For years, Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) water sales seldom caused more than a flicker of public interest. Let nearby Modesto Irrigation District (MID) even think about a sale, however, and the hue and cry are heard for miles around. That was the case in 2011, when MID proposed selling water to the City of San Francisco. Angry protests followed and the public uproar ended with a resounding defeat for those who would sell “our water” to San Francisco. The latest proposed sale would send excess MID surface water to out-of-district farmers in eastern Stanislaus County, where thousands of groundwater-dependent acres of grazing land were replaced with almond orchards about the same time MID was considering selling water to San Francisco. The almond orchards depleted the aquifer on Stanislaus County’s east side, one of the last viable aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley.

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