Board Director Larry Byrd says he’s fully cooperating with investigation
Modesto, CA (September 24, 2025) — In his first public comments since facing allegations of water theft, Modesto Irrigation District Director Larry Byrd said during Tuesday’s board meeting that the claims are a conspiracy to hurt him politically.
An independent investigation into Byrd’s water use at an almond orchard near La Grange, first reported Sept. 15 in The Modesto Focus, is moving forward, MID General Manager Jimi Netniss said Tuesday. Byrd said, “I completely support (it) and will fully cooperate.”
Two weeks earlier, three critics had publicly urged Byrd to address rumors that MID surface water has nourished more than 100 acres of his almonds outside district boundaries, prompting MID Board President Bob Frobose to commission the investigation.
Byrd, first elected in 2011, said in brief remarks Tuesday, “the small portion of the orchard outside the MID boundaries is irrigated with well water. This entire issue is based on false claims by a disgruntled former employee who I fired, repeated over and over as an organized political smear campaign.”
Some in the audience came to Byrd’s defense, including former District 13 congressman John Duarte, who owns a nursery.
“From out here in the cheap seats, it looks like (Byrd) is being persecuted,” said Duarte, an ally of Byrd’s advocacy to sell MID water at below-market prices to out-of-district growers in east Stanislaus County. “It looks like an individual vendetta for (Byrd’s) being inconvenient and voicing certain policy preferences.”
Audience member Emerson Drake of Modesto said, “When you want to smear somebody you say whatever you want and everyone hears the first thing, but they don’t hear when he’s vindicated later on.”
MID provides farmwater to 2,300 growers with 66,000 acres, and about half of Modesto’s tap water is treated MID surface water from the Tuolumne River. The utility also provides electricity to 133,000 customer accounts in Modesto, Salida, Waterford and Mountain House and parts of Ripon, Escalon, Oakdale, and Riverbank.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact Stapley at [email protected].
