One of the most glaring omissions from last year’s 4Creeks investigation into Larry Byrd’s water use on the AB La Grange Ranch was any mention of the orchard on the Rairden property, where a total of seventy-two acres of almond trees are thriving and productive. The AB La Grange Ranch comprises two properties, known as the “Rodoni” and “Rairden” ranches.
A little over thirty acres of those almond trees on the Rairden property are within Modesto Irrigation District (MID) boundaries. Forty-two acres are outside those boundaries.
Very early on in the controversy about allegations that Byrd had been using in-district water on out-of-district trees, multiple sources said that Byrd’s electrical usage records would reveal how much water he pumped onto the orchards on the Rodoni and Rairden properties, where Byrd and his partners planted over five-hundred acres of almonds. After nine months of public inquiry and an investigation that took ten weeks, there are still no answers to how much MID surface water Byrd put onto his out-of-district trees…