"Nothing."
"Don't damage the installation. Photograph everything. I'm twelve minutes away."
I took photographs of the pipe, the valve, the disturbed earth, and the flow entering the lake. I made a short video while saying the time aloud and showing the position of the valve. Then I went back to the steel box, closed the new takeoff, and waited long enough to hear the water subside.
I was not cutting off water to anyone's house. Canyon Lake Estates had its own domestic water service. Its ornamental lake had a permitted well and storm runoff feeding it in ordinary conditions. The pipe connected to my lateral was a new unauthorized branch serving only that decorative lake. Closing that branch restored water to the irrigation system I owned without touching the district turnout or any legitimate delivery.
I slid one of my numbered irrigation locks through the valve handle, photographed the lock number, and recorded the time in my notebook. I did not rip out the pipe, remove bolts, or disturb whatever evidence the installers had left. I knew I might need it.
My next call went to Sam.
"Start the backup well on Four and Five," I said. "Young peaches first. Shut down the grass strip and split the upper zones so we can get pressure where it matters."
"What happened?"
"Someone has been filling the HOA lake from our lateral."
There was a silence on his end, followed by a sound that might have been a breath and might have been a curse.
"You serious?"
"I am standing beside the pipe. Mara's on the way. We don't have time to argue with them."
"Already moving," Sam said.
I also called a water hauler I had used during a pump failure two summers earlier. He had two tankers he could reserve for the next morning, though he warned that other growers were fighting the heat and everybody wanted emergency deliveries. I put my name on the list and asked for a written estimate. We would use the tankers only if the district flow failed to recover fast enough. I was not interested in wasting money for the appearance of action, but neither could I afford to gamble away the young block.
By the time Mara's district truck came up the access road, I had walked the connection twice and made a sketch of its location relative to the turnout, the orchard meter, and the HOA boundary. She got out carrying a tablet, a portable flow instrument, and the expression of somebody who had already decided the facts would be more important than anybody's version of them.
"Show me," she said.
We began at the district meter. It was delivering exactly what the district schedule said it should deliver. We checked the orchard-side readings. They had already begun to improve after I closed the unauthorized branch, though the long lateral needed time to recharge. At the valve box, Mara examined the fitting without touching it, then opened the district's map of authorized connections.