“Rule my sight by vision of the parts
Rejoined. And in my exile’s journey far
From home, be with me, so I may return.”
Wendell Berry, “Remembering” (1988)
At the Sept. 14 board meeting of Alpaugh Irrigation District, I got a silent wake-up call. The board reviewed the minutes of the previous month’s meeting and also a special meeting I’d not known about to approve the settlement of a lawsuit. The minutes showed only the court case numbers, not the names, and no one told me what had happened. But I deciphered that it was the lawsuit over the Atwell Island annexation they had filed in April 2025, which their attorney, David Kahn, confirmed afterward. I drove home a different way, feeling a little lost, a little exiled.
“What do you think about the settlement?” Lisa McEwen of SJV Water asked in an email a week later. I’d been reluctant to look backward at what seems like a failure. For me, the settlement is the end of an effort to limit the expansion of acreage within that specific, undemocratically-structured district. Now the county’s approval is free of blemishes as well as guardrails to keep the largest landowners in our region from moving and marketing groundwater wherever they want, including beyond the Coast Range. But wanting to give a decent answer, I pondered Lisa’s question the rest of the afternoon.
In the middle of the night, I was awakened by the image of a photograph I needed to see again, and did not sleep until I found it. Only then did I realize that the lawsuit itself had been a miracle.
The photo was taken by Bruce Howarth, who was then the general manager of Alpaugh ID. It was of his blue-jeaned knee with the receipt draped across it from LAFCo, recording the $300 payment by Alpaugh Irrigation District, check No. 15273, for the reconsideration hearing on the annexation. It was dated Feb. 28, 2025, the last day to file, just before noon because the LAFCo office closes then on Fridays. The text said “Done deal. Just in time.”
Folks at the Allensworth Progressive Association had also paid the $300 fee with their request for a reconsideration hearing. Having misconstrued the process, I paid $300 later, thinking my concerns would have a decent hearing, but I was wrong. The Allensworth folks later withdrew, the LAFCo staff skunked us, and then enough Commissioners went along with staff to vote against the reconsideration 3:2.
As I wrote later, although it spelled momentary defeat, it was a victory in public recognition of the problem. In response to this column, at least 20 members of the public attended and a large handful spoke extemporaneously in support of the reconsideration, the real heroes of the day. Then, a few weeks later, Alpaugh ID picked up the torch and took both Atwell Island WD and LAFCo to court. They kept Atwell’s “nonexistent” plans on hold for over a year.
Seeing again the photograph of Bruce’s knee reminded me of all the good that had happened leading up to that moment. There was the meeting a few weeks before with Bruce and the Allensworth folks, who had been alerted to my concerns by my pastor, Rev. Dennis Hutson, who lives there and is related to several of the community’s movers and shakers. There was the day a couple of weeks before that when I marched into his church office in Porterville, spread the maps out on his desk over his sermon notes and said “look at this.” And there was the day a couple of weeks before that one when I wandered into the Jan. 29 LAFCo meeting to find out what this flurry of water district annexations was all about, and watched like a fly on the wall while this guy from Alpaugh ID requested an extension on the decision and was overridden.
Afterward, ashamed of my silence, I cold-called him to apologize. “Don’t waste your life apologizing,” he said quickly, as I tried to explain what I thought I might have offered. When I described the impact of the 2023 flooding there as moving me to action, however indeterminate, he said “I think I still have PTSD from that flood.” We became incipient friends in that beginning conversation, and that friendship, as it grew, is what led to every good thing that followed.
With another flood season likely spreading out before us, because of friendships, we actually might be more prepared. Keep watch.
Trudy Wischemann is not giving up. You can send her your flood remembrances c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
