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.
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