Unlike in Korea, nights in America are frightening. So whenever evening approached, except for a few special days, I always hurried home. But today, I couldn’t go home.
Clatter!
Dominic Smith pulled various pieces of equipment from the back of the truck. A water level meter, pressure sensors, sample bottles, and a laptop. Dominic rolled up his sleeves and said to me,
“During the day, the data stays too consistent, so you can’t catch the flow. Since there are so many water disputes, most farms that use a lot of water run their pumps at night. So this is when it’s real.”
I turned on my flashlight and helped him.
“What kind of disputes usually happen around here?”
“The Lodi area? Well... too many. A while back, up north on McGill Road, there was a farm that dug a well down six hundred feet.”
“Oh, no...”
Guessing what must have happened, I let out a sympathetic groan.
“Haha, you can picture it, right? As a result, the water levels of eight farms within a one-mile radius all dropped by more than four feet at the same time.”
“Ah...”
“That sort of thing is common. Southwest of here, near the Mokelumne River, there was a feed alfalfa farm and a dairy farm side by side, and when the alfalfa farm drilled its well deeper, the nitrate concentration in the groundwater suddenly shot up. In the end, two nearby vineyards detected nitrate concentrations over 45mg/L, exceeding drinking water standards. Naturally, lawsuits flew everywhere... It was chaos.”
“I can imagine.”
“But that’s something that can happen, logically speaking. There was a funny one too. Northwest of here, there are a series of large walnut farms, and one of them blocked a tributary of the Mokelumne River and made its own reservoir.”
“Haha...”
“The vineyards downstream of the tributary sued and raised hell.”
Chatting like that, we packed up the equipment and moved out. We first checked the well at the pear orchard.
When we opened the well cover, the damp smell of soil rose up. Dominic connected a sensor to a cable and slowly lowered it into the well. A “beep—” sounded three times, and a blue graph appeared on the laptop monitor.
“Two hundred eighteen feet. Water pressure 0.73 psi. Normal. But if you look at the graph, it’s a little...”
Listening to him, I looked at the laptop screen and saw the line gently wavering.
“Someone’s running a pump somewhere else, aren’t they?”
Mr. Dominic looked at me in surprise.
“Where did you learn that?”
“... At school.”
“Ah! Mr. Pierce did praise you to the skies... Anyway, judging by the numbers, it looks like someone else is running a pump right now, so let’s move quickly.”
We quickly retrieved the equipment, walked briskly to the car, and got in. After driving south for about ten minutes, we carefully checked the wells of several farms.
Check, move, check again, move again—after repeating that for around two hours, we entered a pistachio farm. But the moment we stepped in, I felt a low vibration beneath my feet.
Vmmm—
“You feel that, right?”
I nodded.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go.”
We moved quickly and approached the well. About two meters from the well, we buried a pressure sensor—a piezometer. After checking the reading, Mr. Dominic’s face stiffened slightly.
“Pressure 0.64... It suddenly dropped.”
“That means pressure is being pulled out of this aquifer right now, right?”
“Correct.”
It meant water was being moved right now. But I could see the well cover trembling faintly. When I put my hand near the lid, I felt air hissing out.
“Huh? This isn’t pumping up. It’s backflowing.”
Mr. Dominic Smith checked the graph again, confirmed that it was shaking wildly, and said,
“This is definitely strange. This isn’t a normal pressure fluctuation. Someone is disturbing the aquifer pressure in reverse.”
Dominic collected the water seeping through the gap in the well cover into a sample bottle. Since it wasn’t a large amount, he filled it only about a third of the way and closed the lid.
“If we compare the temperature and electrical conductivity, the EC, we can tell whether the layers have mixed.”
“Let’s go for now.”
“Yes.”
We quickly left the farm, got into the car, and returned to the pear orchard office.
“What happened?”
Chloe, who had been waiting tensely in the office, brushed the dirt from my clothes as she asked. I set down the equipment we had brought back and said,
“They were running a pump at that pistachio farm far off in the distance. We’ll have to see the results from the data we secured to know the details.”
“Take a look at this first.”
Dominic took out the laptop and the glass bottle of sampled water. But even though the water in the bottle was groundwater, it looked obviously unclear at a glance. Under the indoor lighting, it reflected light faintly and had a subtle murkiness to it.
He inserted a portable EC meter into the glass bottle and checked the reading. When it showed 1.41 mS/cm, his face immediately brightened as he said,
“At this level, the salinity is on the high side. The upper layer’s salinity is around 0.9, after all. The southern Lodi aquifer contains older groundwater, so the mineral concentration is higher. That means water from the deeper layer has risen upward.”
I let out a sigh and asked,
“So this proves we’re not the cause?”
“That’s right. It looks like they’re pulling on the aquifer beneath that pistachio farm. With this data, it’s enough evidence.”
The next day, Mr. Dominic visited the pear orchard office with a well-prepared document.
“These are the materials I prepared. Take a look.”
Knowing he was coming, Chloe and I had been at the pear orchard since morning, and we reviewed the report he had prepared.
《Well Interference & Pressure Dynamics Analysis – Lodi Pear Orchard》
That was the title of the document he had made, and the report was excellently put together based on the various data he had collected and verified before.
“The sudden pressure drop at the point near the pistachio farm was confirmed in the same pattern at the pear orchard observation point after a delay of two to four minutes, and this can be interpreted as a pressure wave caused by reverse pumping of the aquifer from the south. Nice. With this much, the NSJWCD won’t be able to ignore it.”
