Stockton NSJWCD District Hearing Room.
Two long tables had been placed parallel to each other, and in the middle sat three committee members, a technical officer, and a stenographer.
Chloe, Nancy the paralegal, Mr. Dominic Smith, and I sat on one side, while across from us sat Jack O’Connell, his attorney, and a middle-aged man wearing a name tag that read “Hydrology Consultant.”
The chair tapped the table twice with his fingers, without a gavel.
“Case 07-1132. Groundwater Harm Investigation. This hearing will become part of the official record. All statements will be recorded, and false testimony may be subject to legal penalties. The Jack O’Connell side may speak first.”
At the chair’s words, Jack O’Connell’s attorney opened his mouth.
“Mr. Chair, the opposing party’s materials were prepared using experimental methods and have not undergone verification by an independent certified institution. Therefore, there are serious questions as to their reliability.”
One of the committee members listening pushed up his glasses.
“I disagree. Mr. Dominic Smith is a registered hydrogeologist with GEI. The materials have already passed this agency’s technical review procedure. Today’s hearing is also meant to hear a summary of that process.”
The attorney stiffened and sat back down. The chair turned his gaze toward us.
“Ms. Chloe Harris, do you have a brief opening statement?”
Chloe, who in the past would have found a seat like this merely burdensome, rose with a confident expression and held up the documents she had prepared.
“Rather than make a separate statement, I will present specific evidence and records.”
At that rather reasonable attitude, the chair nodded.
“Then let us proceed in witness order. Mr. Dominic Smith, to the witness stand.”
Dominic stood and placed three copies of the report on the evidence table.
“I will submit three pieces of evidence. One is a Technical Memorandum, another is the piezometer pressure record, and the last is time-series electrical conductivity, or EC, measurement data.”
After receiving the report, the chair nodded as if telling him to continue his explanation. Dominic then slowly explained the contents he had written.
“First, you will see the pressure log recorded at the pear orchard boundary piezometer, as well as the log from the downstream piezometer on the south pistachio farm. The time was 22:41, after which a pressure drop of the same pattern was observed.”
One of the three committee members present asked,
“Can this pattern be explained by any other factor?”
“It cannot be caused by normal upward pumping. This is a signature accompanying a reverse pressure wave, in other words, reverse pumping…”
The longer Dominic’s explanation continued, the stiffer Jack’s face became, and his attorney cut in from time to time with an awkward expression, only to have his face crumple when the chair rebuked him.
Several times, Jack’s attorney and the hydrology consultant were asked for materials that might refute it, but their answers, such as temporary equipment malfunction, only lowered the committee members’ trust. Decisively, because of the nighttime electricity usage Dominic presented, the conclusion came surprisingly quickly.
“…For the reasons stated above, the stay on the provisional suspension order against the pear orchard will be maintained, and as to the pistachio farm, we recommend a thirty-day suspension of well use (Conditional Stay), a fine of 25,000 dollars, and reporting to the EPA and the State Water Resources Control Board. The formal decision will be posted in two hours. This hearing is concluded.”
After the hearing ended, Jack O’Connell and we stood facing one another in front of the building. I was about to simply pass by, but Chloe, after seeing the look in Jack’s eyes, stopped without avoiding him.
“How dare you… report me?”
The enraged Jack glared at Chloe. But she instead squared her shoulders, looked him straight in the eye, and said,
“If you framed someone else’s farm and tried to pin the blame on them, shouldn’t you have been prepared for at least this much?”
“…When did I ever pin the blame on you?”
“When all the farm people came swarming over, you were there with them, weren’t you? After we received the stay on the well suspension order, I looked into it myself. I really pressed them, asking, ‘You knew it wasn’t our fault, didn’t you? Why on earth did you think we were the problem?’ And do you know what a few of the farms said? They said the O’Connell farm and the Hopkins farm told them so.”
“…They’re lying!”
“You’re saying they all conspired to lie together? Well, I don’t think so. But if that’s true, you should take legal action too. Like I did…”
After snapping that at him, Chloe walked past him. Inwardly, I found her triumphant attitude amusing, but I kept my expression under control and got her into the car. Before getting in myself, I thanked Mr. Dominic Smith for attending today, then left the place.
“Ugh, the nerve of him… You saw him earlier, right? Acting like he hadn’t done anything wrong. Isn’t he just unbelievably shameless?”
Even after getting into the car, Chloe couldn’t calm her excitement.
“Yeah. He really looked like he had a sheet of iron for a face.”
“Honestly, even thirty days of well suspension and a 25,000-dollar fine seem too light. They should have hit him harder.”
She expressed her regret by thrusting out her two small fists.
“No, not necessarily.”
“Really? Is a thirty-day well suspension that big a blow?”
“Yeah. They got the order later than we did when we had our two-week suspension, and it’s thirty days long. For pistachios, late February to early March corresponds to Bud Swell. In other words, dormancy has ended and water uptake is beginning in earnest. If water supply is cut off because well use is suspended, soil moisture will drop quickly, and the buds may not open properly, or even if they do, the flowers may bloom abnormally.”
“Ah… Then the fruit set rate will plummet?”
By now, Chloe knew very well how fatal it was for a tree’s flowers not to bloom properly.
“That’s right. If flowering and fertilization don’t happen properly during this period, he’ll have to prepare for this year’s production to drop by at least thirty to fifty percent.”
“So the 25,000-dollar fine is nothing?”
“Yeah. Besides, this isn’t the end. There’s one more thing left…”
“What is it?”
Seeing Chloe’s eyes sparkle with anticipation, I burst into laughter.
“Hahaha, aren’t you a little too happy about the other side going under?”
