Tuscan Water District Bank Heist Warning Poster

My friends over at Groundwater For Butte are sounding the alarm!

The Sinkhole As Metaphor

My honest opinion?

The sinkholes that have opened up around Orland aren't necessarily due to overpumping of groundwater. Sinkholes can happen anywhere - and they do. Their causes are many.

But they all have something in common: Something beneath the surface gives way; the surface is punctured; often, the cavity that has been exposed sucks things down - snatches them from the world, instantly.

My sense of security in my home - my sense of a future I can trust - has caved in. I never worried about the ground going dry five years ago. Never thought my home could be hard to sell one day. Or of digging rainwater catchment cisterns, for the annual storm.

I can't tell if the drought is the cavity my security fell into, or if there is a big void lurking somewhere in the deep caverns packed with laws and agencies and enforcers and exploiters who determine the fate of our dwindling water supplies.

I view the ballot for the Tuscan Water District as a cave-in - a slippage. To borrow another metaphor, it has gone down like a skip in the tape in the movie The Matrix.

I won't unsee it, will you? We've been told to our faces democracy is a sham in Butte County.

Who's in charge, really? And do they care if my well goes dry? Do they need to?

—Sam Floydd, unincorporated Butte County.

Tuscan Letter to the Editor: Sam's Version

 Dear Editor:

I must alert your readers to an apparent mail scam unfolding in our county. 

A packet arrives looking like a bona fide ballot from the Butte County Board of Elections, signed by Ms. Candace J. Grubbs herself. It includes a voter-information pamphlet - but those never arrive right with the ballot. They’re supposed to arrive in advance, give people some time to think it over. This was my first tipoff.

The pamphlet had a full-page argument for the “yes” on the ballot, but no argument at all against. This was the second tipoff. Everyone knows that Californians never all agree on anything important.

I was sure tempted to just vote like I usually do, holding my nose, but the ballot page itself was even weirder. Up in the corner it said I got three votes because I have three acres.

And I thought: The Mormon Church has 11,817 acres. Who’s going to get all their votes? Jesus?

From there the scam asks you to choose yes or no on the formation of some water district in Tuscany, and on $10 per acre per year to pay for its upkeep (which I assume is just to get us used to paying before they ask for more). Yet another tipoff that someone was up to no good. You see, by law the second question requires a two-thirds vote to enact, while the first, a simple majority. That makes this ballot illegal on its face.

And what’s up with us voters here in Butte deciding how to manage something Italian? Everyone knows only the top growers around here can afford to own property in Tuscany. Don’t they just call in their staff instructions long distance?

Then things get silly. The ballot lists 11 names, almost all of them are “farmers,” and we get to choose nine. But if this was a real election then I, also someone you never heard of with no expertise in hydrogeology, would have had an equal chance to run for an entity that will have to deal with the fact that the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 requires residential water access to have priority over agricultural. 

Whoever cooked this thing up thought we all must be dumb enough to fall for a sloppy imitation of a real election. And that’s insulting - especially to Ms. Candace J. Grubbs. So rather than participate in such an absurd ritual, I might just shred it to line my guinea-pig cage with. 

It’s just too bad those scammers didn’t take the time to make it look more authentic. They could have made themselves a lot of money.

If you too have fallen prey to this attempted fraud, there’s a new Facebook page called Sac Valley Sinkhole Sentry where you can draw strength and support from other victims.

Sincerely,

Sinkhole Sam