A discarded straw hat helped uncover a decades-long water heist in San Joaquin Valley, California.
The extraordinary story has divided the area’s farming community, and also highlights the difficulties in accurately accounting for one of our most important natural resources.
An article published recently in the Los Angeles Times details the accusations levied against 77-year-old Dennis Falaschi, the former longtime general manager of the Panoche Water District who allegedly masterminded the theft of more than $25 million worth of water out of a federal canal over the course of two decades.
The Panoche Water District is a public agency responsible for supplying irrigation for 38,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Merced counties on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, an area short on water but with a surplus of fertile soil.
Falaschi is accused of siphoning 130,000-acre feet of water – enough, according to the LA Times article, to supply a small city for several years – through a secret pipe. He allegedly had his employees carry out this work for him, often at night, and then sold the water to farmers and other local water districts or back to the federal government for water credits.
The illicit siphoning allegedly began in 1992 and continued until 2015 when it was discovered, in part, thanks to the work of Mark Walsh, a hydrographer employed by the water authority that oversees the federal government’s water operations in the western San Joaquin Valley.
The secret pipe Falaschi allegedly used to steal the water was an old turnout on the canal that had been abandoned and sealed with cement. According to a five-count federal indictment handed down in April 2022, the heist began in 1992 when one of Falaschi’s employees discovered that the turnout was leaking through the cement. Instead of reporting the leak, Falaschi allegedly told the employee to install a gate that could be opened and closed, to put a lock on the gate, and to conceal the setup so it could not be easily noticed.
Walsh discovered the setup when he was performing his routine work of inspecting the canal and the hundreds of pipes and irrigation ditches that it services. Walsh told the LA Times that during this process he noticed a straw hat that had fallen near the pipe and was spinning as if floating in water and caught in a strong current. This led him to investigate further, and it was then that he discovered the locked gate.
“When I saw that, I thought: Someone is stealing water,” Walsh told the Times.
News of Walsh’s discovery reached the FBI around the same time they also received a tip about the alleged scheme from a local farmer who, angry about his water rates, had been researching Panoche’s records and claimed to have evidence of the water district’s misuse of public funds. Falaschi eventually resigned from his post, but he and some of his former employees are still facing federal charges related to the allegations.
“The [Panoche Water District’s] egregious lack of spending oversight is shocking,” California State Controller Betty T. Yee said in a press release issued along with her team’s review of the district’s administrative and accounting controls. “It is especially troubling in a region where effective water governance is so vital for the agricultural community. I am looking into what options are available to ensure small entities like Panoche Water District are kept accountable.”
Mitigating Non-Revenue Water Loss
Whether through theft, leaks, water main breaks, or other defects, water that does not reach the end user – also known as non-revenue water, or NRW – is one of the most important issues the U.S. faces as it looks to maintain and improve its aging infrastructure.
If the water is stolen, both supplier and customer are being cheated. If it leaks into the ground, it could cause soil erosion and decay to surrounding infrastructure that will eventually be costly and dangerous to the community.
A water main breaks every two minutes, and an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water are lost each day in the U.S., according to data compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers. That’s enough water to fill over 9,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Given those statistics, it’s no surprise that the ASCE gave our country’s drinking water infrastructure a C- in its most recent Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
It’s also no surprise that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received more than $50 billion in funding to improve the nation’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding represents the single largest investment in water ever made by the federal government.
“The nation has underinvested in water infrastructure for too long,” reads a fact sheet about the funding on the EPA’s website. “Insufficient water infrastructure threatens America’s security, and it risks people’s health, jobs, peace of mind, and future prosperity.”
While these ongoing improvement projects will vastly improve the integrity of the country’s water infrastructure when completed, it will likely take years – maybe even decades – to address the bulk of the country’s aged lines.
Routine water loss surveys are a vital tool for maintaining the water infrastructure we have until it can be replaced and ensuring that new lines have been installed correctly and without pre-existing defects that could lead to more NRW loss.
GPRS’ water loss specialists have the equipment and expertise to locate leaks and provide insights into your water distribution system. We employ a variety of industry-leading equipment and methods, including acoustic leak detectors, leak noise correlators, video pipe inspection, ground penetrating radar, and electromagnetic locating, to protect your assets and people.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many miles of pipe can GPRS test in one day?
While it can vary depending on your specific situation, our professional leak detection specialists can typically test up to 10 miles of pipe a day on a metallic system (cast iron/ductile) and can test one contact point (hydrant/valve) per minute. We’re able to work so efficiently because our field team members have undergone special training to hear the specific tone produced by a leak.
Why does GPRS typically conduct leak detection services in the early hours of the morning?
Our acoustic listening equipment is highly sensitive and amplifies leaks and other noises which mask signals during the day. If we work in city environments, there is often a significant amount of ambient noise. This noise includes airplanes, traffic, mowers, machinery, and most importantly, people using water. It is up to the Project Manager performing your leak detection to determine if night work should be utilized to minimize all other noise to focus on the leak signal.
Why don’t I see any water at the location you’ve pinpointed as the leak’s location?
Water finds the path of least resistance. Water can run through cracks in subsurface rock or make its way into storm, sanitary, and conduit piping. If the subsurface contains a high volume of sand, it will naturally flow farther down. There is no water visible on the surface in more than 99% of the leaks we locate.