About Lloyd

Lloyd CarterEarly Life
Lloyd was born and raised in Fresno. His maternal grandparents were Danish immigrants and his grandfather became a raisin farmer in the Danish Colony near the tiny hamlets of Easton and Bowles in southern Fresno County. Lloyd remembers helping with the raisin harvest as a young boy on his grandfather's 20-acre ranch and, as he got older, getting to drive the tractor. Lloyd's dad, who was born in Georgia and came to California during World War II where he was stationed at the Army Air Corps base in Fresno, worked many years for Langendorf Bakeries (no longer in existence). Lloyd grew up with one older sister and one younger brother.

Lloyd graduated from Roosevelt High School where he worked on the school newspaper as a sports columnist and developed an interest in pursuing a career in journalism. He remembers annually helping the family of a Basque friend with their sheep operations ("marking lambs") in the western San Joaquin Valley in the early 1960s before Northern California river water began flowing to the West Side in 1967 and transformed it into a huge farming region. In those days, much of the West Side, as it was called, was tumbleweeds and jacks rabbits and it was good only for seasonal sheep grazing. There was no Interstate 5 and the western valley was mostly a bleak, windswept alkali plain with an isolated farmhouse here and there.

Lloyd attended Fresno City College, where he was a columnist on the student newspaper, before graduating from Fresno State College (as it was then called) in 1972, with a degree in journalism. He actually started as a cub reporter for United Press International in 1969, working weekends in the UPI bureau in Fresno in the old downtown PG&E building, while attending school. He became a full-time UPI reporter after graduating from college covering issues of the San Joaquin Valley including agriculture, water and Cesar Chavez's farmworker unionization drive.

UPI, A reporter's tale
Lloyd Carter was a reporter for more than two decades for United Press International and the Fresno Bee in Fresno and San Francisco. He is best known for his coverage of the bird deformities at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s for which he won several statewide journalism awards. He continues to write op-ed pieces for California newspapers on water issues and hosts a monthly radio show on San Joaquin Valley and environment issues on public radio station KFCF in Fresno.

Civic Leadership
He is a board member of California Save Our Streams Council, dedicated to protecting Sierra streams, and Revive The San Joaquin, a new group dedicated to the restoration of fishery flows on the San Joaquin River. He is also a Director of the Underground Gardens Conservancy, whose mission is to protect and preserve the Forrestiere Underground Gardens, and the California Water Impact Network that works to promote the equitable and environmentally sensitive use of California's water.

Current Employment
He has been a Deputy Attorney General in the criminal division of the California Attorney General's Office since 1994 and has argued two cases before the California Supreme Court. He formerly taught water law at San Joaquin College of Law.