Tuesday morning, by a 3-2 vote, the Oakdale Irrigation District Board of Directors (OID) approved a proposal to sell $10 million of surplus water outside the district. As usual, the two directors against the proposal were Gail Altieri and Linda Santos, who have the singular distinction of having been sued by their own board, not long after both were elected by overwhelming margins in 2015. Tuesday’s meeting featured the usual […]
Oakdale Irrigation District water sale
Oakdale Irrigation District: “The public be damned”
“Petitioner has bestowed an important public benefit,” says Judge. Imagine tossing 2130 hundred dollar bills into the Stanislaus River to see how long they will float. Sounds crazy, but the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) did something almost as foolish when it decided to contest a suit brought forward by the Oakdale Groundwater Alliance (OGA). The suit was in response to OID’s failure to provide an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) for […]
Despite Sale, OID is Still Under Water
It was fascinating to read Janie Gatzman’s letter of support for the Oakdale Irrigation District’s (OID) water sale in Wednesday’s Modesto Bee. Alert readers will remember that late last June Gatzman wrote that farming “south of the Tuolumne River” had not caused, “significant impacts to downstream city wells.” Gatzman made her claim despite widespread knowledge of a huge cone of depression in the very area she claimed suffered no “significant […]