriculture Career Prep program, allowing him to complete both in four years.

It wasn't easy, but Cruz says he always knew prioritizing his education would unlock opportunities.

"A lot of work out here is fieldwork and I didn't want that for myself. That is why I wanted to stick to my education and when the time is right, have a good job."

His mother couldn't be prouder and says on top of college courses and dealing with the pandemic, her son stepped up when their family needed it most.

His parents got divorced about a year ago, so Cruz added a full-time job at a packing house to his plate - all to make ends meet.

"I didn't want to see her struggle so I knew I had to grow up faster and be the father figure for my brother and sister," he says.

"Very few students can say we worked, we helped our mother or father and I did high school, I did college," says mom Monica Gutierrez.

Cruz admits there were days when just getting out of bed was a struggle, but he persevered.

"I would say he is a great example of the type of student who can get this done and he was successful and we are all very proud of him," says Mendota High School principal Travis Kirby.

Cruz says he's thankful for all the support he's had along the way.

"With family, friends I was able to do it and without them, I don't think I would have," he says.

And Thursday night, they'll be cheering him on from the stands as he closes this chapter and prepares for the next one as a computer engineering major at Fresno State.

"Him walking tonight is something big for me, very big," says his mom.

The graduation ceremony will be at 7:30 on Thursday night. Friends and family can also watch it live on YouTube.

MENDOTA, Calif. -- Getting through high school is a challenge on its own - but imagine adding college courses, a global pandemic, and a full-time job. That's exactly what Antonio Cruz did.

Last week, Cruz graduated from West Hills College with an associate's degree in agriculture science, and on Thursday night he graduated from Mendota High School in Fresno County.

"I am graduating with my associate's before I even get my high school diploma and being able to say that is very amazing," he said.

As a freshman, he enrolled in Wonderful Education's Agriculture Career Prep program, allowing him to complete both in four years.

It wasn't easy, but Cruz says he always knew prioritizing his education would unlock opportunities.

MORE | High school valedictorian delivers abortion rights call at graduation

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Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith's graduation speech was supposed to be on something other than the fiery address she went viral for. The video shows what she said that's getting social media buzz.

"A lot of work out here is fieldwork and I didn't want that for myself. That is why I wanted to stick to my education and when the time is right, have a good job," he said.

His mother couldn't be prouder and says on top of college courses and dealing with the pandemic, her son stepped up when their family needed it most.

His parents got divorced about a year ago, so Cruz added a full-time job at a packing house to his plate - all to make ends meet.

"I didn't want to see her struggle, so I knew I had to grow up faster and be the father figure for my brother and sister," he says.

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"This revelation stands as a testament, albeit small, to both how far we've come as an institution, as a country ... and how far we have to go," she said on her history-making accomplishment.

"Very few students can say we worked, we helped our mother or father and I did high school, I did college," says mom Monica Gutierrez.

Cruz admits there were days when just getting out of bed was a struggle, but he persevered.

"I would say he is a great example of the type of student who can get this done and he was successful and we are all very proud of him," says Mendota High School principal Travis Kirby.

Cruz says he's thankful for all the support he's had along the way.

"With family, friends I was able to do it and without them, I don't think I would have," he says.

Cruz's next step is to be a computer engineering major at Fresno State.