Concrete mixer.
Three workers.
And Cynthia Rowe.
They were standing beside my well.
I called my neighbor, Sam Ellison, whose pasture overlooked the boundary.
“Can you walk down toward my east field?”
“What happened?”
“There’s a contractor at the well.”
“Your well?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going.”
Thirty seconds later, I was calling the number painted on the contractor’s truck.
Foster Site Services.
Neil Foster answered.
He was the project superintendent.
I identified myself and gave him the address.
There was a pause.
Then:
“Yes, sir. We’re doing some landscape removal associated with the Hawthorne Ridge entrance.”
“You’re on my property.”
Another pause.
“We were told that strip was part of the HOA maintenance area.”
“It isn’t.”
“Well, I have a site plan.”
“I have a recorded survey.”
Silence.
Then I said:
“The concrete vault your crew is working around contains a live artesian well.”
That got his attention.
“I’m sorry?”
“Water is flowing into it right now.”
“We were told it was abandoned.”
“It is not.”
Neil asked someone something away from the phone.
Then came back.
“I specifically asked whether the well was active.”
“Who told you it wasn’t?”
“The project representative.”
“Cynthia?”
He did not answer directly.
“I asked whether we needed a licensed well contractor or county environmental-health sign-off.”
“What were you told?”
“That no abandonment process was required because the structure was inactive.”
“It is visibly flowing.”
Another pause.
Neil sounded uncomfortable now.
“Mr. Parker, I’m going to call the crew.”
“I’m already driving back.”
I reached my property twenty-eight minutes later.
The vault lid had been removed.
Water was visible inside.
The overflow line had been exposed with the excavator.
Cynthia stood beside the trench wearing sunglasses and a cream-colored jacket.
She did not look remotely embarrassed.
Neil had already told the operator to pause.
I walked to the survey monument twenty feet away.
Pointed.
“This is the property line.”
Cynthia unfolded a glossy plan.
“The HOA maintenance strip comes to this feature.”
“No.”
She tapped the plan.
“Right here.”
“That is a landscape sheet.”
“It is the approved project plan.”
“It is not a deed.”
Neil looked between us.
I went to my truck.
Retrieved the recorded survey I kept behind the seat.
Opened it on the hood.
“This is the actual boundary.”
Neil bent over it.
Cynthia did not.