Modesto Irrigation District (MID) Board Member Larry Byrd likes to boast he “didn’t put any money in” to his partnership with Ty Angle on the AB La Grange Ranch in the hills of southeastern Stanislaus County. While Byrd’s role on the AB hasn’t been publicly disclosed, it wouldn’t have been unusual for him to take on management duties as his role in the partnership.

Thing is, the AB already had a top hand in Todd Sill, who had been on what was then the Rodoni Ranch for 24 years prior to Byrd and his partners, including Byrd’s brother Tim, leasing the 3,000 acre spread in 2015. In fact, Byrd (re-)hired Sill not long after he and his partners took over.

Ty Angle is a major landowner and grower throughout Stanislaus County, and especially in those eastern hills. Many of his properties depend on groundwater. The AB Ranch is a special case; it has usage rights for 367 acres of MID surface water.

In what would seem to have been a puzzling decision, Angle and the Byrd brothers planted almost 500 acres of almond trees on the AB in 2015-16. That left a little over 130 acres groundwater-dependent.

Choosing to plant groundwater-dependent orchards in 2015 was a bit of a gamble. By then, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) had been enacted for the entire State of California. SGMA required every county in the state to achieve sustainable groundwater usage by 2040.

Though the date seemed a long way off, almond orchards can have a productive life of over twenty years. Farmers who planted in eastern Stanislaus County knew that the Mehrten Formation, a geologic marvel with plenty of highly permeable black sand, contained what amounted to a large underground reservoir of untapped groundwater, at least enough to keep thousands of acres of almond orchards profitable for one very productive orchard-lifetime, assuming prices held.

Almond prices had peaked at well over $4 a pound in 2014-15. At those prices, a yield of 2,000 pounds per acre — about average for Valley almonds — would bring in over $8,000 an acre. Depending on production costs — they vary greatly from ranch to ranch — a productive orchard in a good year can net as much as $4,000 to $5,000 an acre. At those yields, even a small, 100-acre operation can become a gold mine as long as prices and costs hold steady.

At least one study by the Almond Board of California shows a breakeven price a $1.90 per pound with production of 2,000 pounds per acre. Water costs are a major element in total costs of production, of course.

Given prices at the time, planting 130 acres of groundwater-dependent trees on the AB Ranch made sense, as long Byrd and his partners were willing to risk the likelihood of future regulations limiting pumping from the Mehrten aquifer. With Ty Angle providing the up-front costs of $10,000 an acre for trees and irrigation systems, Larry and Tim Byrd were looking at a bright future, even for those 100+ acres of groundwater-dependent trees.

Still, given Byrd’s public statements prior to his partnership with Ty Angle, planting outside district boundaries might have seemed hypocritical to some. As early as June of 2013, Byrd had advocated selling surface water in “wet years” at “inflated prices” as a way of mitigating the effects of excessive pumping, which had caused wells to go dry all over Stanislaus County’s east side.

Even as late as August of 2015, when he was Chairman of the MID Board of Directors, Larry Byrd had argued for full transparency on out-of-district pumping:

“But for the good of the community, we ought to say how much we’re pumping and how deep and large the well is,” said Byrd to Modesto Bee Reporter Garth Stapley that August 1.

By the end of that same year, Byrd and his partners had planted well over one-hundred acres of groundwater-dependent almonds on the AB La Grange Ranch. From that time until July of this year, there is no record of Byrd ever mentioning relying on groundwater.

Not long after partnering with Ty Angle on the AB Ranch, Larry Byrd began promoting MID’s Groundwater Replenishment Program (GRP) as part of a strategy to meet the state’s rapidly approaching sustainability requirements. The GRP would offer groundwater-dependent farmers MID surface water in so-called “wet” years, when rainfall and snowmelt levels are above average.

Despite having planted those groundwater-dependent trees, however, Larry Byrd has never applied for the GRP.

It might be argued that had Byrd applied for the GRP on his over one-hundred acres of groundwater-dependent trees, he’d have had a conflict of interest because of his position on the MID Board of Directors. However, all he’d have had to do is recuse himself from voting.

Of course, pushing the GRP at a price of $60 per acre-foot might have looked even worse had anyone known about Byrd’s out-of-district trees. Yes, that $60 price Larry Byrd advocated for the GRP was far below market value throughout the region, which has been as high as $425 an acre-foot as recently as 2021.

Even at $60 an acre-foot, however, Byrd found few takers. From 2017 through 2019, when the GRP was advertised at $60 per acre-foot, there were only thirteen applicants over the three-year period. Of those thirteen applicants, eleven of the thirteen were from five different ranches owned by Larry Byrd’s partner, Ty Angle.

Naturally, Larry Byrd himself was not Angle’s partner on any of those ranches. That would have been a conflict of interest. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that Angle even applied for GRP water for his Modesto Reservoir Ranch, where he would seemingly have a limitless supply of water from seepage under the reservoir, seepage which hydrogeologists have widely agreed belongs to MID itself and amounts to over 23,000 acre-feet.

So now we have a double conundrum: Why would MID Director Byrd not recuse himself and apply for the GRP on the AB La Grange Ranch and why would Byrd’s partner Angle apply for the GRP on the Modesto Reservoir Ranch where he could tap into an endless supply of seepage from Modesto Reservoir itself?

Conundrums aside, it was a more than a bit of a shock for many observers to learn just a couple of months ago that Larry Byrd had any need at all for groundwater. It was only last July 8 that Byrd admitted pumping, and that was after former Oakdale Irrigation District Board Member Linda Santos said at an MID Board meeting that Byrd was putting MID surface water on his out-of-district almond trees.

People who had been led to believe Larry Byrd didn’t pump groundwater included fellow MID Board Member Robert Frobose. After learning Byrd said he pumped groundwater from “two deep wells almost daily during hot weather,” Frobose said,

“As recently as last March, we met on the AB Ranch and then went to Don Pedro Dam on MID business. His [Byrd’s] specific words were that he did not need the GRP or to pump groundwater because everything he irrigated had surface water except for some pasture land that had riparian rights.”

And Todd Sill, who managed the AB Ranch from 2015 until early in 2023, has said Larry Byrd “seldom pumped” groundwater. Sill, like Linda Santos, claims Byrd has used MID surface water on those out-of-district trees. There is at least one other former employee prepared to testify in support of Sill’s statements.

Last Tuesday, several speakers at the MID Board meeting in downtown Modesto remarked that it would be easy for Larry Byrd to resolve the confusion about his use — or nonuse — of groundwater on the AB La Grange Ranch. The speakers pointed out that all Byrd would have to do is release his pumping records.

He still hasn’t done so.

Coupled with his continuing insistence on pushing the GRP at far below market prices, Larry Byrd’s role as Ty Angle’s partner begins to look more and more dubious. Was Byrd made a partner so that he could carry water for Ty Angle? Why has Larry Byrd taken such contradictory positions on groundwater?

Given Byrd’s refusal to provide pumping records “for the good of the community,” it might take the Grand Jury to investigate his questionable claims about putting groundwater on his 130 acres of out-of-district trees, especially in the context of Linda Santos’s and Todd Sill’s statements to the contrary.

MID ratepayers deserve to know the truth.