I walked along the berm toward the subdivision and heard the answer before I saw it. At the edge of the ornamental lake, a heavy stream of water poured from the new pipe into the basin, turning a section of the shallow shoreline brown. The lake had been nearly three feet low the previous week. Now it was climbing toward the decorative stone border beneath the residents' dock.
Denise Calder stood on that dock with two landscapers.
Denise had been president of the Canyon Lake Estates homeowners association for four years. She was in her early fifties, neatly dressed even when she came outside in summer heat, and possessed the particular confidence of someone who believed an elected neighborhood title granted authority over anything visible from the clubhouse. I knew her well enough to recognize her approach before she spoke. She would begin with a pleasant explanation, then grow offended that anybody needed one, then insist a decision had already been made.
"Who connected that pipe to my ditch?" I called.
One landscaper looked down at his boots. The other glanced toward Denise. She did not move away from the railing.
"We arranged emergency lake water," she said.
"From whom?"
She folded her arms. "From you."
I remember looking across the lake and seeing sunlight flash on the windows of expensive houses whose owners had probably never once asked where their landscaping water came from. A fountain in the middle of the basin was running. Children were riding bicycles on the path near the clubhouse. From that side of the property, the scene looked like a pleasant afternoon in a well-funded subdivision.
On my side, the roots of my peach trees were drying out.
"I have never sold this association a gallon," I said.
"Our contractor has the authorization."
"Then your contractor has a problem. That is my private lateral, and your pipe is taking the water my trees are waiting for."
She gave a little sigh, as though I had failed to understand something obvious. "Richard, the lake has to be at a presentable level before the September home tour. Residents have been complaining for months. We cannot have people walking around looking at exposed mud."
"My trees don't care about your home tour."
"There's no need to become hostile. This is a temporary arrangement."
I looked at the discharge pouring into the lake. "Temporary for whom?"
One of the landscapers shifted his weight. Denise's eyes moved toward him, and he looked away. I understood then that the conversation was going nowhere useful. Denise thought the problem was whether she could persuade me to accept what had already happened. I knew the problem was how much water was still leaving my property while she talked.
I stepped back from the dock and called Mara Velez, the field operations manager at Mesa Valley Irrigation District. Mara had worked with our delivery schedules for years, and she knew which part of our system belonged to the district and which part belonged to the ranch.
"I think somebody tapped my private lateral," I told her. "Ten-inch branch line. Goes into the Canyon Lake Estates lake."
She did not waste time sounding surprised. "Is the turnout meter running normally?"
"Yes. My orchard meter isn't."
"Do you see an approval tag or a district turnout number?"