Public outrage about mining groundwater on Stanislaus County’s east side peaked a little over a decade ago. Directed first at local farmers and farm developers, it soon focused on Trinitas Partners, a Bay Area investment group that surreptitiously bought thousands of groundwater–dependent acres of east side grazing land before converting it to almond orchards.
As Trinitas became the focal point for the environmental destruction brought about by draining the east side aquifer, local farmers engaged in the same practices benefitted from the lack of attention to their own depredations. One of those local farmers — more accurately described as a “farm developer” — was Tyler “Ty” Angle, whose purchase or leases of thousands of acres of east side cattle land featured many of the multiple LLC ownership smokescreens as Trinitas Partners.
As early as 2015, Angle was partners with Stanislaus County Supervisor Terry Withrow in a farming operation in Westlands Water District. Around that same time, Angle took in Modesto Irrigation District (MID) Board Member Larry Byrd as a partner on the AB La Grange Ranch, just west of La Grange in southeastern Stanislaus County. Byrd’s brother Tim, a career Gallo attorney, also became a partner in that same operation.
Larry Byrd has admitted he put no money into the “partnership” with Angle. Given recent exposure of Byrd’s lies about his irrigation practices on the AB La Grange Ranch, it would be interesting to know whether his brother’s or Withrow’s partnerships were also “no money down” propositions…