It wasn’t just that the report was well made. I liked the signature that added authority to it even more: “Hydrogeologist Dominic Smith.”
If all we needed was a report, I could have made one myself, but it was because of that signature that we paid to call him in.
“This is what I’m supposed to do.”
“Still, thank you. Here’s the agreed fee, and I added a little extra.”
Chloe paid him for his trouble with the cash she had prepared in advance, and then she and I headed back to the Lodi County Administration Office.
Since we had already been here before, we were now familiar with the place, and we immediately requested to meet Nancy, the paralegal. Not long after, the inner door opened, and the middle-aged woman we had seen before came out holding a file folder to her chest.
It was Nancy Hamilton.
“You’re here.”
“We had a bit of a hard time.”
At my answer, she smiled.
“I can tell from your expression. Come on in.”
After we entered the small consultation room, Nancy sighed and took a sip of coffee.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a farm owner come in this quickly and confidently with documents in hand. And you’re young, so I wouldn’t think you have much experience with farm work...”
“Chloe here has a father who’s been growing cherries for a long time. She learned farming alongside him, so even though she’s young, she isn’t short on experience.”
“I see. Good. The additional documents...?”
“They’re here.”
I carefully handed over Dominic’s report. She turned the first page, the second page, the third page, and then around the fourth page, her movements stopped.
“Hydrogeologist Dominic Smith... You went through a proper verification process with a hydrology consultant? The numbers are quite detailed too... You really prepared thoroughly.”
“We’re innocent, so we wanted to resolve the issue quickly. Can we formally amend our appeal with this?”
“Of course. We’ll proceed with three things: a Reconsideration Request, a Stay of Order, and a request for independent technical verification. The basic forms have already been submitted, so we just need to swap in the attachments.”
Nancy immediately took out a new file folder and placed Dominic’s report cover at the very front. Soon, a large red stamp was pressed onto it.
[ATTACHMENT – TECHNICAL MEMO]
[SUBMITTED BY – LODI FARM BUREAU]
“From here on, we’ll take charge. The investigator doesn’t have the authority to reject this. That person only writes field reports. The judgment is made higher up, by the Hearing Office.”
Chloe, who had been listening, leaned forward.
“Then that investigator can’t say anything to us?”
“They already issued a temporary cease order, so they won’t withdraw it immediately. But... with these materials, we should easily be able to get a ‘temporary stay of effect.’ And it will be overturned at the hearing.”
I asked again,
“How long will it take?”
“The Hearing Office will contact you within ten days. Two weeks at most.”
Considering this was the very time when water needed to be flowing, that felt slow enough to make me sigh, but there was nothing we could do.
On the way back to the farm, Chloe kept letting out heavy sighs.
“This is bad. What do we do?”
“The one good thing is that thanks to the biochar, the water usage is low... And the timing is at least late February, so that’s fortunate too.”
Since the charcoal held onto water for as long as possible, that was at least something to be thankful for. And from late February through March, the pear trees were physiologically in full dormancy and just beginning to wake up, so they didn’t use much water to begin with.
“So you’re saying it’ll be okay?”
“Yeah, up to exactly this point, they’ll be fine without water supply. If it stretches any longer than that, it’ll be a problem.”
“Whew... Then there’s no problem.”
It was infuriating that we were being wronged, but once I said the pear farming itself wouldn’t be affected, Chloe let out a relieved breath and smiled. Seeing her care more about the crops than herself made it seem like she had completely become a farmer, and I ended up smiling too.
“Don’t worry. The pears will be fine.”
And exactly ten days later, the phone rang. The number was from the Lodi County Administration Office.
“Hello?”
“Is this Ms. Chloe Harris? This is the Hearing Office of the Lodi County Administration Office. We have good news. The temporary cease order has been changed to a ‘stayed’ status. The NSJWCD has begun a review, and the hearing date has also been set. That means... as of today, you may restart the well.”
“Kyaaah! Thank you!”
Chloe immediately cheered. Then she told me the good news right away, and when I arrived at the farm, the sprinklers were already running at full force.
“Now we can use water freely.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah. Now I can finally sleep easy.”
I lightly patted her shoulder and said,
“But it’s not over yet.”
“It’s not over?”
“Of course not. If we just let this slide, they might harass the farm again using some other excuse.”
From the beginning, this looked like an attempt to tame the local area. If Mr. Frederick, the previous farm owner, had still been here, would they really have been able to make a complaint like this? Probably not.
Since a young woman had become the farm owner, they had colluded for their own convenience, and if it had worked, they would have been able to use water even more comfortably from then on. But would it really end with water? Considering all the environmental regulations a farm had to comply with, I couldn’t be certain something like this wouldn’t happen again.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“We can’t just sit still.”
By the time afternoon came, we had arrived at the Lodi County Administration Office again. Maybe because this was our third meeting, Nancy’s face now felt familiar.
“I heard the temporary cease order was stayed. Congratulations.”
I nodded, and this time, I spoke first.
“Thank you. But... we came today for a different reason.”
“Hm? What is it?”
I slid a USB drive onto the desk.
“We’d like to formally report the pistachio farm to the NSJWCD. Reverse pumping, excessive withdrawal, aquifer disturbance. We’re going to make the damage we suffered official.”