Chapter 118: Dispute (5)
TL: Hanguk
The NSJWCD regional hearing room in Stockton.
Two long tables stood parallel to each other, and at the center sat three commissioners, a technical officer, and a stenographer.
Chloe, Nancy the paralegal, Dominic Smith, and I sat on one side, while across from us sat Jack O'Connell, his lawyer, and a middle-aged man wearing a name tag that read "Hydrogeological Consultant."
The chairman rapped the table twice with his fingers, no gavel.
"Case 07-1132. Groundwater Harm Investigation. This hearing will be entered into the official record. All statements are being recorded, and any false testimony will be subject to legal penalties. The O'Connell side will speak first."
At the chairman's words, the lawyer for the O'Connell side spoke up.
"Mr. Chairman, the opposing party's materials were prepared using experimental methods and have not undergone verification by an independent accredited body. Their reliability is therefore in serious doubt."
One of the commissioners who had been listening pushed up his glasses.
"I disagree. Mr. Dominic Smith is a registered Hydrogeologist with GEI. His work has already passed this agency's technical review process. Today's session is, in part, an opportunity to hear a summary of that process."
The lawyer's face hardened as he sat back down. The chairman turned his gaze toward us.
"Ms. Chloe Harris, do you have a brief opening statement?"
Chloe, who once would have found a setting like this nothing but daunting, rose with a confident expression and held up the documents she had prepared.
"Rather than make a separate statement, I'll let the specific evidence and records speak in my place."
The chairman nodded at her quite reasonable manner.
"Then let's proceed with the witnesses in order. Mr. Dominic Smith, take the stand."
Dominic stood and placed three copies of his report on the evidence table.
"I'm submitting three pieces of evidence. The first is a Technical Memorandum, the second is the piezometer water-pressure log, and the last is the hourly electrical conductivity (EC) measurement data."
The chairman took the reports, looked them over, and nodded as if to say go on. Dominic then slowly walked them through what he had documented.
"First, you'll see the pressure log recorded by the piezometer at the boundary of the pear farm, along with the log from the downstream piezometer at the pistachio farm to the south. The time was 22:41, and after that, an identical pattern of sudden pressure drops is observed."
One of the three participating commissioners asked.
"Could this pattern be explained by some other factor?"
"Not by normal upward pumping. This is a reverse pressure wave, the signature that accompanies reverse pumping, which..."
The longer Dominic's explanation went on, the more Jack's face hardened, and his lawyer, looking flustered, kept interjecting, only to wince each time the chairman cut him down.
A few times the commissioners asked Jack's lawyer or the hydrogeological consultant for material that might rebut the findings, but answers like "temporary equipment malfunction" only eroded the commissioners' trust, and decisively, owing to the late-night power-usage figures Dominic presented, the conclusion came surprisingly fast.
"...... For the reasons stated above, the provisional stop order against the pear farm shall remain suspended; with respect to the pistachio farm, we recommend a 30-day suspension of well usage (Conditional Stay), a fine of $25,000, and reporting to the EPA and the state water quality control board. The formal ruling will be posted in two hours. This hearing is adjourned."
After the hearing ended, Jack O'Connell and the rest of us stood face to face in front of the building. I'd meant to just walk past him, but Chloe, seeing the look in Jack's eyes, planted herself there instead and refused to back down.
"You had the nerve... to report me?"
Jack glared at Chloe in fury. But she only squared her shoulders, looked him straight in the eye, and said:
"If you're going to frame someone else's farm and pin your guilt on them, shouldn't you be prepared for at least this much?"
"...When did I ever frame anyone?"
"When all the farmers came swarming in, you were right there with them, weren't you? After we got the stay on the well-stop order, I did some digging of my own. I went around demanding, 'You know it's not our fault, don't you? Why on earth did you decide we were the problem?' And you know what a few of the farms told me? That it was O'Connell Farm and Hopkins Farm who said so."
"...You're lying!"
"You mean they all got together and lied? I doubt that. But if that's really the case, then go ahead and take legal action yourself, just like I did..."
Having snapped that off, Chloe walked right past him. Inwardly her triumphant manner made me want to laugh, but I kept my expression in check and got her into the car. Before climbing in myself, I thanked Dominic Smith for coming today, and then we left the place.
"Ugh, the nerve of him... Did you see that back there? Acting like he hasn't done a single thing wrong. Isn't he just unbelievably shameless?"
Even in the car, Chloe couldn't get her temper under control.
"Totally. The guy's shameless to the bone."
"Honestly, a 30-day well suspension and a $25,000 fine seem way too soft. They should've hit him harder."
She threw a couple of little punches in the air to show her frustration.
"No, not necessarily."
"Really? Is a 30-day well shutdown that big a hit?"
"Yeah. He got the order later than when we were shut down for two weeks, and his runs a full 30 days. For pistachios, late February to early March is Bud Swell. That's when dormancy ends and water uptake really kicks in, so if the well suspension cuts off his water supply, the soil moisture drops fast, and the buds either don't open properly or, even if they do, the flowers bloom abnormally."
"Ah... so his fruit set rate would crash, then?"
By now Chloe understood well just how devastating it was for a tree's flowers to fail to bloom properly.
"Exactly. Flowering and pollination won't happen the way they should during that window, so he'd better brace for this year's yield to drop by at least 30 percent, maybe even 50."
"So the $25,000 fine is nothing by comparison?"
"Right. And it doesn't even end there, there's one more thing coming..."
"What is it?"
I burst out laughing at the sight of Chloe, her eyes shining with anticipation.
"Hahaha, aren't you enjoying your enemy's downfall a little too much?"
