Political battleground for irrigation issues shifting from Modesto to Oakdale

The Oakdale Irrigation District’s practice of selling Stanislaus River water to outsiders is being questioned by two women challenging board incumbents on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Gail Altieri will take on Frank Clark in OID’s Division 1, and Linda Santos will oppose Al Bairos in Division 4. The women have compared notes but are not pursuing joint candidacy on a formal slate, Santos said.

A third candidate, Daniel Medina, will challenge Gary Osmundson for OID Division 5.

Meanwhile, a calmer political climate this year in the Modesto Irrigation District produced no challengers to incumbents Nick Blom or Larry Byrd. Because they are unopposed, both will keep their seats.

In the Turlock Irrigation District, board member Rob Santos is unopposed, while Tracy Sunde will challenge incumbent Michael Frantz in Division 1.

OID has never had a female board member, but Santos said gender has nothing to do with her candidacy.

“I almost feel like I’ve been pushed into this because we’re not getting any kind of cooperation from current board members,” Santos said. “They’re polite, they placate you and they’re nice while you’re talking to them, then nothing changes.”

Santos, a longtime cattle rancher, said she is unhappy at the board’s recent closed-door negotiations with prospective buyers from other counties. OID has received more than $35 million over a decade by selling water.

In a candidacy announcement, Altieri railed on “nonstop pumping” of groundwater by the district while shopping “supposedly surplus water” to outsiders. The “career educator and rancher” wants “to keep as much OID water as possible here to irrigate local farms and ranches,” the release said.

Clark said, “We’ve gone through four years of very serious drought and OID is in the best position of probably any district in the state. Our customers are just very fortunate.”

The Modesto Bee was unable to reach Altieri, Bairos or Medina for comment.

Osmundson, a dairy farmer appointed in April to fill the unexpired term of former board member Jack Alpers, said of Medina’s challenge, “That’s fine if someone wants to run. People will vote for whoever they want to be in office.” He said the board and top staff “take a lot of heat, but from what I’ve seen, they’re doing the best they can, given all the agencies they have to deal with.”

The OID office said only one woman has run for the board in recent times, and perhaps in its 105-year history: Patricia Foard, who collected 44 percent of the votes in a 2009 loss to Herman Doornenbal, who remains on the panel.

Political unrest two years ago prompted nine people to run for three MID seats, all of which were claimed by newcomers when John Mensinger, Jake Wenger and Paul Campbell emerged victorious. Hot-button issues included fallout from the abandoned idea of selling Tuolumne River water to San Francisco at a big markup.

Blom and Byrd said this year’s lack of opposition indicates that things have settled down.

“It tells me people are happy, I guess,” Byrd said. Blom noted that the board has not raised electricity rates in four years while reducing MID’s debt.

This story was originally published August 12, 2015 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Political battleground for irrigation issues shifting from Modesto to Oakdale."