A former California official has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal more than $1.5 million in water, but the decades-long water theft case still has more questions than answers.
Dennis Falaschi served as general manager of the Panoche Water District in Fresno and Merced counties, located in central California, from approximately 1986 to 2017. The public water district purchased water from the federal government and collected drainage water from farms, which it then sold legally to area farmers, according to a statement released Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.
But after Falaschi discovered that some of the federally owned water was flowing from an old pipe into a separate channel, the pipe was modified so that it could be opened and closed, allowing water to be taken. water “on demand,” prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney said Falaschi was responsible for stealing water worth between $1.5 million and $3.5 million. Prosecutors also said that between 2011 and 2016, Falaschi was paid for water he obtained legally, but failed to report his income on his tax returns.
In a plea agreement filed Thursday, Falaschi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to take federally owned water and one count of filing a false income tax return.
A lawyer for Falaschi did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. His sentencing is scheduled for September.
While this plea provides some answers, many questions remain in the case that San Joaquin Valley farmers have been watching for years.
When Falaschi was indicted in 2022, prosecutors described him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that lasted from approximately 1992 to 2015 in which more than $25,000,000 worth of water was stolen from the federal government, or more than 130,000 acre-feet of water.
The indictment says the proceeds of the theft should have gone to the federal government, rather than to Falaschi and eight co-conspirators, in the form of “exorbitant salaries, benefits and reimbursements for personal expenses.” “.
The Los Angeles Times, which published an in-depth article on the alleged heist in April, reported that while some farmers were angry with Falaschi, others described him as the “Robin Hood of irrigation,” saying that they could get the water they needed.
Falaschi’s plea agreement claims he is responsible for stealing only a fraction of the $25 million prosecutors initially charged in the original indictment. The plea agreement also stated that Falaschi was one of several people involved in the misconduct and that he was unaware of the extent of the misconduct.
The plea agreement states that almost all of the water withdrawn by Falaschi was used to “mix and reuse drainage water, which helped protect agricultural land and improve the water quality of the San Joaquin River.
“Improved water quality contributed to the San Joaquin River being removed from the list of impaired waters under California’s Clean Water Act,” the plea agreement states, adding: “It n “There was no evidence that Mr. Falaschi directly benefited from this misconduct.”
The Times reported that the complaint raises even more questions about who was stealing the water, who was making money from it and why it took the federal government so long to realize it.
The mystery surrounding the case continues as water consumption in the state comes under increasing scrutiny, with droughts and water shortages forcing California officials to reconsider how water is used and allocated.
businessinsider