“We almost went under too.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
If this pear orchard failed, I would also lose the thirty percent of future profits coming to me, so even aside from my relationship with her, I couldn’t just leave it alone.
“Well… I guess that’s true. Anyway, hurry up and tell me. What is it?”
“It’s not that there’s anything incredibly special, but the surrounding farms… Even normally, excessive pumping collapses the pressure gradient, but reverse pumping is even worse, causing saline and turbid water from the lower layers to mix upward. When that happens, they’ll file lawsuits, claiming property rights infringement or economic losses due to turbidity contamination.”
“Ah! That makes sense. Then shouldn’t we sue too?”
“Hmm… I don’t know. For now, let’s watch the condition of the water coming up from our well and think it through step by step. From what I saw, the condition of the water coming up from our well wasn’t that bad yet.”
Pears are extremely vulnerable to muddy water, so if the aquifers mixed, they would suffer the greatest damage. But since it had only been a year since we planted the saplings, the damage wasn’t severe. Besides, it could have gotten worse, but we discovered it early and stopped it, which was a big factor.
“Why?”
“I don’t think making too many enemies is a good thing. Up to this point, what we did was defensive action we were entitled to take. But going so far as to file a lawsuit is an offensive move that says you intend to destroy the other side… and the surrounding farms are going to sue anyway, even if we don’t.”
“So you’re saying we should just stay out of it?”
“If the water condition is too bad, we’ll have to do it, but if it isn’t, we should just let it pass.”
This was America, the country of guns. Chloe’s pear orchard was seventy acres, which was about the size of forty soccer fields. Unless you were growing drugs, it would be difficult to turn a profit if you operated a farm by putting security guards on a vast, seemingly endless property like this, and it wasn’t as if we were the mafia.
In the end, it meant it was best not to live as enemies with the neighboring farms as much as possible, but to get along amicably. At the very least, if we were going to get rid of a villain, it was better to stand back rather than step forward ourselves.
“Well, that’s true. But the surrounding farms might not file a lawsuit.”
I gave a small laugh.
“Do you really think so? In America?”
The income of American farmers was higher than that of farmers in Korea, but there were still many places struggling. If they were the kind of people who would let such a good opportunity slip by, America would never have earned the title of “the country of lawsuits.”
---
“Are you really going to do this?”
Jack O’Connell, his face ashen, was shouting in the farm office. Across from him, Jeffrey, who ran a walnut farm, fidgeted as he spoke.
“I’m sorry… But there’s nothing I can do either. Of course I’m staying out of the lawsuit, but my younger cousin… I tried to stop him so many times!”
Many farms in America were run as family units, and when land was passed down to siblings, it was quite common for the neighboring farm to belong to a relative. That was why, in the same region, it was very common for one family to operate vast farms over generations.
“This is too much!”
“I know, I know that too! I tried to stop him several times, but when he showed me the muddy water coming up from his well and confronted me with it, I had nothing to say.”
“The muddy water is that bad?”
Jack O’Connell couldn’t believe it. Even if groundwater mixed because of reverse pumping, he couldn’t believe the degree of it was so severe. If it had been that bad, the water coming up from his own well, which used the same aquifer, should also have had a major problem, but it wasn’t to the point where it warranted a lawsuit.
“You know as well as I do. Orange farms are very sensitive to muddy water.”
“Haa…”
“Walnuts and pistachios like ours have deep roots, so they tolerate muddy water well, but oranges aren’t like that…”
Jack’s legs gave out, and he sank heavily into a chair.
“I’m ruined…”
He clutched at his hair, and Jeffrey, who had been watching him with pity, slowly backed away before leaving the office.
---
A week later, after what felt like ages, Chloe, Uncle Frederick, Aunt Amelia, and I gathered at Redwood Winery. It was Dad’s birthday today, so we had planned to spend it modestly as a family, but Uncle Frederick had insisted on attending, and so he was joining us.
Just because it was a birthday didn’t mean there were balloons hanging up or music playing. For now, all there was in the small house was bright lighting and the delicious food Mom had made. But everyone present was full of smiles.
“Happy birthday. This is a gift.”
The gift Uncle Frederick handed over was in a small paper bag, and to my surprise, it had Rolex written on it.
“Wow… seriously?”
I was shocked, but Dad was even more shocked.
“No, something like this… Is it all right for me to accept it?”
“Hahaha! Of course. We’ve received so much help thanks to Brian. The help with the almond farm we acquired this time was one thing, and I’m also very grateful that you helped Chloe safely get through that major trouble she faced. Compared to that, this hardly counts as a gift.”
“Not at all. I suppose I’ll have to buy clothes that match this watch first.”
“Hahaha! Come to think of it, you seem far too frugal. By now, you should have no reason to envy most wineries.”
As Uncle Frederick said, our winery, which brought in six million dollars in annual sales, had grown enough to proudly claim a place as one pillar of Napa Valley. Compared to that, it was certainly true that we appeared very frugal.
The house really was small and unimpressive. Rather, Dad’s car and mine parked outside didn’t fit in with it.
“Hahaha! Until this year, I was focusing hard on growing the winery, and around next year I was thinking of getting a new house.”
“In that case, how about Deer Ridge Country Club, where we live? Do you happen to like golf?”
“Golf?”
Dad asked with wide eyes, and soon a conversation about golf began between the two middle-aged men. Before immigrating here, Dad had learned golf because of business, so the topic was not unfamiliar to him.
“Oh… The houses must be quite expensive.”
“Even if they are expensive, you have more than enough means to afford one, don’t you? Hahaha!”
As he said that, Uncle Frederick needlessly patted my shoulder and looked at me with satisfaction.
‘What’s with that look?’
I turned my head and decided I would have to choose a place not too far from Napa Valley.