Former Ranch Manager Claims MID Director “seldom pumped” Groundwater

July 8, when Modesto Irrigation District (MID) Director Larry Byrd claimed he pumps “almost daily…and sometimes daily” from deep wells on the AB La Grange Ranch he farms with Tyler Angle, many of Byrd’s friends and associates were taken by surprise. One of those people was former MID Director Nick Blom, who was on the MID Board with Byrd for thirteen years.

“The impression I always had was that everything he had that he was farming was in district or had riparian rights,” said Blom on August 5.

When told of Blom’s remarks, Byrd said he couldn’t imagine how Blom got such an impression.

“I’ve always pumped,” said Byrd. “I’ve always been open about it.”

MID Director Robert Frobose had an even more immediate memory of Byrd’s claims about surface water.

“As recently as last March, we met on the AB Ranch and then went to Don Pedro Dam on MID business,” said Frobose earlier this month. “His specific words were that he did not need the GRP (Groundwater Replenishment Program) or to pump groundwater because everything he irrigated had surface water except for some pasture land that had riparian rights.”

Byrd’s claims about pumping water were especially puzzling to Todd Sill, who worked for Byrd on the AB Ranch from 2015 until early in 2023.

“We seldom ran those pumps,” said Sill recently. A highly experienced ranch foreman and manager, Sill keeps meticulous daily journals.

“I could only find two or three times we pumped in 2022,” said Sill, after consulting his journals. “We didn’t pump much before then either.”

When asked to comment on Sill’s claims about seldom pumping, Byrd said he couldn’t imagine why Sill would say such a thing.

“I helped him turn the pumps on all the time,” said Byrd.

As for Frobose, Byrd at first said that Frobose “had never stepped foot on the AB Ranch. He’s never been on that ranch.”

Then, when told Frobose remembered being on the ranch prior to a visit to Don Pedro Dam, Byrd said,

“Oh I remember now. We met in the driveway. The driveway’s not the ranch. I don’t know why Bob would say such a thing about pumping. I’ve always pumped. I have to pump. I’ve got trees outside the district.”

Todd Sill has known Larry Byrd for decades. It was Todd Sill who Byrd would call in the middle of the night to help him with a sick cow, long before he went to work on the AB. Sill is still puzzled about Byrd’s real motive for letting him go in January of 2023.

“He said I stole thirty or forty thousand dollars’ worth of diesel,” said Sill, who was often on the job six days a week and sometimes seven. He had little time or incentive to burn diesel for his own uses.

Byrd would not comment on his reasons for firing Sill. He did say he couldn’t imagine why Sill would say they “seldom” pumped.

“I’m telling the absolute truth here,” he said repeatedly, “The absolute truth. I pump two days a week when it’s hot and sometimes three days a week. I used to help Todd turn on the pumps.”

Sill claims Byrd was rarely on the ranch.

A top hand who can ride, rope, pull a calf, irrigate, build a fence, weld a trailer hitch and speak Spanish with Mexican farmworkers, Sill has worked  the eastern hills of Stanislaus County for well over thirty years, most of them on the AB Ranch when it was known as the Rodoni.

Todd Sill even built and installed the iron frame for the AB Ranch sign that hangs  alongside Highway 132 near La Grange. He’s earned a sterling reputation and had no trouble finding work after Byrd fired him. In fact, Sill was on the job at another ranch at 5am the morning after he left the AB. He’s still there now.

Not the kind to live in the past, Todd Sill doesn’t miss Larry Byrd’s temper tantrums, which over time grew more random and profane. When told that Sill claimed Byrd frequently used foul language with employees, Byrd said,

“I don’t cuss. I just don’t. I never use foul language.”

Curses or not, Todd Sill doesn’t miss Larry Byrd. What he does miss is the AB Ranch, which he worked when it was known as the Rodoni. Sill worked cattle there before Byrd and Angle leased it and planted almond trees. He learned to love its natural beauty, enhanced by its location near the Tuolumne River.

Byrd’s claims about pumping groundwater are of special significance because approximately 130 acres of the over 500 acres of orchard on the AB Ranch are outside the MID district and thus not eligible for district water. In normal years, the ranch gets 42 inches of MID surface water, just enough to serve the orchards, including the trees outside district boundaries. During dry years, it receives 36 inches, hardly enough to keep that many trees in good shape.

Whether or not Larry Byrd pumped groundwater on the AB Ranch is thus a more critical issue than most people might think. Irrigation districts exist precisely in order to assure water use beneficial to the district itself and, by obvious extension, beneficial to the public interest. They are public entities charged with monitoring appropriate usage of a public resource. Farmers within MID pay a yearly fee of  fifty-two dollars per acre to cover overhead for their water rights. That fee entitles use within the district and only within the district.

Intuitively, a farmer might argue that if he’s entitled to 42 inches per acre of in-district water, then he’s entitled to use it on land he owns adjacent to the boundary line. However, this seemingly common sense argument falls apart under the question of authority: It is the district that decides boundary lines, not the landowner, for reasons that might at first seem obscure but under examination become obvious.

The very existence of a “district” doesn’t just imply boundary lines, it is defined by them. The district itself is the creation of an authority over a public resource that literally says, “Your right to the use of this water stops here.” “Here” is the district boundary line.

For example, consider a neighboring ranch without rights to in-district water. If that rancher were to appropriate a neighbor’s surface water for his or her own use, it would clearly be a case of water theft, not because the water “belongs” to the neighbor, but because the adjacent ranch has no water rights as defined by the district boundary. The same principle applies to a situation when the property next to the boundary line is owned by the person on the other side of the line, for obvious reasons.

This principle was made clear in a recent court case, Kenneth Nichols vs MID. In the Nichols’ case, the ruling was that any “share” of water a landholder may have by virtue of membership within the district was subject to the authority of the district and that authority only:

“It [the landholders “share” of district water]…still remains subject to that trust, and can therefore be used only for the irrigation of lands within the district…” (boldface added)

Using district water outside the district without approval by the board of directors destroys the foundational principle for creation of the district itself, which is to limit the use of district water to within the district only. In short, use of district water outside the district represents an existential challenge to the very principles the district is founded on.

If water is to be sold or moved outside the district, the sale or transfer must be approved the district’s board of directors.  In this case, at least two MID Directors believed Director Byrd had surface or riparian water for all his irrigated property. One of those directors was told on the property in question that Byrd “didn’t need groundwater.”

The issue now becomes a matter of critical importance to MID management. In the case of AB Ranch, how does MID settle what now has become a critical dispute? The atmosphere around Larry Byrd’s contradictory claims about groundwater use has become clouded and contentious. How can such an atmosphere be cleared? What metrics are involved that assure MID ratepayers that the public trust bestowed on MID has been honored by effective water management?

The one undeniable fact here is that well over 100 acres of Director Byrd’s trees are outside MID boundaries and they are thriving. They’re getting water from somewhere.

It may be that Todd Sill is mistaken about how often Director Byrd ran his deep well pumps on the AB Ranch, a ranch Sill worked on for over thirty years, beginning when it was known as the Rodoni. Todd Sill might know that ranch better than anyone else on earth.

Monday, Director Byrd insisted that he pumped groundwater on the AB Ranch and has pumped every year since orchards were planted on what was then the Rodoni Ranch, in 2015.

“I’m telling the truth, the absolute truth,” said Byrd. “I’m very comfortable. I’ve got nothing to hide.”