There’s a growing public consensus that Modesto Irrigation District (MID) Board Member Larry Byrd has waited far too long to address Linda Santos’ and Todd Sill’s claims about Byrd’s irrigation practices on the AB La Grange Ranch in southeastern Stanislaus County.
Sill worked for Byrd from 2015 until 2023, when Byrd fired him. At the time, Byrd claimed Sill had stolen diesel fuel worth tens of thousands of dollars. Sill knew Byrd had no evidence because there was none.
Nonetheless, Todd Sill was tired of Larry Byrd’s capricious management tactics, profanity-filled tirades, and endless stacks of bullshit. A multi-talented top hand who can ride, rope, irrigate and build, Sill was on a new job at 5am the morning after Byrd let him go. Byrd never did file charges.
Byrd now describes Sill as a disgruntled employee. Fact is, Todd Sill didn’t bring up Larry Byrd’s “seldom” use of his deep well pumps until Byrd claimed publicly that he ran his pumps “almost daily and sometimes daily.” Byrd’s claims about pumping were in response to Linda Santos raising the issue of his out-of-district orchards at an MID Board Meeting last July 8, some two and a half years after Sill left the AB Ranch.
Linda Santos is a former member of the Oakdale Irrigation District’s Board of Directors. Like Todd Sill, she’s also a member of a tight-knit local community on Stanislaus County’s southeastern corner. Like Sill, she’s lived on the ranch in question.
Once Santos raised the issue about Byrd’s irrigation practices on out-of-district ground, Todd Sill simply responded to questions about how often the two deep well pumps ran: He said, “Seldom.”
Over two and a half years after he left the AB La Grange Ranch, Todd Sill wasn’t disgruntled. He was merely truthful.
And Todd Sill doesn’t have to rely on memory for recalling how often the deep well pumps were used on the AB La Grange Ranch. Like many good ranch managers, Sill keeps a journal; he kept meticulous records during his time on the AB. There’s also another former AB Ranch employee prepared to support Sill’s claims.
Garth Stapley’s blockbuster revelation in the Modesto Focus that MID will conduct an independent investigation of Byrd’s alleged use of MID surface water on out-of-district almond trees underscores Byrd’s ongoing refusal to provide pumping records for the two deep wells he claims irrigate those same trees. Even former California State Secretary of Agriculture Bill Lyons finds Byrd’s failure to provide records puzzling, remarking at the September 9 MID Board Meeting that the charges of “water theft” are a “blemish” on MID itself.
MID ratepayers might well look at the upcoming investigation as less a blemish than an unnecessary expense. Why should the district have to undergo a costly investigation when Director Byrd could have and should have provided pumping records as soon as Santos’s charges became public?
In fact, given Byrd’s previous public statements about growers having moral obligations to provide pumping records “for the good of the community” and his repeated public citations of “transparency” as one of MID’s guiding principles, his failure to provide records of any kind reeks at best of self-serving hypocrisy. The bottom line is that MID ratepayers are going to foot the bill for an investigation that never needed to happen.
If Director Byrd has indeed pumped from those two deep wells, he should have provided records by now. According to Bill Lyons, electrical engineers could almost certainly tell from power usage on Byrd’s 250 horsepower pump whether he’s used it to irrigate more than his 367 acre MID allotment permits. He hasn’t provided those records either.
At this point, the most pressing question for MID customers is simple: Why should MID ratepayers have to foot the bill for investigating a director who could clear the clouds over his irrigation practices with the release of readily available records?
It’s a good question.
And if Larry Byrd needs help finding his pumping records for the seven years Todd Sill worked for him, maybe Mr. Sill will let him look at his journals.
How do you get your partners to agree to letting your young grandson with no farming experience become ranch manager when you have a qualified man like Sill? Accuse Sill of stealing that’s how. No choice now. Grandson gets the house Sill lived in and more money. CowByrd looking out for LittleByrd, Sill gets slandered and partners get manipulated. Always Byrd looking out for himself no matter the damage to others. He didn’t give Sill any proof because there was none and he is not going to give MID any proof for the same reason.
I understand about providing records. What I am confused about is whether it is bad to use surface water or to pump from deep wells. I started reading this from the beginning and get the impression that he was supposed to pump ….? is this not a bad thing? I thought we were supposed to be cutting down on pumping? I have tried going back to the beginning of these articles and still don’t understand except for the fact that he says he pumped and Sills says he didn’t. I guess I am just confused about the best way to use water for irrigation.
Thank you Margaret. The issue is whether Director Byrd used MID surface water outside of district boundaries. For years, Director Byrd told people he did not need to pump water. Then, on July 8 of this year, he said he pumped “almost daily” when it’s hot. Linda Santos had first raised the issue of using surface water out of the MID boundaries. Todd Sill, when he learned of Director Byrd’s claims about pumping said that during the seven years Mr. Sill worked on the AB Ranch, they “seldom” ran the wells. The implication is that the out-of-district trees survived on illegal use of MID surface water. There is another former employee who has supported Mr. Sill’s claims and Mr. Sill has journal records that also support his claims. Thus far, Director Byrd has not offered any pumping records to support his statements about pumping. I hope this helps clarify a confusing issue.
What I am curious about is what parts of Byrd’s land is in the district and what portions are outside of district and if the two are connected. In a previous article, you showed an image of the ranch’s fields and their acres. I overlayed them with an MID map and is showed parts of fields “2”, parts of “South”, “Rairden”, and parts of “4” are outside the district. If only part of the fields are out of district that would make it very easy to utilize district water outside of the district. But without proper GIS layers and land records not much can be definitively concluded. Unfortunately, I could not find any GIS layer of the MID irrigation district boundaries besides rough map images. This situation is quite interesting and I will keep reading any new articles that come out!
Thank you Mr. Ott. Yes, there is much confusion for those of us outside looking in. However, the MID boundaries are obviously clear enough for Director Byrd as he has admitted he has out-of-district ground. The issue now is whether that ground has been irrigated with groundwater or MID surface water. It remains puzzling why Director Byrd has failed to provide pumping recors.
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