"We almost went under ourselves, you know."
"I'd never let that happen."
If this pear farm went under, I stood to lose the 30 percent of future profits headed my way, so quite apart from my relationship with her, there was no way I could just leave it be.
"Well... I guess that's true. Anyway, hurry up and tell me. What is it?"
"It's not so much that there's anything extraordinary, more the neighboring farms... Look, excessive pumping already collapses the pressure gradient, but reverse pumping is worse, so the briny, murky water from the lower layer ends up mixing into the upper layer. When that happens, the other farms are going to sue, claiming turbidity contamination caused infringement of their property rights or economic losses."
"Ah! That makes sense. So shouldn't we sue too, then?"
"Hmm... I'm not sure. Let's take it step by step and watch the condition of the water coming up from our well first. From what I've seen, the water coming up from our well isn't all that bad yet."
Pears were extremely vulnerable to turbid water, so if the aquifer mixed, they'd take the worst of the damage; but it had only been a year since the saplings were planted, so the harm wasn't great. On top of that, things could have gotten much worse, and catching it and stopping it early had made all the difference.
"Why?"
"I think making too many enemies is a bad idea too. Everything we've done up to this point has been defensive, but going all the way to a lawsuit would be an aggressive move, like saying we want to destroy the man... and besides, the neighboring farms are going to sue whether we do or not."
"So you're saying we just stay out of it?"
"If the water turns out really bad, we'll have to, but if not, I say we let it go."
This was America, the land of guns. Chloe's pear farm spanned 70 acres, the equivalent of about 40 soccer fields. We weren't the mafia, and running an endless farm like this with guards posted around it would make turning a profit nearly impossible, short of growing drugs.
The bottom line was that it was best to stay on good terms with the neighboring farms rather than turn them into sworn enemies. At the very least, when it came to taking down a villain, it was better to hang back than to charge in directly.
"Well, that's true. But what if the neighboring farms don't end up suing?"
I let out a snort of laughter.
"You really think so? In America?"
Farm incomes in America were higher than in Korea, but plenty of them still struggled. If these were the kind of people to let a golden opportunity like this slip by, America never would have earned the title "the land of lawsuits."
"Are you really going to do this?"
Jack O'Connell, his face drained pale, was shouting in his farm office. Across from him, Jeffrey, who ran the walnut farm, fidgeted anxiously as he spoke.
"I'm sorry... but there's nothing I can do. I'll obviously stay out of the lawsuit myself, but my cousin... I tried to talk him out of it so many times!"
Farms in America were often family-run, and when land was passed down to siblings, it was common for the very next farm over to belong to a relative. As a result, it was quite ordinary for a single family to run a sprawling farm across generations in the same region.
"This is going too far!"
"I know, I know! I tried to stop him over and over, but when he showed me the muddy water coming up from his well and laid into me about it, I had nothing to say."
"The muddy water's that bad?"
Jack O'Connell couldn't believe it. Even granting that the reverse pumping had mixed the groundwater, he couldn't accept that it had gotten that severe. If it really were that bad, the water coming up from his own well, drawing from the same aquifer, should have been just as much of a problem, but it wasn't bad enough to justify a lawsuit.
"You know how it is, orange farms are really sensitive to muddy water."
"Haah..."
"Trees like our walnuts and pistachios have deep roots, so they hold up fine against muddy water, but oranges are a different story..."
Jack's legs gave out, and he dropped into a chair.
"I'm ruined..."
He clawed at his hair, and Jeffrey, watching him with pity, edged backward step by step until he slipped out of the office.
A week later, for the first time in ages, we all gathered at Redwood Winery, Chloe, Frederick, Amelia, and the rest of us. Today was Dad's birthday, and we'd planned to keep it a quiet family affair, but Frederick had insisted on coming, so he was joining us.
It wasn't as though there were balloons strung up and music playing just because it was a birthday. In our still-small house, there was nothing more than bright lights and the delicious food Mom had made. But everyone there was beaming.
"Happy birthday. This is for you."
The gift Frederick handed over came in a small paper bag, and to my astonishment, it read "Rolex."
"Wow... no way."
I was surprised, but Dad was even more so.
"Goodness, something like this... are you sure I can accept it?"
"Hahaha! Of course. You have no idea how much we've benefited thanks to Brian. There was his help with the almond farm we just acquired, and we were so grateful that he got Chloe safely through that terrible trouble she ran into. Set against all that, something like this hardly even counts as a gift."
"Not at all. The first thing I'll have to do is buy clothes worthy of a watch like this."
"Hahaha! Come to think of it, you really are too frugal. By now you've got nothing to envy in most wineries."
Just as Frederick said, our winery, bringing in $6 million in revenue a year, had grown enough to proudly hold its own as one of the pillars of Napa Valley. Set against that, it was certainly true that we looked awfully frugal.
Our house really was small and plain, after all. If anything, it was Dad's car and mine parked outside that looked out of place.
"Hahaha! I've been focusing on growing the winery hard through the end of this year, and I was actually thinking about getting a new house sometime next year."
"In that case, how about Deer Ridge Country Club, where we live? Do you happen to enjoy golf?"
"Golf?"
Dad's eyes went wide as he asked, and soon a conversation about golf got going between the two middle-aged men. Dad had learned golf for business before immigrating here, so the subject was hardly foreign to him.
"Oh ho... the houses there must be pretty expensive?"
"Even if they are, you've certainly got the means for it, haven't you? Hahaha!"
As he said this, Frederick gave my shoulder a needless pat and looked at me with a pleased, contented expression.
'What's with that look?'
I turned my head away and made up my mind to settle on a place not too far from Napa Valley.
*****
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